A Dragon Swamp is a Microfilm, which Taped a History of Nature. Fish Hunting of the North Korean Soldiers A Masterpiece of Joint Effort of the North and South Koreas, Seung-Il Gyo(Seung-Il Bridge)

[This on-the-spot survey is excerpted from publishing contents of a daily report of Gangwon-do residents, which was published serially for the past 3 years as a column name 'DMZ' by an editorial writer 'Kwang-Bork Ham', and a collection of prose 'DMZ is not a boarder' from a publishing house 'literature town' on Aug/1995]

Fish Hunting of the North Korean Soldiers.

Visitors at the armies near the boarder area are carrying water bottles these days. The visitors of boarder area armies at places like Inje, Hwacheon, and Yang-gu run to the wells as soon as they are done with visiting their sons. They get to see their son and bring some clean water back. The scenery of people carrying water bottles is a new phenomenon caused by contaminated water supply in cities. The soldiers at DMZ must be happy with the water they are getting. It is free of the danger of carcinogenic chemicals such as Benzene or Toluene. The parents of soldiers at DMZ are even told that they should have no worries about their sons who reside in such a clean area. DMZ is the only part of the country, which is not yet contaminated, and the water in this area should also be clean. However, this is a dangerous assumption coming from a common belief, which is not always true. The northern part of the Korean peninsula is higher than the southern part. Therefore, all the rivers, which cross DMZ, originate from the North Korea and flow to south. The water can sometimes be used as an excellent means of assaults. Therefore, soldiers at DMZ, who have to live with what come from the North Korea through the rivers, have to always keep their eyes on the water to seek out any possible threats from the North Korea. Oftentimes, the life at DMZ gets much tension with things that aren't really anything important. There came a rubber shoe floating on Sataecheon (Satae Creek) after rain. It was a boy's show with size of about 230mm. The shoe proved that civilians were also living in the collective farm over the mountain. We are not familiar with a boy wearing rubber shoes. This single shoe clearly showed us what the economic condition of the North Korean civilians is like. Massive death of fish at Seohwacheon(Seohwa Creek) in Gajeon-li, Inje, was a real emergency situation. The guard at the boarder line found a mass of fish dead at the bottom of Seohwacheon. It was a situation, which requires an emergency reporting. Seohwacheon, the upper stream of Soyanggang. It originates from Ipo and flows to south, crossing DMZ at around Seohui-gu. In this situation, complaints of environmentalists, "Who killed the fish here," wouldn't matter at all. Soldiers at DMZ have to be able to quickly realize the possible danger, questioning him "Why did those fish die?" In other words, they have to be able to come up with the possibility of poisoning in this situation. It could be a very dangerous problem for those who live on that water. And the water supply in areas around Seohwacheon was stopped immediately. About 2,890 residents here were faced with an unexpected crisis. No one could be sure about the safety of the water. The water samples were taken from DMZ area, 5Km, and 7.5Km down to south to Gangwon-do Institute of Health and Environment Research for careful examination. One of the governmental officers here came up with a clever idea to put fish in each water sample and see how they react. A careful autopsy would have taken a very long time and high technology. According to the result of this simple and clever examination, Seohwacheon was clean. And the water supply resumed at 5 PM on the same day.

The result of the first analysis of water at DMZ done by a researcher at an Institute of Health and Environment Research was very satisfactory. No poisonous Cyanic remaining was found in any of the three samples. The residents around Seohwacheon went back to their ordinary everyday lives. It almost seemed that they took this incident just as some kind of military training. However, the incident left some interesting findings. One of them was the fact that there were a number of rare species of fish. At the time of the incident, some governmental officers preserved some of them in formalin. Surprisingly, they were Brachymystax lenok, Yellow Catfish, Hemibarbus mylodon , and False Minnow which live only in cold freshwater of best quality. Brachymystax lenok is a very rare fish, with only a few remaining at Jungamsa in Jungsun and Socheon-myeon, Bonghwa. Hemibarbus mylodon is only found in Korea and they are mainly found in a few streams at the Geumgangsan. And no record of the scientific investigation of DMZ shows Yellow Catfish found here. In 1991, the North Korean governmental publication "Minju Chosun"(Democratic Chosun) claimed that there were about 180 kinds of freshwater found in the North Korea. And they also claimed that Hemibarbus mylodon is a very valuable and rare fish in the field of science. If what they claim are all true, it means that Seohwacheon in DMZ is full of those rare freshwater fish. Theoretically, if some military officer keeps a sample of each kind of fish around Kajeonli out of his personal interest, it might as well be a national treasure; Because it would be a containing every single kind of fish in Bukhangang. No one is sure about the reason why those rare fish were floating dead on the river. We can only make an assumption that the North Korean soldiers 'mass-murdered' them, according to the fact that they often fish-hunt for their food. It is not hard to see the North Korean soldiers fishing in DMZ. You can also see this frequently at Nam River at the Geumgangsan, Mundeungcheon (Mundeung Creek) at mountain ridges of Tanjang, Gumsungcheon (Geumsung Creek) of Kimhwa, Namdaecheon (Namdae Creek), and Hantangang (Hantan River). They sometimes even use bombs, and the rumor says that they catch a massive amount of fish and preserve them in salt for winters. (Three of the North Korean soldiers were seen fishing on this day, 6Km up from our guard post) The fishing in DMZ is a very unfamiliar scenery to our soldiers. In southern part of DMZ, it is strictly prohibited to even wash clothes or dip their feet in the water. Moreover, it is hard to imagine for us that they have to eat the fish because of the food shortage. Above all, soldiers of this generation don't know much about fish. It wouldn't be wrong to say that they have almost no knowledge about the natural environment that is surrounding us. Even if he is from countryside, they grew up with books in their hands instead of fishing equipments. They might know that Gomchi is a wild plant with strong scent, but there is no chance of them distinguishing Gomchi from Namulchi, Tteokchoe, and Goldenrod. They know that a black snail could be a great delicacy, but they wouldn't know how to cook them. He would have to be an expert to be able to distinguish Hoenamu from a sweet brier and a birch from Gachimbakdalnamu. Soldiers these days have even less knowledge about our natural environment than 7-year-old boy living in mountain area. They would get a headache to recognize the difference between Pasbae and a wild rose fruit, a wild grape and Ribes fasciculatum, an oak and a Mongolian oak, a bracken and an osmund, an Angelica and Gaedanggwi, mugwort stalk and an Ambrosia, an azalea and Rhododendron, an owl and Korean scops owl, a sparrow and a black kite, a butterfly and a moth, a male and a female locust, a common poisonous snake and a viper, young carp and crucian carp, a catfish and a Mori, an ordinary mudfish and Cobitis rotundicaudata, a diving beetle and a goldbug, or leaves of a bean and a sesame.

This lack of knowledge about their surroundings causes many happenings in DMZ. With shallow knowledge, a lacquer bud could be seen as a fatsia. Urushiol, the main ingredient of lacquer, causes a lot of itchiness. If one mistakes it as fatsia and serves it on a meal, the following consequence can be easily predicted.You should never wonder "how one could hang that honeycomb on the rock?" looking at hornet's nest or try to seal the entrance of wasp's hive to get underground storage of honey. Such behaviors could easily take one to hospital, and some really did end up in a hospital. Some people attempt to grab Tongari, which has very cut appearance with brown skin and waving tail, and the only thing they get is piercing pain through their hands caused by Tongari's tentacle. And some others show off their stupidity by saying "Look at those cherry blossoms" pointing at Gaeboksungakkoch. It is even harder to distinguish Brachymystax lenok or Hemibarbus mylodon , which are natural monuments. In fact, it wasn't a long time ago when Brachymystax lenok came up as a major natural monument. In 1970s, soldiers at DMZ called Brachymystax lenok a "Kim, Il-sung fish." This fish seemed to have some dignity with its big body and spots on it, but it had little sense of upcoming danger. It hides its head down into a rock when it senses danger and doesn't seem to realize it even when the rock is removed. And it stays still until one tries to grab it with a hand. Moreover, it seems to never regret its stupidity when caught. Instead, it keeps staring at the person with its big eyes with red vessels on them. The fish got its nickname, "Kim, Il-sung fish," because it was stupid enough to come down south to spy on us and didn't get any sleep to get those bloodshot eyes. The soldiers are now very sorry that they degraded this very important natural monument. The soldiers at DMZ now say that they don't know the fish with that name. The rivers at DMZ could be containing harmful hazardous conspiracy, and, thus, those are just some objects which requires precaution. The nickname of Brachymystax lenok, "Kim, Il-sung fish," eventually disappeared. In some way, this shows that the soldiers now are not very well-trained with the basic methods to survive in the natural surroundings. Before DMZ dissected our country, the rivers didn't have any harm in them. The water at DMZ originates from 145m underground and can't be purer. When our soldiers were digging a counter-tunnel to stop the North Korea's 4th underground tunnel to south, they found a water fountain in DMZ. And they now provides a cup for visitors here. The soldiers, who are even prohibited to deep their toe into the river, suggest that you drink this water.