Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Korean Demilitarized Zone (dmz) Most Heavily Fortified Border On The Planet.


DMZ is the most heavily fortified border on the planet, with over a million soldiers on both sides ready to pull the triggers to each other in a matter of hours. For anyone who plans to be in South Korea on business or vacation, this place is not to be missed.
Go ahead, make its day.
A new gun-toting sentry robot, developed by Samsung Techwin Co. for the South Korean government, may soon be coming to a disputed border near you. The SGR-A1 robot uses a low-light ­camera and pattern recognition software to distinguish humans from animals or other objects and, if necessary, can fire its builtâ”in machine gun—a Daewoo K3.
The machine’s real innovation is its color camera, which can pinpoint a target from up to 500 meters away in illumination down to 0.008 lux (lumens per square meter), about the same as a starlit night. The robot has three such cameras, two of which work in stereo for surveillance and tracking while the third zooms in for targeting. A digital video recorder captures data for up to 60 days at a time. By calling up the robot’s ID number, operators back in Seoul can also see in real time what is happening in the field.
For use in the DMZ, the sentry bot doesn’t need to distinguish friend from foe. ”When you cross the line, you’re automatically an enemy,” Yoo says. He wouldn’t say whether the robot has actually been deployed in the DMZ but did note that units are currently being assembled and tested at the company’s factory in Changwon, near Pusan. Samsung is also looking to deploy the robot—minus the gun, but perhaps with some sort of nonlethal weapon—at airports, prisons, and nuclear power plants, among other places. There’s no price tag as yet, but Yoo estimates it will be in the US $80 000 to $100 000 range.
By deploying the robots, Yoo thinks his government may be able to significantly reduce the mandatory two years of military service that all young Korean men now serve.
All of these refer to one spot on the Korean Peninsula that very few would ever conceive to be able to visit. Why? Because the DMZ is the most heavily fortified border on the planet, with over a million soldiers on both sides ready to pull the triggers to each other in a matter of hours. The highest concentration of firepower resides along this area in what hopefully will be the last remains of the Cold War. Now, who in their right mind would want to visit an area where more than 50 Americans, 1,000 South Koreans and countless North Koreans have died in skirmishes over the past 40 years, and is still dotted with land mines, razor wire and concrete tank bunkers? Surprisingly, a lot of us would. So, if you’re looking for a little action, then this is definitely the place for you.
The DMZ is not some mere historical site where one can casually browse around at what once was. Rather, it is a mix of what was, what is, and what is to come.
PANMUNJEOM
In the middle of the DMZ, about an hour and half bus ride to the north of Seoul is Panmunjeom or the Joint Security Area. Panmunjeom is the “truce village” where the armistice was signed in 1953 ending the Korean War and splitting the peninsula into North and South. Since then it has been the scene of on-and-off dialogue between the free South and the communist North. Almost all the tourists who come up here are foreigners because South Koreans need a special government permit to visit Panmunjeom.
FREEDOM ROAD
As soon as your tour bus leaves Seoul, you start to get the idea that things are a little different here. “Freedom Road (Jayooro),” the only way to Panmunjeom, is a major divided highway that is about 12 lanes across in some places. The median strip is massive and flat, just right for a wave of tanks and artillery to head north to repel an invasion. What are those odd little structures up on almost every hill? Yes, those are machine gun emplacements.
THE BORDER
From that point on, tourists in the DMZ are under constant guard by UN soldiers. They keep tourist from straying out of authorized areas, but mainly they are there to protect the visitors from enemy attack. They also make sure tourists take pictures only at authorized spots,
more from source    thank you MVSN

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