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Taesung Freedom Village: A South Korean mobile phone company has launched 5G services in one of the world's most heavily armed borders - the four-kilometre-wide buffer zone separating South and North Koreas.
The new technology will give villagers of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) better access to online services and enable them to water crops by remote control so they don't have to leave their homes, KT Corporation said.
"Life here will get easier because villagers are normally escorted by military when they need to work on farms," Chae Uk, a KT official, told reporters during a tour of the village where the company installed two 5G base stations.
US and South Korean soldiers, foreground, and North Korean soldiers, background, stand guard in Paju, near Taesung in the DMZ, South Korea.Credit:Bloomberg
The 200 residents - who live only 400 metres from a border guarded by soldiers, barbed wire and anti-tank barricades - cannot leave their homes or work in the fields without a military escort.