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| It has been a half-century since
Korea was divided and exchanges between the North and the South
were stopped at the DMZ. Each side has military forces of nearly
one million strong faced off against each other across the DMZ.
This is the reality of security in Korea.
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The DMZ was created by the Korean Armistice
Agreements, which was signed on July 27, 1953. Specifically,
the Armistice created a 155-mile long military demarcation
line (MDL) with a 2-kilometer deep demilitarized zone
on each side of it (for a total width of 4 kilometers),
where all military operations and hostile acts ceased.
This area is the DMZ.
The MDL starts in Kyodongdo, near the intersection of
the Imjin and Han Rivers in the neutral Han River Estuary,
and runs to Kosong-gun, Kangwon Province, via Panmunjom
south of Kaesong, Chorwon, Kimhwa and Myunghori. Overall
it runs across the waist of the Korean peninsula for about
248 kilometers. When we think of the MDL, we usually think
of a line divided by military fences, barbed wire entanglements,
however the MDL is simply marked by yellow signs called
MDL Markers.
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The MDL Markers are written in Korean
and English on the southern side and in Korean and Chinese
on the northern side. This was done with respect to the
languages of major participants in the Korean War.
The MDL Marker numbering begins with 0001 at its western
end where it intersects the Imjin River and ends at the
East Sea. There were a total of 1,292 MDL Markers placed
at approximately 200 meter intervals.
Of these 1,292 markers, the United Nations Command (UNC)
forces are responsible for maintaining 696 markers and
the Communist armies are responsible for the maintenance
of 596 markers.
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A barbed wire fence, often called the iron
fence line, is set up approximately 2 kilometers away from the MDL
in the vicinity of the respective boundaries of the DMZ. These lines
are called the Southern Boundary Line and the Northern Boundary Line.
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