There is an exhibit more ghastly and gruesome than the tatty stuffed Alsatian dog, awarded the Gustav Husak medal for sinking its teeth into a record number of attempted defectors from Communist Czechoslovakia, that graced a dusty museum in Prague.
It is an axe in a glass case on the North Korean side of the demilitarised zone. In 1976, a group of American GIs attempted to fell a poplar tree in an area the North Koreans believed was off-limits to them, and the axe was turned against them by the ever vigilant border guards. Two US Army officers were killed in the incident.
The Alsatian, like the Czech Communist regime, is long gone, as is the the Iron Curtain border that once separated East from West. But in North Korea, the axe is still in its case, and the Cold War border between North and South is bristling and more dangerous than it has been since the end of the Korean War, in 1953.
