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Also called the Joint Security Area, Panmunjom is little more than a collection of no-frills conference rooms bisected by the Military Demarcation Line. Here, 50 years ago, military representatives of China, North Korea, and the United Nations finalized the armistice agreement that stopped the Korean War. Today Panmunjom is the one place in the DMZ where delegates from North Korea and the UN Command force meet to discuss military, political, and logistical matters.

You might think, then, that Panmunjom is a decorous, grown-up place. Nope, says Lt. Chris Croninger of the UN Command force. "It's like a schoolyard with two bullies poking each other in the eye."

The rules of combat at Panmunjom emphasize mind games—psyching out the enemy. Each side blasts opposing hillsides with patriotic music and recorded messages. A giant signboard on the North Korean side warns—in Korean characters, which few of the Americans can read—"Yankee Go Home."

In one of the conference rooms North Koreans once sawed a few inches off chair legs so that their counterparts at the negotiating table would look small and silly. When North Koreans attended a meeting on another occasion with AK-47 assault rifles obviously hidden under their jackets, an armistice violation, American officers chose not to confront them. Instead the Americans took delight in jacking up the room's heat to equatorial levels just so that they could see their adversaries, unwilling to expose their weapons, squirm and sweat in their heavy clothes.

Lt. Charles Levine, a lanky South Carolinian who quit a rock band in 1998 and joined the Army, escorts me to Panmunjom to observe the mental war games. The occasion is a "body repatriation," involving the remains of four North Koreans who have washed down rivers into the south. Were they fishermen, soldiers, spies? Levine won't say.

We watch from a window as Red Cross officials from the South pass the coffins to soldiers from the North. But I hardly register the actual transfer. I can't take my eyes off the North Korean guards staring at us through the windows, close enough for us to see the red Kim Jong Il pins on their chests. Their hard stares unnerve me. "As a visitor you are not allowed to gesture at, or communicate with, the North Koreans. They want to provoke incidents," Lieutenant Levine has warned me. That doesn't stop him from shooting dark glances of his own. I also notice Major Kim, the South Korean officer I had interviewed, toeing the Military Demarcation Line—which here is a strip of concrete between the buildings—and glaring like a bad dream at the North Korean soldiers, who glare back.

You wonder if they practice this stuff in front of a mirror. In fact, the soldiers at Panmunjom are chosen for their intimidating appearance. The South Koreans here must stand at least five feet eight (170 centimeters), two inches (5 centimeters) taller on average than their countrymen; a black belt in martial arts is also required. The Americans assigned to Panmunjom are plucked at airports from the batches of GIs arriving from overseas, selected for height—six feet (180 centimeters) or more is preferred—and for physical bearing. The North Korean sentinels are no slouches either—ramrod straight, steely eyed, and among the best fed people in their famine-threatened country.

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