Military and civilian members of the POW/MIA recovery team wait in line while American officers confer with North Koreans at the demilitarized zone. After completing a mission in North Korea, 28 Americans out of Hawai'i crossed the demarcation line to re-enter South Korea at the DMZ. The harsh terrain reminded team members of how isolated any American might have felt being trapped in the North. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Oh, yeah, definitely. You know that you are one of the very few people from America who can say actually say they've crossed the DMZ," said Sgt. Duane Elrod, a 24-year-old from South Carolina.

Certainly it was with a sense of purpose. The military and civilian members of the team spent 30 days in Unsan County and at the Chosin Reservoir searching for the remains of U.S. soldiers missing in action from the 1950-53 Korean War.

Yesterday, they came out with remains believed to be those of a U.S. soldier from each site.

The POW/MIA group represents the only U.S. Defense Department presence in North Korea. Only since May have teams been able to cross out of North Korea by foot across Panmunjom in the DMZ.

In the north, the team encountered 1950s technology, steam-driven trucks, and propaganda aimed at the United States.

Missions began in '96

Recovery missions have been conducted since 1996, but teams and remains were usually flown into and out of North Korea via Beijing.

"I think how I traveled all that way back to that line (DMZ), and how the U.S. forces fought to where I was," Benson said.

What Benson encountered was a forbidding land.

"I thought of the harsh conditions and the cold, the terrain and the mountains that appear out of nowhere and go straight up," the Iowa man said.

"It made me think of the isolation and loneliness. The fighting was never-ending and they were surrounded and secluded. They were questioning whether they would live or die, go back to safety or become prisoners."

About 8,100 U.S. service members remain missing from the war. After identification, the remains brought back will be returned to families.

A ceremony to repatriate the remains is being held today at Yongsan Army Garrison in Seoul, and the exiting team will fly back to Hawai'i tomorrow.

Another POW/MIA team is heading into North Korea from Beijing for a 30-day mission.

Concerns and change

For the exiting group, making one of five attempts at recoveries from spring to fall, it was an odyssey through the Stalinist country and the regime of Kim Jong Il, whose nuclear capabilities have raised alarm and led to President Bush to call North Korea part of an "axis of evil."

Called “Propaganda Village” by U.S. soldiers, Kichong-dong sits in plain view as a living example of the North’s prosperity. U.S. officials believe, however, that it is largely uninhabited. In a game of one-upsmanship, the North erected the world’s tallest flagpole. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Nowhere is the 51-year-old divide of the two Koreas more evident than at the approximately half-mile Joint Security Area, part of a 151-mile border fortified with barbed wire, mines and guard posts.

Nearly 1 million North Korean soldiers and 10,000 artillery tubes are permanently massed on the border to attack the South, which in turn is protected by South Korean and 37,000 U.S. troops.

Four tunnels have been discovered leading to the South, and many others remain hidden as part of a plan to send tens of thousands of North Korean commandos into the South in a war.

"I would call it an oxymoron — the demilitarized zone," said Lt. Col. Paul Snyder, commander of the U.N. Command security battalion for the Joint Security Area. "The demilitarized zone is probably one of, if not the most, fortified borders in the world."

At the Joint Security Area, a roughly circular enclave surrounded by woods alive with the buzz of insects in the summer heat, a bizarre ritual of psychological warfare plays out, with North and South eyeing one another suspiciously with binoculars and television cameras across the divide.

The South's soldiers, representing the Republic of Korea, wear dark sunglasses as they stand in a martial-arts stance called "ROK-ready" behind a series of meeting rooms that straddle the border in a stare-down with the North. The soldiers stand half hidden behind the buildings to minimize exposure should the North fire on them.

Joint Security Area soldiers from the South must be taller than the average Korean, and 80 percent are black-belt experts in the martial arts.

"I think there is a mutual distrust and mutual disdain for each other. But at the same time there's a mutual respect for force capabilities," said Snyder, who commands a security force of 550 soldiers.

About 60 percent are South Korean and the remainder are American — a force that this fall will become almost entirely South Korean. Snyder said there's always an underlying tension.

"In a moment's notice, an incident could occur," he said. "You could have guys rushing into the JSA for a firefight in a short period of time. Things could go bad very quickly."

Snyder said the last time things went really bad was in 1984, when a Soviet defector made his own crossing — with a dozen North Koreans firing at him.

A firefight just over the border resulted in one South Korean and three North Koreans being killed.

More than 250 South Koreans, 50 Americans and 375 North Koreans have been killed since 1967 in the DMZ. Last summer, guards from the North and South briefly exchanged machine gun fire.

Tourist attraction

Adding to the bizarre atmosphere on the border is its use as a tourist attraction — visits both sides try to use to their advantage.

Led by North Korean soldiers, Americans on the recovery team move to the border crossing after one month in North Korea on missions to recover the remains of Americans missing since the Korean War. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

When the South built Freedom House as a meeting place for North and South Korean families just across the border in the Joint Security Area, the North — not to be outdone — added a third floor to Panmungak, an observation facility directly opposite.

North Korean soldiers once entered into one of the joint meeting rooms and sawed down the chair legs on the U.S. and South Korean side so they would appear shorter at meetings.

The North village of Kichong-dong nearby is called a propaganda village by the South, which says few people actually live in the five- and six-story buildings intended to showcase the North's building skills.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists each year board buses in the South for tours of the Joint Security Area and nearby Camp Bonifas, named after an Army captain who was hacked to death in 1976 by North Koreans wielding axes, clubs and knives in a dispute over tree-trimming along the DMZ.

Opinions not rigid

Opinions about North Korea are far from black-and-white, even among South Korean soldiers in the Joint Security Area.

Returning team member Marine Sgt. Michael Housch applauds while Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jason Douville swigs a cold soda after being welcomed on the bus ride back to Seoul from the DMZ. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Jung said he believes that the two countries can open their borders but retain their separate ways of life and government.

"Right now, it's not that possible. We'll need time to understand each other," he said.

Crossing over the border yesterday, Elrod, 24, a vehicle mechanic with the POW/MIA team, said: "When you are standing there right at the line, you see the North Koreans and they are giving you that hateful look."

At the Chosin Reservoir, the team of 13 POW/MIA members lived in big tents and had large kitchen and supply tents and hot showers.

The 7th Infantry Division fought Chinese forces in late 1950 there in fierce battles. Unsan County, an area 60 miles north of the North Korean capital of

Pyongyang, was the site of battles between communist forces and the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry and 25th Infantry divisions in November of 1950.

A second POW/MIA team of 13 recovered one set of remains at the Unsan County site.

According to the Korean War Almanac by retired Army Col. Harry G. Summers Jr., the 25th Infantry Division had 13,685 casualties in the war. A total of 3,048 soldiers were killed or died of wounds received in action, 10,186 were wounded, 67 were missing in action, and 384 were held as prisoners of war.

"You get to see the way the 'great leader' treated (the North Korean people)," said Elrod in a reference to Kim Il Sung, who led North Korea until his son, Kim Jong Il, took over.

"They're just often in the dark about so much. They are told only what they need to be told."

Other team members have said soldiers with the Korean People's Army, which guards the Hawai'i team members, are cordial, but do not converse with the POW/MIA group.

$2 million payment

The United States negotiates each year for recovery missions to North Korea, and last year agreed to pay the government $2.1 million. Twenty-four sport utility vehicles also were provided to the North to transport the team.

A Korean People’s Army guard peers across the DMZ from a guard tower. Separated by mere feet in some places, the North and South keep a vigilant, if not ceremonial, watch on each other. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Navy Senior Chief John Dela Cruz, 40, who grew up in 'Aiea and is the POW/MIA command's noncommissioned officer in charge, briefly went across the border yesterday to oversee the transfer of team supplies.

He's been to the Chosin Reservoir before as a team leader.

"It's a different environment than this (crossing over briefly)," Dela Cruz said, "because I know I'm just a few steps from the border. When you go in as a team leader, it's a totally different atmosphere because you have the fear of the unknown, being in a communist country."

The unpredictable North is hard to read, and all its decisions involving the United States are highly nuanced.

Choong Nam Kim, an expert on Korean relations at the East-West Center in Hawai'i, said the North is trying to drive a wedge between the South and the United States.

Kim said the decision to allow the movement of teams back across the visible Joint Security Area at Panmunjom and movement of supplies there may be another propaganda scheme.

"If you exchange remains at Panmunjom, that will be viewed inside South Korea as North Korea being very flexible towards the United States, but the United States is taking a hard-line policy towards North Korea," Kim said.

Although the team coming out — hampered by rain and wind — recovered just two individuals' remains, Col. Claude Davis, deputy commander of the POW/MIA command, said the focus should not be so much on the numbers but rather on the promise to not forget missing U.S. service members.

By contrast, a mission in the spring resulted in the recovery of 19 sets of remains.

"You hear a lot of comment out there about us doing missions up north and what we get out of it," Davis said. "The key here is we're bringing closure to families."

It's an equal motivator for POW/MIA team members.

"It's not hard to keep these guys pumped up," he said. "You just explain to them what it means to a family to bring back a relative's remains."