This image is part of a photo package of 47 recent images to go with AFP story on walls, barriers and security fences around the world. More pictures available on afpforum.com
This photo taken on February 12, 2017 shows visitors looking through binoculars towards North Korea from a South Korean observation post in the border city of Paju, near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas. Built to keep out migrants, traffickers, or an enemy group, border walls have emerged as a one-size-fits-all response to the vulnerability felt by many societies in today's globalized world, says an expert on the phenomenon. Practically non-existent at the end of World War II, by the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 the number of border walls across the globe had risen to 11. That number has since jumped to 70, prompted by an increased sense of insecurity following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the 2011 Arab Spring, according to Elisabeth Vallet, director of the Observatory of Geopolitics at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). This image is part of a photo package of 47 recent images to go with AFP story on walls, barriers and security fences around the world. More pictures available on afpforum.com / AFP PHOTO / JUNG Yeon-Je