It’s not without a sense of woeful irony that I notice just how peaceful the northern South Korean city of Paju is at night. I walk along a river in the demilitarized zone at nearly three in the morning, nothing moves. The only suggestion of humanity is the dull glow of a distant Seoul. The gentle hum of a lucent sky powered by industry – a burning which seems to hang in the air as if to suggest a powerful engine roaring on this brisk fall night. Towards the north, the absence of anything; the complete and devastating vacuum of any kind of progress.
As I walk on the edge of this shallow, muddy river bank, all that exists in this eerie frontier battleground; miles of unspooled deadly razor-wire, men in simple, camouflage booths with guns sharply trained on the slightest of ripples in the water – suspicious of anything that may arise out of the still, inky, black water.
Paju, a city in growth; modern, clean, abundant with all the creature comforts one could possible hope for, or indulge. Paju is a place that most would considered an excellent budding city. A great example of how far this modest-sized, but resilient Republic has come since the hellish civil war only sixty-nine years ago.
Yet, just five-hundred meters across this veiled river, existing in the persistent blackness of the rogue nation to the North, a town with no name settles into night. An eerie silence lingers – like the low notes of a classical piano sonata. And as the sun sets over the village, she blithely cloaks herself; her collective failures disappear – at least at night. This strange, small town seems to exist between the striking percussion notes – between the real and the unbelievable; an opus to scarcity, oppression, hopelessness.
I’ve been here before. In the daylight. When the sun is cresting, in the distance, I could almost make out the silhouette of a cultural centre, a row of harmonica houses, a small school, and abeyant farm land that now lies forgotten. Now, on this moonless night, there is nothing. Nothing but a bitter stillness.
I’m sure upon closer inspection, I could find the vivid cerise and amber glow coming off of hand-rolled cigarettes of North Korean men huddled in the darkest of corners reminiscing of better days. Days long since gone. Indeed, so distant and the struggle so great now – that to recall such a time is dangerous and hardly productive. Perhaps somewhere in that shadowy town beyond the fences, floodlights, and soldiers, I would pick up the faint suggestion of women doting over their babies, doing a poor job of fighting back the tears for the future of their ill-fated children.
However, from this vantage point in these early hours, on this side of the river, I see nothing. Just the suggestion of hills delineated in the windswept desolate nation to my North; only highlighted by the light given off by the Republic of which I call my home.
Korea, a divided country. Cousins now suspicious of each other. A conflict created by men and nations alien to the history and character of such a place. The border I now walk etched out in a global game of domination by the rich and known and unknown. Guns ready, Korean soldiers picking up arms and training it on each other. Where the ‘six parties’ see two nations, two peoples; I see only one. Perhaps some day, the capitalist South with all its flaws and wonders, and the tough and hardwearing North will for once be able to fashion and forge its own destiny, as one, whatever that may mean.
Just as the South continues to plow into the future with such fervour and dispatch, the North seems to hang there in the dark, stifled, and unable to get past an ideology that seems only to serve a select few while the rest sleep in the dark, cold and hungry on this wintry autumn night. I hope to see the day when the arms are laid down and the soldier from the South learns to trust and the soldier from the North. Arise, may such day in my heart and in my head come to this land of morning calm.
I DIDN’T PLAN TO BECOME A TEACHER: The Students Who Made Me Stay
I didn’t become a teacher because I planned to. I became one because I stayed. Because I said yes often enough. Because students like Alex and Clare taught me that education is not merely academic—it is relational, fragile, and profoundly human.
RAISED BY PLACES UNSEEN: The Quiet Way Borneo Found Me
I arrived in Kota Kinabalu under a veil of night. The airport was modest, its walls carrying a patina of age that felt unexpectedly comforting. It didn’t strive to impress; it felt lived-in, a doorway used by generations of travellers before me.
PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride
What began as innocent play, the joy of dressing up and pretending, soon curdled into confusion and punishment. My parents’ gentle corrections hardened into anger, their voices faltering with something more akin to unrelenting impatience. My pleas — small, wordless, desperate — were dismissed as misbehaviour. How could I have explained, at four or five…
(10 YEARS LATER) Learning to Ask for Help and Finding Friends with Latex Gloves
And these early changes—years later I recognize them as slight—felt monumental in the moment. They were proof that everything leading up to this—the appointments, the bureaucracy, the needles, the anxiety—was beginning to pay dividends.
AN ARGUMENT FOR SUFFRAGE: A Foreigner’s Fight for the Right to Vote in Korea
In no uncertain terms, I told them that until they make ‘meaningful efforts to include long-term residents, such as myself and the many reading this, into the decision process of how such money is to be spent,’ I won’t be paying this, or any other property tax.
- I DIDN’T PLAN TO BECOME A TEACHER: The Students Who Made Me Stay
- JUSTICE ENDS WHERE POLICING BEGINS: The Shameful History of Policing The Gay and Trans Community in Canada
- RAISED BY PLACES UNSEEN: The Quiet Way Borneo Found Me
- ALONE AGAINST THE SYSTEM: Fighting Police Misconduct in Ontario Means Surviving It
- PART 3 – NO PERMISSION NEEDED: What Was Once Shame Has Become Pride
Sabrina Constance 