US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has visited the world's most heavily armed border, greeting US soldiers on guard near the tense buffer zone between rivals North and South Korea.
The Demilitarised Zone, which is both a tourist trap and a potential flashpoint, is guarded on both sides with land mines, razor wire fence, tank traps and hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops.
Tillerson touched down by helicopter at Camp Bonifas, a US base about 400 metres from the DMZ, a Cold War vestige created after the Korean War ended in 1953.
He will later move to the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ, where the Korean War armistice was signed.
It's the first trip to the border by the new Trump administration's senior diplomat as he makes a tour of Japan, South Korea and China.
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Speaking in Tokyo, Tillerson earlier vowed a tougher strategy to confront North Korea's nuclear threat. But he offered no details about what would comprise the "different approach" to North Korea the US will pursue.
He pointedly noted that 20 years of "diplomatic and other efforts" had failed to dissuade the isolated communist government from developing its nuclear program, which he called an "ever-escalating threat."
President Donald Trump is seen as seeking to examine all options - including military ones - for halting the North's weapons programs before Pyongyang becomes capable of developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could reach the US mainland.
