Highway to Hell may have been a more accurate nickname. But the expression was already copyrighted by AC/DC in 1979, long before this road was built.

Jayu-ro, or “Freedom Road”, is the last section of the National Motorway 77 which starts in the big port city of Busan, in the south of South Korea.

In an ideal future, it will link Seoul to Pyongyang, China, Russia and beyond. And with it South Korea will cease to be a virtual island.

For the moment, the 50 km-long Jayu-ro starts in Seoul and ends at the military checkpoint on Unification Bridge, which crosses the Imjin River to the Civilian Control Zone and to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

For a few kilometers, in Paju City, this busy suburban motorway runs alongside the border with North Korea whose nearby villages and mountains suddenly seem within reach.

Here, there is no 4-km-wide DMZ to separate the combatants. North and south almost touch. The guard towers on both sides seem so close together, it’s as if the sentries could shake hands over the border if they wanted to.

This never happens, of course. But I can imagine how the soldiers must feel when they look into each other’s eyes at such close range.

Taking the Jayu-ro from Seoul to the North means an accelerated and extremely brief, but visual transition from the economic and cultural effervescence of the South to the rural landscapes of North Korea.

But few of the early morning commuters on the packed 2200 bus from Paju to Seoul will come out of their torpor or their cell phones to take a look at the hermit country to their right.

Until recently, signs on the highway still indicated to motorists that they were heading towards Kaesong and Pyongyang, in North Korea.

Indeed, for more than eleven years, from December 2004 to February 2016, the highway did continue to Kaesong, where the South had set up an industrial zone. But the complex has long since closed. And in late 2024, the North Koreans blew up the road just north of the border to mark the definitive break up with the South. The Pyongyang signs on Jayu-ro have since been removed.

As soon as you leave Seoul, you realize that Jayu-ro is no ordinary highway.

Very quickly, barbed wire fences, searchlights, watchtowers, bunkers, CCTV and infrared cameras appear on the banks of the Han River, which runs alongside.

A few dozen kilometers downstream, the Hangang marks the border with North Korea. The large river has been used as an infiltration route before by North Korean commandos (three of them were shot dead in 1980 as they tried to enter Seoul in this way). Hence the military’s reluctance to cede the riverbanks to the civilian authorities of the riverside cities, who are nonetheless calling for them to be turned into areas for strolling and relaxation.

In the suburbs of Seoul, the road is overhung by a huge anti-tank obstacle: concrete blocks weighing several tons resting on pillars packed with explosives that can be detonated in the event of an enemy invasion, blocking the way for armored vehicles. Incidentally, these facilities also serve as an advertising medium for the South Korean military. Just to the south, in a park between the road and the riverbank, a bike path crosses several rows of old “dragon’s teeth,” another type of anti-tank device.

This type of obstacles can be found all over South Korea, particularly in the border regions. The fear of tanks is a legacy of the trauma caused when hundreds of North Korean Soviet-made T-34 rolled into Seoul at the start of the Korean War in 1950, destroying everything in their path (for their part, the North Koreans, traumatized by the rains of American bombs that reduced most of their cities to rubble, are obsessed with building air-raid shelters and digging tunnels).

The most interesting part of the road begins at the Odusan Observatory, which can be seen at the top of a hill on the left when coming from Seoul.

For several kilometers, the motorway runs alongside the Imjin River, which at this point marks the border. North Korean mountains, villages and watchtowers are clearly visible 2.5 kilometers away or less.

Here, the Jayu-ro marks the boundary of the Civilian Control Zone. Don’t think about getting out of your car, or venturing through one of the tunnels under the road. With the exception of the military and a few farmers authorized to cultivate fields near the border, anyone sneaking into this restricted and heavily monitored area runs a serious risk of being shot without warning.

The best place to safely watch the border from the other side of Jayu-ro is the Daon Forest Cafe set up just off the highway since 2022.

The two-storey building boasts a spacious terrace and a comfortable lounge from which to take a long look at the landscape on a sofa while sipping a home-made beer or devouring a hearty brunch.

From this vantage point, the watchtowers of the North seem insanely close to those of the South, and the sunsets over the North Korean mountains are magnificent.

The café was founded by Lee Ho-sook and her husband, both children of North Korean refugees.

“Our parents wanted to return to the land of their birth, but they died before realizing this dream. So we chose a place close by, to think of them more often”, Ms Lee explained when I returned to the place in April 2025 with my AFP colleagues to report on her cafe.

The cafe also attracts North Koreans who have defected to the South. During family holidays such as Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok in the autumn, they can look across to their homeland from its terrace.

On the other side of the border, North Korean farmers go about their business, burning rice fields at the end of winter in a polluting agricultural practice eradicated in the South. The pungent smoke billows across the border and envelops the cafe, but some customers, indifferent like many South Koreans to their northern neighbor, are unaware of the cause.

“It looks so calm and peaceful right now, but many visitors don’t know that the North is just across the road, so when they find out, they’re surprised”, Mrs Lee said. “Most people forget that the country is divided and this reality is normalized.”

To obtain a building permit in this area so close to the North, the café owners had to agree to build a bunker, as well as four fortified tank positions on their land around the cafe, to be used by the South Korean army in the event of an enemy attack.

This 70-meter-long bunker lies beneath a vast lawn and includes 25 loopholes facing north, from which soldiers can fire on any invaders.

The facilities are requisitioned once a year for military exercises. The rest of the time, Kim Dae-nyeon, an artist from the border city of Paju where the café is located and a former chair of the South Korean National Electoral Commission, exhibits his drawings there.

His 40-year career in the service of democracy, he says, has profoundly influenced his art. “I hope North Korea will also adopt democracy and freedom one day. My convictions about peace and freedom have continued first through my public career, and now in my artistic work,” he said.

Many of his drawings deal with the division of Korea and the hopes of reunification.

One of them depicts an imaginary bridge spanning the Imjin River. In others, comic-book superheroes like Spiderman or the Incredible Hulk attacking border fences. Another shows weasels demonstrating, noise-cancelling headphones on, against noise pollution from the North.

Mr Kim also painted the four tank fortified positions in the colors of the four seasons.

He has named his gallery “Bunker Gallery Yes!”, as his main theme is “응” (pronounced “eung”), which means ‘yes’ in Korean”.

“It’s a word that symbolizes empathy, harmony and reconciliation”, he said. ”This character also symbolizes North and South Korea, separated but hoping to reunite. The horizontal line can represent the Imjin River or the ceasefire line – the point at which union can occur, like sunset over the West Sea”.

“When life gets tough, I come here and look at North Korea”, Mr Kim said. “Our compatriots there live in far worse conditions. When I look north, I feel grateful to be here, free and I regain the confidence to go on living. I hope that the whole world will become aware of this suffering, and that there will never be another war here. And until the day peace really comes, I’ll keep on painting”

During the harsh Korean winter, the busy motorway ending at the border with the other world is prone to sudden fog banks and black ice patches, making it one of the deadliest roads in South Korea. This was all it took for it to become the focus of a creepy urban legend.

In this Korean variation of the “vanishing hitchhiker” tale, a woman wearing sunglasses can sometimes be seen along the side of Jayu-ro. But those who get closer to this ghostly hitchhiker soon realize that she’s not wearing dark glasses, but has completely empty eyeballs.

The ghost turns out to be quite harmless, as she simply asks motorists to drop her off at a cemetery, where she evaporates.