South takes no hance as troops reinforce capital
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Wednesday May 27 2009
LOADED on military transporters, four M109 Howitzers trundled down the Freedom motorway towards Seoul, as South Korea reinforced its capital.
"I have been watching army lorries moving up and down the motorway since yesterday," said Shim Hee-soon (73), in Imjingak, a village of 600 people that sits on the edge of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the most heavily armed border in the world.
Almost two million soldiers face each other across the zone, a 2.5-mile buffer at the 38th parallel between North and South Korea that is still littered with mines from the Korean war. As the American soldiers stationed here joke: "There's no D in the DMZ".
Mrs Shim said North Korea's nuclear test triggered a series of drills near the village. "There were lots of heavily armed soldiers moving through."
Although she lives in Seoul, her sister has lived in Imjingak for more than 40 years. It was here by the banks of the Imjin river in 1951 that one of the fiercest battles of the Korean war took place.
Mrs Shim said she felt nervous for her sister. "I told her that she should come and live in Seoul. But she told me that if North Korea attacks, it will bomb Seoul first." (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Malcolm Moore