Coffee with a view of North Korean propaganda: ‘We live in prosperity and they have to pretend’

There are two things that South Koreans consume excessively: fried chicken And coffee. In fact, the city with the most Starbucks branches in the world is not New York, but Seoul. You come across branches of the coffee chain in the craziest places, but recently Starbucks opened a new location at a very special location: right to the border between North and South Korea.

« Look there, those big houses! They look like villas, dude, but they are not real. They are only there to pretend they are not poor. » Lee Ho-Son (61), who is coming here for the third time, says it this Saturday afternoon with a lot of conviction, while he points to a not insignificant building across the River Han.

The fact that Starbucks opens a branch here is not entirely from nowhere. The coffee tent is in the far north of the Aegibong Ecological Peace Park, an area at Gimpo where people have been coming to the north for some time as a tourist day out. Because the park is so close to North Korea, anyone who wants to fill in a form with a lot of personal data-South Korea is not yet as digitized in this area as is often assumed-and showing a passport before one can pass a military checkpoint. Exhibitions, a VR experience and historical artifacts can be visited in the park.

Socialist slogans

It is a special place to look out on North Korea. Along the entire border between North and South Korea, a so-called ‘demilitarized zone’ (DMZ) runs, a four-kilometer wide strip of no man’s land whose edges are firmly guarded by the armed forces. As a result, you cannot just view North Korea from the South-except a few tourist vantage points-rather on a fence that indicates that there is a military area behind this.

We have grown so far apart that we are no longer the same or think

But north of Aegibong, the border only consists of the mouth of the Han river, which is only fourteen hundred meters wide at the narrowest point. Because Starbucks was so smart to build his branch on a hill, you can look into a North Korean border town of it. There are binoculars so you can see people walking.

The village looks a bit old and poor, but seems to you notice the details quite everyday: a tower that symbolizes the ‘eternal life’ of former dictator Kim Il-Sung (1912-1994) and banners with socialist slogans like ‘Let us defend the revolution!’ And « Long live the revolutionary ideas of Kim Jong Un! »

Fake buildings

Lee Myung-hee (68), who visits this place for the first time, was touched by what she has just seen through the binoculars. « It is so very close and yet we can’t go there, I find that heartbreaking, » she says in the collar of her jacket. « Certainly when you consider that the split of Korea was not our wish, but was determined by foreign powers. » Although she still finds Korean reunification a nice ideal, she no longer regards it as realistic. « That is wish thinking, » she sighs. « We have grown so far apart that we are no longer the same or think, how should that ever come together again? »

The contrast only feels bigger when you then turn around and see the enormous logo of Starbucks, which as a capitalist symbol is hardly inferior to a large yellow M.

That Lee Ho-Son thinks that the North Koreans have put down fake buildings is not a wild theory. North Korea was allowed to build one village in the DMZ and that became Kijong-Dong in the 1950s, about twenty kilometers away as the crow flies. A glance by advanced binoculars from South Korea soon learned that it was fake buildings, with a beautiful outside, but completely empty inside. So it would not be the first time that North Korea put down a potem child village.

Kim Min-Yong (40) finds it especially pathetic for the North Koreans. « We live in prosperity and they have to pretend, » she notes shaking his head. « While it is only this river that separates us from each other. »

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