The certain tone of cameras softly drowns the mind and heart as you pass through the Constantine wire from the open fields of South Korea to the tight quarters of the JSA. There is a beautiful marble building lined with statues and decadent features that seem to almost mask the tension. Each larger-than-life stair looks back at you with the memories of steps it has had before. One can almost hear them cry out that the world's most important world figures have stepped here, and warn to tread softly.

          I soon find that the large marble building is in fact very thin from the other side, and in moments found myself at the other end facing another street, a different street. There is an eerie silence as I exit the building and stand facing the border.

Around me I begin to notice a more intense emotion. Things are blatantly marked as warning from either side of plaza. The distinct colors of the buildings marking their own culture, blue for democracy, and red for communism. There are approximately six South Korean guards wearing helmets and sunglasses facing North Korea in an unwavering fighting stance. They stand there, some half exposed behind the buildings and some not, in attempt to strike fear into anyone who takes a gander at them, and they do. You can hear the hum of an electric fence waiting patiently to snare someone not precautious. Everyone is watching your every itch from either side of the line.

I start crossing the street with an escort of two well decorated South Korean guards when I first caught a glimpse of one of them. He was wearing a beige drab uniform, head to toe in the sickly color of indifference, with a few red accent stripes on his cap and sleeves, and armed to the teeth. He was just as poised and dead silent as the South Korean guards, and just as ready to kill and die if given the order. He was the spitting image of a relic government.

I into the center building or what's known as the "Conference Room." it smells clean but old, like the many diplomats and high-ranking military officials that have sat there before. In the middle is a long table stretched out, cut in half by a string that claims the boundary of the 38th parallel. This is the border that separates Communist North Korea and Democratic South Korea.

It is strange listening out into the air and hearing the sound of loudspeakers from the north spewing out communist propaganda. "Communist life is the life," or "The capitalist pigs will rape your mothers, and drain the blood from your babies," were just a few of the popular phrases. you look beyond out the window facing the north to the only village in view and there is a giant flag pole, with an oversized, 31 ft. flag waiving in pride for the red army and Kim Jung Ill. You snap back to reality, look at the blue door that leads to the north and are numb from the fact that there are at least eight armed KPA (North Korean Army) Soldiers pointing their AK-47s directly at the hinges, praying for the chance that maybe one dumb fool might just crack open the door.

This is definitely the world as a relic of the cold war. In a sense it can instill fear into you, but in another is almost magical how one nation could be separated by different ideal for so long in such a deadly standoff. Their world is so different from ours. It is so disheartening that an individual can control so many, for so long, with nothing to fear. It makes you think twice about taking things for granted.