Mick Hartley

From the Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK, on Sunday:

The concrete wall, a symbol of confrontation and division, which divides Korea into two, must be demolished immediately. Rodong Sinmun Sunday says this in a signed article.

The wall erected in the south side’s area along the Military Demarcation Line is one of division and confrontation the military dictators of south Korea built in a bid to permanently divide the Korean nation into two at the instigation of the outside forces, the article notes, and goes on:

It is a national disgrace that such physical wall still remains even in the present June 15 era of reunification which witnesses the opening of a wide avenue for the development of inter-Korean relations, peaceful reunification and national prosperity. It is also quite contrary to the trend of the times. The existence of this wall is hindering the inter-Korean reconciliation, cooperation and independent reunification.

There’s a slight problem though, as this article in the Scotsman points out:

One of the greatest hindrances to tearing down the wall is that it does not exist.

Another problem is that North Korea does not allow its citizens to leave the country freely. Defectors say anyone trying to escape is shot and the state has even executed some North Koreans caught abroad and forcibly returned….

A few weeks after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung, said in a New Year’s Day address that Seoul had built a massive concrete wall to divide the two states, which are technically still at war.

Analysts said Mr Kim made the claim to rally support for his state as its communist allies faded with the end of the Cold War. At the time Seoul was working to set up formal ties with the Soviet Union, then the North’s biggest benefactor.

On New Year’s Day 1990 Mr Kim, founder of one of the world’s most isolated and repressive states, called it “a barrier of national division” preventing free travel between the two countries. The North’s official media have never corrected Mr Kim, who is revered at home as a god and was posthumously declared the country’s eternal president.

Some international news reports accepted Mr Kim’s pronouncement as fact, prompting Seoul to invite journalists and observers a few weeks later to look into the DMZ to see for themselves that the wall did not exist.

But for a wall that is not there, North Korean propaganda has painted a vivid picture of it, claiming the border wall stands 16ft to 26ft high, is as thick as 30ft and was built by a “South Korean military fascist clique”.

KCNA has mentioned the wall about 150 times over the past decade.