Why is dmz dangerous

In , a Soviet interpreter visiting from the North ran across the military demarcation line, drawing North Korean soldiers across in pursuit. A firefight ensued, killing three North Koreans and one South Korean soldier. In perhaps the most notorious encounter between the North and South here, North Korean soldiers attacked a group of South Korean and U. The North killed American Capt. Arthur Bonifas and Lt. Mark Barrett with axes and wounded several others.

Three days later, American and South Korean forces cut down the tree in a show of resolve called Operation Paul Bunyan. One of the South Korean soldiers involved was a special forces commando named Moon Jae-in, now the president of the country. The Joint Security Area originally was a neutral area with no boundary dividing North and South, but after the ax murders, the military demarcation line was added.

Around U. Living in rural North Korea was evidently a harsh lifestyle. Pyongyang tells little of the real story. Halfway passes and we take a break at what the guides and most foreigners know as the Tea House Sohung Rest House. For those readers familiar with that Vice documentary on North Korea, it may be recognisable.

A path leading out into remote village communities. All transport is foot or bicycle. There were no cars and motorbikes looked more like antiques and were just as reliable. Questionable dwellings, but this is about as good as it gets outside Pyongyang. This rule was strictly enforced. Upon leaving Pyongyang, I saw trains hidden by tall barriers above which the upper half of military tanks were clearly visible.

The guides in North Korea are essentially an extension to your own responsibility. They take the fall for minor crimes on your behalf. Military checkpoints began to appear in rapid succession.

Four leading up to the city of Kaesong about 20 minutes apart. This was before we even arrived in the vicinity of the DMZ itself. Each checkpoint gated off the road splashing Korean signage widely enforcing a stop.

Our role was to sit in deathly silence, look ahead on our best behaviour and ensure anything with a lens quickly became invisible. Unless of course, a bus shakedown in North Korea was on your bucket list. At least not now. All things considered, these checkpoints are a slight inconvenience at most.

Yet, they are an intimidating process but I think that is the point. As a direct line to Pyongyang, the motorway is well contained and those using it must have purpose and approval.

They waved us down and five minutes later our bus was back on its way joined by eight new occupants. Not sure about the minivan driver. He stayed behind. Likely discussing terms of his contract on a call to the insurance company, I bet. Not long after, we reach Kaesong, a city just a stone throw away from our DMZ destination of Panmunjom.

Due to its proximity to South Korea, Kaesong provides an interesting role in the economics between the two nations including the morally questionable Kaesong Industrial Region where South Korean companies employ North Korean labour for a pittance on DPRK soil.

As we pass through, one guide points out Kaesong Train Station. Police officers having a discussion on the barren streets of Kaesong. Colourful traditional housing in Kaesong. Taken from the bus window as we pass through. With a keen eye, the towering flagpoles of both North and South Korea can be seen in the distance less than four kilometres apart, the width of the DMZ splitting each nation. We embrace yet another and final, yay! My first thought after seeing this mural was the irony in that we were standing aside a 4km wide, km long minefield purely designed to keep the North and South of Korea away from each other.

Now that we are here, there are three sections of the DMZ which I want to make clear, mainly because they confused me initially. I might not be the only one. It exists as a 4km wide buffer between both Koreas. This is the actual political border. Anyway, in this staging area of our arrival, we have to ditch the bus. I kid you not. Soliciting tourists is a universal language, folks. Among other things…. Kim Jong-Un may be eating extra lobster tail this week thanks to that 10 euros. But with the Kaesong Industrial Region nearby I felt somewhat less guilty.

Well, apparently Ginseng is used in Korea for impotence. Ahh, the International Friendship Exhibition incident , and now this. Note how the frame is thicker at the top so that the leaders are always looking down upon you.

These stock portraits are in every household and business. As we waited for authorisation, it suddenly dawns on me — could I get cell phone signal here? We are right on the border…surely South Korean tower coverage reaches. My iPhone has been on flight mode since boarding the plane in China to Pyongyang because well, as we know, North Korea is a communicative black spot.

Sure enough, disabling flight mode showed a two-bar signal to a South Korean cell carrier and I instantly received an automated roaming SMS and one I was sent days earlier. Or something equally ridiculous along those lines. Alright, with the bus searched and cleared of nefarious products, we are lined up and marched single file through the gate into the DMZ itself. The path we take is set below ground level, built up on both sides by brick, it was one-way and only wide enough for the bus and driving within it made me feel like a rat up a drainpipe.

Atop of these girders sit huge bulk blocks of stone and the gaps between are filled in by barbed wire and electric fencing. Behind it on both sides appeared peaceful — lush, long green grass where nature has reclaimed land and is devoid of anything, not even any crops. The bus currently sit sandwiched between two desolate fields that form just a small section of the approximate 3 million landmines present across the entire DMZ. Oh and those stone blocks?

Those are tank traps, our guides acknowledge them to be rigged with explosives and a necessary evil to prevent military pressure bypassing the fields and streamlining through this paved gateway into North Korea.

The result is a set of four known infiltration tunnels North Korea dug underneath as invasion paths into South Korea, El Chapo over there in Mexico may have gotten some inspiration here from Kim Il-Sung.

From the South side on a DMZ tour, you even get the chance to go into one. From the North? Their existence is not acknowledged. Guides have never heard of them. Halfway into the DMZ, we make a stop. This is the actual location of the late Panmunjom village — there is now nothing left.

Once IPv6 is fully phased in, the larger address space will do away with the need for NAT and possibly DMZ altogether, but this will take years to fully bring in. The DMZ is a separate zone on your router which you can place devices on your home network into, which allows them to bypass firewall filtering and fully open them up to the internet for best connectivity.

Using DMZ carries with it some enormous benefits for gaming, basically improving end to end connectivity with other games consoles, which is crucial for reducing lag or latency when gaming online. See our article on DMZ for gaming for more details. The good news is that it is safe to place games consoles into the DMZ, since they have restrictions on the way they are able to access the internet which mean they do have have the same security vulnerabilities that other devices do.

Put simply, games consoles cannot catch viruses because they cannot be put in a position where they can catch viruses. The internet browsers on them cannot download anything and any downloads that a games console does make for games, patches etc are done through channels carefully controlled and secured by the the console manufacturers. The user does not have the same freedom of browsing on games consoles that they do on other devices and so cannot stray them off into territory where they could get infected, like downloading from suspect sites.

It restricts access to sensitive data, resources, and servers by placing a buffer between external users and a private network. Other benefits include access control, preventing attackers from carrying out reconnaissance of potential targets, and protecting organizations from being attacked through IP spoofing.

A DMZ can be used on a router in a home network. Some home routers also have a DMZ host feature that allocates a device to operate outside the firewall and act as the DMZ. All other devices sit inside the firewall within the home network.

A gaming console is often a good option to use as a DMZ host. It ensures the firewall does not affect gaming performance, and it is likely to contain less sensitive data than a laptop or PC. Skip to content Skip to navigation Skip to footer. What is a DMZ Network? Benefits of Using a DMZ. As a result, the DMZ also offers additional security benefits, such as: Enabling access control: Businesses can provide users with access to services outside the perimeters of their network through the public internet.

The DMZ enables access to these services while implementing network segmentation to make it more difficult for an unauthorized user to reach the private network. A DMZ may also include a proxy server, which centralizes internal traffic flow and simplifies the monitoring and recording of that traffic.

Preventing network reconnaissance: By providing a buffer between the internet and a private network, a DMZ prevents attackers from performing the reconnaissance work they carry out the search for potential targets.

Servers within the DMZ are exposed publicly but are offered another layer of security by a firewall that prevents an attacker from seeing inside the internal network. Even if a DMZ system gets compromised, the internal firewall separates the private network from the DMZ to keep it secure and make external reconnaissance difficult.

Blocking Internet Protocol IP spoofing: Attackers attempt to find ways to gain access to systems by spoofing an IP address and impersonating an approved device signed in to a network.