This deserves to be better known. "Vasilii Yakovlevich Matuzok had dreamed of fleeing the oppression of communism since his high school days in Moscow. At age twenty-two, he became a translator in the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang, capital city of dictator Kim Il-sung’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Almost as soon as Matuzok arrived in the Far East, he began planning his defection. His opportunity came on 23 November 1984. That day he joined a group of Soviet-bloc Europeans for a tour of the so-called “Truce Village” at Panmunjom. All Matuzok required for escape was a moment of inattention by his handlers. A quick sprint across the Military Demarcation Line would bring him to safety and freedom. In 1953, representatives of the United Nations Command (UNC) met with their communist counterparts from North Korea and China in the ruined village of Panmunjom to put an end to three years of bloody armed conflict. The armistice they signed on 27 July 1953 ended active combat operations and established a zone of separation between the two Korean states in hopes of avoiding further military confrontation. Within the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Panmunjom became the permanent site for the two sides to maintain the fragile peace and exchange words instead of munitions. For a brief moment in 1984, however, Panmunjom was the site of a renewed Korean War, when Matuzok’s defection caused North Korean soldiers to open fire and pursue him into South Korean territory. The U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers guarding “Freedom’s Frontier” demonstrated superior training and discipline by limiting the scope and duration of the firefight while preventing the North Korean soldiers from apprehending the defector. Their skill in doing so, however, enabled senior American and South Korean officials to downplay the significance of their actions and to delay recognition of their valor for nearly twenty years." A Forty-Minute Korean War: The Soviet Defector Firefight in the Joint Security Area, Panmunjom, Korea, 23 November 1984 - The Campaign for the National Museum of the United States Army
