The World's Most Dangerous Golf Course

It's only a single hole, but if you hook badly, you might find yourself retreiving your ball with the help of the above character. BTW, anyone seen "Crossing the Line" now on Comcast OnDemand? Via Sundance Channel, a great documentary about an American GI who crossed the border during the Korean War and remains there today, unrepentant.

Situated on a strip of land two and a half miles wide, the fairway at Panmunjom is not the only strange thing you'll find in the Korean Demilitarised Zone. Jerome Taylor reports

When he's not on duty, Sgt Corbin likes to relax with a quick round of golf. It has to be quick, though, because the only golf course on his base is a single hole, par 3. And it's no place for a stroll in the rough. The fairway is ringed by landmines.

The course is a well-driven tee shot from the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), the most heavily fortified border in the world. This strip of land - two and a half miles wide - divides the two Koreas.

And Camp Bonifas is the closest military base to North Korea. If war were ever to break out on the Korean peninsula, the camp and its 400 or so United Nations soldiers expect to bear the full brunt of a military assault from a million-strong army.

Sgt Corbin's rather exclusive, 192-yard hole was dubbed "The World's Most Dangerous Golf Course" at the height of the Cold War. The name stuck and the troops stationed there, most of whom are from the US and South Korea, are fiercely proud of it.

"Damn right it's dangerous," smiles Sgt Corbin, a giant of a man with cropped hair and the kind of square-cut jaw ideal for shaving commercials and the US Army. "It's completely surrounded by minefields. If you hook your ball into the rough, I can tell you, you're not getting it back."

A few weeks ago, he even managed to lose a golf club. "I headed down to the course and tried out a brand new club," he said. "If I'm honest I might have had a few beers to drink so I wasn't exactly on my finest form. Anyway I took a swing and the club flew straight out of my hand. A $400 golf club lying in the rough and I can't go get it!"

The 155-mile DMZ runs across the Korean peninsula like a gruesome scar, cleaving it in two. It has separated family, friends and sworn enemies for more than 50 years.

Barbed wire fences, tank traps, artillery guns and minefields line both sides, creating a powerful physical obstacle between the two countries. Europe's Iron Curtain would have paled in comparison with its east Asian counterpart. And whereas people power brought down Europe's ideological and physical barriers, the sheer scale of the DMZ makes its removal, at present, a distant thought.

As you leave the heavily fortified UN base (passing under the camp's welcome sign that ominously reads "In Front of Them All") and head deep into the no-man's-land of the DMZ, it's easy to imagine that Camp Bonifas is the start of some bizarre theme park where danger is the feature attraction and where reality verges on the absurd.

The Independent