Images of peace on border

Artist works on Koreas' buffer zone

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Declining on sofas at a South Korean cafe, customers sip iced americanos as they gaze past barbed wire fences and watchtowers at the mountains of North Korea.

Daonsoop cafe is so close to the North Korean border that to obtain the building permit, its owners had to construct the property with a bunker and fortified positions for tanks.

Founder Lee Oh-sook and her husband, both the children of North Korean refugees, built the cafe less than two kilometers from the border in Paju, seeking proximity to their ancestral homeland.

"From here, you can see North Korea, so close but inaccessible... Our parents always hoped to return to their homeland, but they died before realizing this dream," 63-year-old Lee said.

"We chose to settle here to think of them more often."

The two countries are technically still at war as the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and South Korea still refers to the border as the "front line".