Here's what it's like to attend school on the edge of North Korea — the world's most militarized border
REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
- Twenty-nine students attend school in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.
- American troops monitor the situation to the North and teach English to the students.
- Less than 100 miles away from the border lies 70% of North Korea's soldiers.
In a small buffer zone on the southern side of the border that separates North and South Korea resides Daesungdong Elementary School.
The school is located in Taesung Freedom Village, a settlement in the Korean peninsula's Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The DMZ was created in 1951 for peace talks during the Korean War, and is a small area of just a little over a mile on either side of the border.
While the conflict stopped after an armistice was signed in 1953, a peace treaty was never signed, which means the two countries are technically still at war.
That tenuous situation led President Bill Clinton to call the DMZ "the scariest place on Earth" when he visited in 1993.
Reuters captured the daily life of students at Daesungdong Elementary School in a photo package called "Learning English in the Korean DMZ's Freedom Village."
On the southern side of the DMZ are American troops, many just a five-minute drive from a United Nations camp set up to monitor the situation to the North. Here, a US navy officer high-fives children at the Daesungdong Elementary School.
REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiThe students' daily commute includes trudging past barbed-wire fences, military checkpoints, and anti-tank barricades.
REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiOne of the students, a South Korean 4th grader named Lee Su-jin, said despite attending school in the DMZ, she isn't worried for her safety. "People are worried about us, but soldiers are with us, and we do evacuation drills," she told Reuters. "So I don't think there is anything to be scared or worried about."
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