South Korean soldiers held their normal stern and unmoving positions Wednesday outside the blue huts of Panmunjom village, the only place along the border where troops from the two Koreas stand nearly face-to-face, but with one notable omission: their weapons. Sporting their signature aviator sunglasses, the guards in the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the peninsula - standing only metres away from North Korean soldiers - were visibly no longer armed.
Public tours to the southern side of the inter-Korean border village resumed on Wednesday morning with firearms and guardposts now removed from the designated Joint Security Area (JSA), after having been stopped in October to facilitate joint efforts by Seoul and Pyongyang to demilitarise the border.
But with Pyongyang still in deadlock with the US over its nuclear weapons and economic sanctions - and fresh tension between North and South Korea - the tours began again with little fanfare.
The truce village is a frequent destination for tourists on both sides of the border, and for US presidents seeking to symbolically demonstrate Washington's commitment to defend Seoul from the nuclear-armed North.
The resumption of the tours is timed to mark the first anniversary of the Panmunjom summit, the first inter-Korean talks between the South's Moon Jae-in and his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un, held at the truce village last year. That summit fuelled a whirlwind of diplomacy which has died down amid deadlock over Pyongyang's denuclearisation.
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