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North Korea: Photos from the 38th Parallel

A South Korean soldier looks out from observation post No. 717, the easternmost outpost in South Korea. The two fences on the hillside in the background mark out the mine-filled strip of land at the center of the DMZ. Image © Tomas van Houtryve/VII. South Korea, 2013.

Special Forces soldiers crawl through tunnels as part of a training exercise. Image © Tomas van Houtryve/VII. South Korea, 2013.

South Korean Marines sleep on a boat to Yeongpyeong island, which was shelled by North Korea in 2010, killing four people. Image © Tomas van Houtryve/VII. South Korea, 2013.

These images by Tomas Van Houtryve were first published by Foreign Policy. View the full online gallery here.

Photographer Tomas Van Houtryve began exploring North Korea's borders after two trips inside the country in 2007 and 2008.

"Although the view from the inside was fascinating, it was also distorted," he says, noting that the experience was shaped by guides and government agents pushing regime propaganda. So he turned to the country's borders for what he calls "a more honest visual reflection of North Korea's relations to its neighbors and the world."

Van Houtryve spent 10 weeks along the 154-mile dividing line between South and North Korea, as part of a larger project to document the frontiers of the Hermit Kingdom, which also included trips to the North Korea-China border and visits with North Korean refugees.

At the line dividing North from South, Van Houtryve says, "fear and paranoia are the ruling elements."

"I encountered every range of fortification imaginable: triple razor-wire fences, concrete walls, land mines, anti-tank columns, trenches, road blocks, tunnels, bunkers, watch towers, and, of course, South Korean and American military bases," he says. "There is even an immense dam with an empty reservoir built at a cost of $429 million on the South Korean side of the DMZ — a preventative measure just in case North Korea unleashes a flood from their reservoir on the other side."

During his trip, Van Houtryve gained access to areas under strict control and rarely photographed, including military installations. Here's an exclusive look at some of the images he collected along the world's hottest border.