Panmunjom's Blue Conference Huts Sit Exactly on the Border Between Two Korea-Sized Countries

The Joint Security Area at Panmunjom is the only place along the 250-kilometer-long Korean Demilitarized Zone where the soldiers of North and South Korea face each other across no actual physical barrier. The site is small — roughly 800 meters across — and arranged around a row of three blue prefabricated conference huts that sit exactly on the Military Demarcation Line drawn at the close of the Korean War in July 1953. The line bisects the inside of each hut, running through a microphone stand on the central conference table. Soldiers on each side stand with their toes inches from the line. Diplomatic visitors who step into the southern half of a hut to take a photograph are technically still in South Korea; if they walk across to the other side of the same room, they are in North Korea.

The site has been the stage for several genuinely violent moments. On August 18, 1976, two American officers — Captain Arthur Bonifas and First Lieutenant Mark Barrett — were leading a small detail to trim a 30-meter poplar tree that was blocking sightlines between two UN guard posts. They were attacked and killed by a group of about thirty North Korean soldiers wielding axes the work crew had brought along. The U.S. response was Operation Paul Bunyan three days later, in which the tree was cut down by a heavily armed and air-supported team while a B-52 bomber circled overhead.

The most photographed visit happened more recently. On June 30, 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump walked across the demarcation line at the JSA with Kim Jong Un, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to enter North Korea. Kim's quoted greeting: "You are the first U.S. President to cross the border."