09-151.pdf

northern side when they were apprehended and would be released “in
due course.”
At the October 19 meeting, Colonel Yu Sang Yol asserted that
the farmers had crossed the MDL but the KPA planned to return them,
if only the South would first admit the crossing. Colonel Thomas Riley
asserted that the innocent farmers had been abducted by force and
remained detained; he could not recognize the North’s investigation.
The farmers should be released immediately and unconditionally. At
a third meeting proposed, like the previous one, by the UNC/MAC
and convened on October 20, it was decided to make a joint
investigation on the next day. Colonel Riley for the UNC and Colonel
Yu for the KPA formed a joint observer team which was the first
convened since 1976. After the investigation, the two detainees
agreed: “It seems we accidentally crossed the Military Demarcation
Line in an area that is not clearly marked.” The UNC spokesman, Kim
Young Kyu, said: “We accepted the farmers’ statement to secure their
safe and timely release.” The farmers were handed over to the UNC on
October 21. 347
347_ Downs, op. cit., pp. 265-6; Hapch’am chôngbo ponbu, op. cit., 1999, pp. 471-3:
op. cit., 2001, pp. 264-5; Kirkbride, Panmunjom: Facts About the Korean DMZ,
2006, pp. 22, 42. Original quotation marks. On the North’s side of the JSA, just
some 200 metres away, is Kijông-dong, well known in South Korea as the “Propaganda
Village” due, above all, to the extensive loud speaker system that broadcasts
to the citizens of Taesông-dong. Also, it is merely a village in a caretaker
status: there are no citizens but only 15 to 20 workers present every day to raise
and lower the flag and to maintain the facilities. In 2002, more than 40 three-
to-five storey buildings were located densely in the village, which in North Korea
is reportedly called “The P’anmunjôm Peace Collective Farm” (organized in
1982). The flagpole at the entrance is with its 160 metres the world’s highest,
while the one in Taesông-dong is 100 metres high. From Kang, “Pukhan-ûi
chôpkyông chiyôk hyônhwang,” in Chông et al., DMZ III - chôpkyông chiyôg-ûi
hwahae hyômnyôk (Seoul: Tosô ch’ulp’an Sohwa, 2002), p. 65; Kim, DMZ
450 Peace-keeping in the Korean Peninsula