2024-05-02 14:47:00
reportage
On the South Korean archipelago of Yeongpyeong, people experience firsthand how often North Korea provokes its neighboring country. Three kilometers separate the islands from the north. How do you live there with the almost daily shelling?
The ferry leaves twice a day from Incheon on the west coast of South Korea towards the Yeongpyeong Islands. It’s a good two hour drive to the largest, the Daeyeongpyeong.
It is only seven square kilometers in size and is strategically important for the democratic south, because a few kilometers away as the crow flies rise islands that belong to North Korea.
Bunkers, tunnels and lots of soldiers
Daeyeongpyeong makes a living from the military. Around a third of the 2,000 people on the island are soldiers or military personnel. Anyone who visits the viewing platform in the middle of the island will see tunnels in camouflage colors everywhere, a bunker here and there.
In the island café, hundreds of post-it peace doves and hearts in yellow and purple hang on a lattice wall. Soldiers and their friends have written wishes and messages, expressing their love and hoping for peace, which in fact has not yet existed between North and South Korea since the end of the war in 1953, only a ceasefire.
Due to the café’s exposed location on a hill, it has to close every day from 5 p.m. Young Ae stands relaxed behind the espresso machine. “When the North does military exercises, we always hear about it,” she says, “I worry for a moment, but they quickly pass and everyday life returns.”
View from the South Korean island of Yeongpyeong to North Korea: “When the North does military exercises, we always hear that”
Refuge in the shelter
She got a bigger shock at the beginning of January when 200 artillery shells hit the buffer zone, the alarm was sounded on Daeyeongpyoeng and people were told to flee to safety. She then sat in the shelter for three hours and, like other residents, probably asked herself why people in the rest of South Korea could lead such a carefree life and she couldn’t.
The events in January did not faze Park Hee Sook. She shows the shelter underneath her house. Unlike usual, the steel door is only ajar. At least the anteroom is open. There are about 50 pairs of slippers neatly lined up on a shelf on the left.
She believes the risk of an attack is no greater than anywhere else: “South Korea is a small country and we are not safe anywhere.” But why would North Korea attack a small island rather than the mainland and Seoul, she asks herself.
However, she still remembers a much more serious incident on Daeyeongpyoeng. In the fall of 2010, the North responded to military exercises by the South with artillery fire. Several houses were set on fire, four people died and eighteen were injured. Park Hee Sook then moved to the mainland for three months and says she continued to cringe at every noise for a long time afterward.
Prepare for an emergency
The island has a total of seven shelters, which are equipped so that all residents can be well looked after for at least half a day. Lee Han Byul works at the city government and is seconded to Daeyeongpyoeng for two years. It leads through one of the bunkers for 150 people.
There are gas masks hanging in one room, emergency beds in the next, lots of different food, and a hi-fi system for television and radio. There are also two gray telephones – one for the island’s residents, one for the military – and a satellite phone.
Lee Han Byul believes that they are very well prepared for a possible attack on Daeyeongpyeong. The navy is constantly training, especially in the north there are many military bases and even a self-propelled howitzer. In an emergency, a rocket could even be fired northwards.
Regular Evacuation drill
Because the goal in such an emergency is to get the residents off the island as quickly as possible, this is also practiced regularly, once every three months – participation is voluntary.
A good dozen people followed the request. One morning you are sitting in a hovercraft at the harbor. As the ship leaves, the Korean women in the front row alternately look left and right and talk about how they can get discolored laundry white again. They leave talking to journalists to the men. They are rather quiet, but one of them says that the exercise gives him security, even if the group is basically only driven around their own island for 20 minutes.
Police Chief Choi Gwang Seok, who was visibly tense before, now has a smile on his face. Everything went well.
Anyone who makes it to Yeongpyeong from North Korea will be greeted with this sign on the beach.
Refugees and island residents alike should always watch out for mines that have washed up.
Welcome greeting and mine warning
Every year one or two North Koreans cross the sea border, usually in wooden boats, and become stranded in the south. According to residents, swimming is too difficult because of the current. When a North Korean arrives on the wide beach of sand and pebbles, the first thing he sees is a sign: “Welcome to the free country of South Korea. Please press your head next to the phone and we will direct you.”
What the refugee doesn’t see is another sign on the side leading to the beach. There are warnings about North Korean mines that keep washing up and could be hidden in the pebbles.
A restaurant owner stretches his feet on the beach during his lunch break. In the summer everyone went swimming here, mines or not. The short distance to the north doesn’t scare him either: “Both countries know that in the event of a conflict there is no end, then it will be a really big war, so I’m not too worried.”
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