Peace Train goes to DMZ, but can’t take Koreans home

Posted on : 2014-06-11 17:50 KST Modified on : 2014-06-11 17:50 KST
Newly opened Korail route gives passengers an up-close look at the Korean peninsula’s painful division
 Gyeonggi Province while riding the DMZ-Train to Doraran Station
Gyeonggi Province while riding the DMZ-Train to Doraran Station

By Song In-geol, Daejeon correspondent

“When we pass Imjingang Station and go over the rail bridge, everyone concentrates on the view outside the windows. There are lots of people who start crying, as well,” the conductor said.

Jeong Se-young, 31, the conductor of the DMZ train, was talking to a Hankyoreh reporter on June 10 about the view from the train, which has already had more than 10,000 passengers in a month of operation.

The DMZ Peace Train, a short three-car train that runs twice a day from Seoul Station to Dorasan Station, blew its horn for the first time on May 4.

On the front of the train is a sketch of a steam locomotive, and there are also pictures of deer and cranes and the message “Peace Train” - especially poignant, since this is the only train that goes into the DMZ.

Each day, an average of 400 passengers ride the train. The passengers consist of families, foreigners, university students, elderly people, including North Koreans displaced by the Korean War, and veterans of the war.

When the train reaches the rail bridge spanning the Imjin River, it slows to 20km an hour. Through the windows on the right side of the train the pillars of a broken bridge can be seen, all that remains from bombing during the Korean War. The sightseers gazing at the steam locomotive that stopped running after an attack, Freedom Bridge, and the Mangbaedan memorial could not conceal their complicated feelings, Jeong said.

“An elderly man in his 90s got on the train in April. He told me that he had been a POW and had come over Freedom Bridge after a prisoner exchange. He said he boarded the train to say goodbye to his war comrades who had never made it back before they died. I can‘t forget how he held his hand against the window throughout the trip, trying to touch the landscape beyond,” Jeong said.

The route of the DMZ train means different things to different people: for South Koreans who moved here from the North, it is the road home, as well as memory lane; for young people and families, it is a way to experience the separation of the peninsula; for visitors from overseas, it is a journey motivated by curiosity. Jeong explained that many international visitors ask why they can’t keep going to the rest of Korea. Jeong and the other conductors explain the division of the peninsula using the example of Germany.

On the way back to Seoul, the conductors hand out a postcard showing the DMZ train. All of the Koreans whose homes are in the North share the same desire: they want to go home. This is also the desire of the DMZ Peace Train. It wants to take its passengers home.

In August, Korail will operate another DMZ train, which will run from Seoul Station to Baekmagoji Station, in Gangwon Province.

 

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