These photos show us staring across the DMZ at North Korea for 50 years—and them staring back

Peekaboo, Kim Jong-un

South Korean citizens look out at an anti-tank barrier built by South Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, August 10, 1990. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

From failed missile test launches to international espionage, North Korea contributes as much to its own image exploitation as the foreign press is willing to report. It is the rare hermit kingdom with a superpower profile — and that turns heads. But the nature of a closed country means what we see from the outside can never be taken at face value. The reality of North Korea — its political motives and social conditions — remains largely a mystery, intwined as it is with the choreographed image the WPK projects to the world. And we can’t seem to look away.

But voyeurism begets anxiety, and while we peer across the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the mundane weirdness on the other side, the North Koreans are looking right back at us. Since its establishment in 1953, at the end of the Korean War, the de facto border between north and south has played host to a prolonged staring contest between political leaders, tourists, and the soldiers permanently stationed along its 160 miles. The DMZ is actually a very militarized space where altercations and deadly incursions are common. At least four clandestine tunnels have breached the border and occasional tit-for-tat gunfire is exchanged between opposing guard towers.

South Korean Army soldiers patrol one of the tunnels discovered at the DMZ — illegal under the terms of the Korean Armistice — in 1976. North Korea still denies any knowledge of the tunnels. (Bettmann/Getty Images)

So what is there to see on the far side of the DMZ? Fragments of a 60-year stage show, well rehearsed militancy, calculated smokescreens. In the 1950s North Korea erected the Kijŏngdong “peace village” on the DMZ within earshot of the south. With modern buildings wired for electricity, the village was meant as an example for the outside world of socialism gone right. Later it was proven to be nothing more than an uninhabited prop — a “propaganda village,” if you like.

When Vice President Mike Pence travelled to the DMZ to warn Pyongyang that “the era of strategic patience is over” this week, he spoke as if into a void of unknowability. He did so as many American leaders have done before, using the geopolitical boundary as a site to reinforce the distance between them and us.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, viewing his adversaries in the distance, looks at North Korea from Observation Point Ouellette near the border village of Panmunjom, Monday, April 17, 2017. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A North Korean soldier looks toward the South at the truce village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas in 2010. (Jung Yeon-Je/Getty Images)

A North Korean observation post is seen through binoculars from the South, 2010. (AP Photo/Wally Santana)

President Ronald Reagan looks at positions in North Korea from the South Korean side of the DMZ, Nov. 13, 1983. (AP Photo/Scott Stewart)

An American soldier and a North Korean soldier photograph one another from opposite sides of the border in Panmunjom, the cease-fire village on the 38th parallel in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), in 1988. (Gerhard Joren/Getty Images)

Negotiations between North and South Korea take place at a table — itself bisected by the DMZ line — in Panmunjom in 1983 (Alain Le Garsmeur/Corbis via Getty Images)

A South Korean soldier looks over the DMZ from his bunker in 1983. (Alain Le Garsmeur/Corbis via Getty Images)

North Korean soldiers observe South Korean territory from a guard tower in 1994. (Choo Youn-Kon/AFP/Getty Images)

American soldiers keep watch for North Korean troop activity from a trench along the southern side of the DMZ, Feb. 8, 1968. (AP Photo)

(L) U.S. President George W. Bush peeps at North Korea from Observation Point Ouellette in the demilitarized zone, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) / (R) President Bill Clinton does the same in 1993. (Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images)

A view of Kijŏngdong, a North Korean “peace village,” is seen from a South Korean observation post in 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

A North Korean soldier looks toward the South through a pair of binoculars at the demilitarized zone, 32 miles north of Seoul, in 2002. (AP Photo/Yun Jai-hyoung)