Sensationalism or real information?

While looking for an article for my last submission I stumbled across this one."Amid Soldiers and Mines in the Korean DMZ, School Is in Session" and I thought it was really interesting, plus I have a bit of a fascination for the North and South Korean issues so…. Here we go again…
The Korean War took place between 1950-1953. At the end there was a Demilitarized zone set up as a buffer between the two countries, it’s about 2 and a half miles wide. Within this DMZ there lies two towns, Kijong of North Korea and Taesung Freedom village for the south. A long time ago these two villages were used to compete between the countries. When South Korea built a tall flag pole the North outdid them by putting up the tallest one in the world. Over the years the propaganda war died down after South Korea obviously won the competition and the North Korean village, Kijong in now deserted. The Taesung Freedom village however, is up and running. In between 2 million troops stationed on either side of the DMZ is this town that people are given incentives to inhabit. The residents don’t have to do the countries mandatory military service or pay taxes, farmers are allotted ten times as much land as they would anywhere else and the town is riddled with little “gifts” such as a new movie theater. The Article is mostly about the elementary school in this town and I think its ironic that the article would cover the elementary school and not something more pertinent to the tensions this region is feeling. After decades, children have grown up and the student body dropped to as low as 6 students. New students are now being driven across the boundaries of the DMZ, passed the miles of barbed wire and minefields, every morning to attend the school which is guarded by 80 military service men 24-hours a day. The school is very well funded, as most of the town is, it has a wide screen TV in every room and 18 teachers for 30 students. This article explains more of a place and not as much of a new issue of event, at least on a macro-scale. The main issues involved here are inherently social. As children have been attending school here for decades, many have graduated through the years and I am sure that once they leave the town to head toward the cities and start their careers, that their status is elevated because of their home town. Also, there is now a waiting list of 18 names of children that are waiting to fill the vacancies that will be left by graduating kids in the future. This, I would also think, could become a status symbol for those who are accepted not only because of the minute numbers of children that have the ability to go to this school but also because I’m willing to bet that the families of these children are also taken care of financially for allowing their child to cross the fences of the DMZ every morning and go even further towards the dangerous North Korean Border. The mere existence of this town and its school is a symbol of the decades of weary peace that the two countries have been balancing for so long. It is imperative that South Korea continues to keep this village populated and running smoothly simply to continue to show the North Koreans that the Southern Koreans are still prospering and enjoying their democratic, capitalist system.