50 years of trip-wire weirdness end as US leaves Korean border [View All]

Telegraph
By Richard Spencer,China Correspondent
(Filed: 02/11/2004)

The world's sole remaining Cold War frontier post lost its American guards yesterday when the United States withdrew from the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea.

Its abandonment of Panmunjom, the "truce village" of huts and observation posts that has been described as the weirdest as well as the most threatening settlement on earth, ends a 50-year history full of intrigue.

From now on, it will be manned just by the forces of the two Koreas, as the US reduces its 27,000-strong military in South Korea by a third.

Panmunjom owes its existence to the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953. As the North refused to recognise the government of the South, the two remain technically at war.

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