Former and Active DMZs Allow Visitors to Learn the Haunting History of These Landscapes

When standing at the center of Vietnam’s Hien Luong pedestrian bridge, the former divide between the country’s north and south is painfully obvious. That’s because this 584-foot-long expanse across the Ben Hai River is painted blue on the upper side and yellow on the lower, replicating its appearance following the 1954 Geneva Accords, when the nation was split into two “regroupment” zones. The bridge is located along the 17th parallel—the demarcation line from which Vietnam’s demilitarized zone (DMZ) extended for three miles on either side. It was active until the country reunified on July 2, 1976.

I’ve long been fascinated with DMZs, which are intended to be neutral areas between two military powers, places where armed conflicts and military weapons and installations are technically prohibited. “In a way, the term ‘demilitarized’ is kind of a misrepresentation,” says David Biggs, an environmental historian and professor of Southeast Asian history at University of California, Riverside, “because many DMZs—including Vietnam’s former DMZ—are actually heavily militarized. What’s missing are the people.” In turn, these militarized environments develop their own unique ecologies and infrastructures, whether it’s transforming into an unintentional nature preserve—as is the case with Korea’s DMZ, where golden eagles, mountain goats and even Siberian tigers thrive—or becoming memorial parks and grasslands, like the “no man’s land” (not technically a DMZ, but similar) of minefields and barbed wire that once existed around Germany’s Berlin Wall.

My Vietnam DMZ tour began in the coastal city of Hue, the country’s once imperial capital and itself the site of an intense battle in 1968. Together with our guide, Hoa Trần; a driver; and a Dutch couple on vacation, we set out on a full-day tour of what’s left of the former partition, a 47.3-mile-long border area that once divided the country into north (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and south (the Republic of Vietnam). This DMZ was a direct result of the Geneva Conference—a series of international meetings that took place in 1954 and intended to help end the conflict in Indochina and reunite Vietnam’s two sides—and ran along the 17th parallel and part of the 62-mile-long Ben Hai River, stretching west to east from the Laos border to the South China Sea. It was originally intended as a two-year temporary partition, after which a general election to establish a single national government—either communist or capitalist, depending on the votes—would then be held.

“But once the CIA discovered that the people truly loved Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam’s communist leader,” said Trần, “the election never took place.” Instead, a war ensued between the two sides for approximately two decades.

During that time the DMZ saw some of the war’s heaviest fighting, though today only a few vestiges of this wartime history, including many of the military bases, landmines and various weapons meant to deter people from crossing, still exist, tucked within central Vietnam’s mountainous jungle greenery. “One of the effects of the fighting in the DMZ is that it thoroughly blasted huge swaths of the surrounding highland hill territory,” says Biggs, “inadvertently opening up the land for the coffee and rubber plantations that exist there now.”

Due to this lack of remaining DMZ infrastructure, the driving distance between stops was often long, so Trần shared her own personal stories en route. Her father fought for South Vietnam and was subjected to a year of “re-education camp,” which included political indoctrination and mandatory confession sessions, after the war ended. She also treated us to a playlist of songs that captured the era in some way—like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” which includes a mention of one of our stops, Khe Sanh, and the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B.” “While it’s not a song about the war,” said Trần, of the latter, “the line ‘let me go home’ was one that soldiers sang repeatedly.” Trần’s prompters helped me envision what this stretch might have been like for soldiers before April 30, 1975, when the Fall of Saigon ended the war and the DMZ essentially became irrelevant.

The stops themselves were just as enlightening. Quang Tri Citadel, an ancient fortress where the war’s Second Battle of Quang Tri occurred, still holds the remains of soldiers from both sides, as well as an ample amount of unexploded ordnance. (During our visit, an area was even sectioned off for the removal of several undischarged bombshells.) We paid a visit to Khe Sanh Combat Base, touring an outdoor display of military vehicles and aircraft, including a C-130 used to drop fuel and ammunition to marines fighting here during the 1968 Tet Offensive, as well as a museum exhibition featuring photographs from the trenches and weapons from both sides of the battle, including handmade artillery used for fighting against U.S. troops. Then, after stopping at the Hien Luong bridge, we made our way to the Vinh Moc tunnels, a complex of underground bomb shelters hidden along the country’s north-central coast.

Unlike the extremely narrow Cu Chi tunnels that exist in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), which were largely used as supply routes to support rebel forces in the south, Quang Tri’s Vinh Moc tunnels served primarily as living quarters. Local residents dug them by hand out of the terrain’s red basaltic soil, resulting in an approximately 6,000-foot-long network of rooms and passageways that existed on three subterranean levels, ranging from 33 to 75 feet below ground. Meandering through these dark and dampened tunnels, we came upon spaces once used as kitchens and surgery stations (at least 17 babies were born in the Vinh Moc tunnels), and even a 60-person meeting hall.

But like the overall tour itself, imagination was an essential part of the experience. DMZs, it seems, require visitors to look beyond what exists and to find the real stories in what doesn’t.

“What’s unique about DMZs and similar militarized landscapes,” says Biggs, “are the environments that you’re left with when you take usual human interactions out of the equation and leave these areas to essentially fend for themselves.”

“It’s a kind of globally common infrastructure,” he says, in which some truly distinct pockets of both earth and time have come to exist.

DMZs around the globe

Some of the world’s most famous DMZs are still active and open to visitors.

Antarctica

Signed by 12 nations in 1959, the Antarctic Treaty turned the entire “White Continent” into a truly demilitarized zone, one that’s been preserved for scientific research and “peaceful purposes only.” This includes welcoming expedition cruises, which allow travelers to step foot on what’s the world’s largest desert and to watch wobbly, webbed-footed penguins right in their natural habitat.

Cyprus

Since 1964, Cyprus has been home to its own DMZ, separating the European island’s population in two. Most Turkish Cypriots live in the north, while Greek Cypriots reside in the south. Although this Buffer Zone (also called “the Green Line”) runs across the country, it’s most apparent in Nicosia, the island’s divided capital city. Walking tours showcase how life has evolved on both sides, and they include abandoned buildings and military outposts that serve as reminders of the historical conflict between the two communities.

Korea

Like Vietnam’s former DMZ, the demilitarized zone separating North Korea and South Korea is heavily militarized. It’s also a hotbed of flora and fauna, including Asiatic black bears, red-crowned cranes and the purple flowering diamond bluebell. DMZ tours are popular day trips from Seoul and often include a visit to Dora Observatory, which offers views inside a country that’s off-limits to most.

Laura Kiniry | READ MORE

Laura Kiniry is a San Francisco-based freelance writer specializing in food, drink, and travel. She contributes to a variety of outlets including American Way, O-The Oprah Magazine, BBC.com, and numerous AAA pubs.