Founder Lee Oh-sook and her husband built Daonsoop cafe less than two kilometres from the border in Paju, seeking proximity to their ancestral homeland.
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00:00A South Korean Downsup Cafe is so close to the North Korean border that to obtain a building
00:09permit, its owners had to construct the property with a bunker. Founder Lee-Hoo Shook and her
00:19husband, both the children of North Korean refugees, built the cafe less than 2 km from
00:26the border in Padua, seeking proximity to their ancestral homeland.
00:56The two countries are technically still at war as the 1950-1915-3 conflict ended in an
01:05armistice rather than a peace treaty, and South Korea still refers to the border as the front
01:11line. The Imjin River, which separates the two Koreas, runs alongside the motorway, while
01:17a sign in a military-controlled border area warns that trespassers may be treated as an
01:24enemy or suspect and shot. Every night, giant loudspeakers across the border in North Korea
01:32broadcast blood-curdling sounds as part of a noise campaign emblematic of the two countries'
01:39steadily declining ties.
01:41country-2021, from the South Korean border, the people of North Korea
01:45are seeing a sound of a noise, and they don't have to sleep, and they couldn't
01:50sleep. So the birds, please, don't fight the North Korean. They won't be
01:54capable of working. They couldn't live. They couldn't live. They had a headphone
01:57up. So we should be able to bring peace and peace and peace. So the birds, I
02:01can see the birds who were forced to the war against the people in the war.
02:05Once a year, the bunker is requisensed by the army for military exercises, but the rest
02:14of the time, it is used by cartoonist Kim Dae-nyeon to display his artwork.
02:20The bunker is a place where the bunker is fighting, but I don't see this space.
02:26The place where the peace and peace starts, is to protect it.
02:32Before his retirement, Kim was the head of South Korea's National Election Commission.
02:37His 40-year career in the service of democracy, he says, he has profoundly influenced by his
02:43art.
02:44Hung between the bunker's narrow loopholes overlooking the North, his drawings depict the pain of division
02:52and hopes for Korean reunification.
02:55In one drawing, an imagined bridge spans the Imjin River.
03:02Another shows whistles wearing noise-canceling headphones protesting the loudspeakers blasting from the north.
03:08Outside, Kim has painted the walls of the tank yard in colors depicting the four seasons.
03:15The cafe also attracts North Koreans who have defected to the south.
03:21During family holidays such as Seolal, Lunar New Year and Chiosk in the autumn, they can look
03:28across to their homeland from its terrace.
03:34On the other side of the border, North Korean farmers go about their businesses burning rice fields
03:41at the end of the winter in a polluting agriculture practice eradicated in the south.
03:47The pungent smoke blows across the border and envelopes the cafe.
04:05But some customers, indifferent like many South Koreans to their northern neighbor, are unaware
04:12of the cause.