New Zealander Hopes to Hike North and South Korea Roger Shepherd The revered Baekdusan, the tallest peak of Baekdudaegan, the mountain range that runs 1,400 kilometers, or 870 miles, and forms the geological spine of the Korean Peninsula. SONGNISAN, South Korea - Roger Shepherd, a former police officer from New Zealand, holds the unusual record of being the first foreigner to set foot in many of the remotest mountains of North Korea since at least the 1950-53 Korean War. Now, he is chasing a dream that looks even more daunting, something no one in living memory has attempted. He wants to walk the entire Baekdudaegan, the mountain range that runs 1,400 kilometers, or 870 miles, and forms the geological spine of the Korean Peninsula, starting from Baekdusan on the North Korean border with China, then winding down the east coast across the highly fortified demilitarized zone before ending at Jirisan, a mountain near the south coast of South Korea. With the two Koreas locked in tensions triggered by the North's Feb. 12 nuclear test, Mr. Shepherd's dream may sound like little more than that for now. But he remains convinced that he has found something deeply unifying among all Koreans that he believes will eventually persuade the authorities on both sides to recognize the significance of his proposal. Mr. Shepherd's ambition draws upon the near-religious reverence Koreans feel for Baekdudaegan, and for Baekdusan, its tallest peak at 2,744 meters, or about 9,000 feet. The South Korean national anthem opens with a reference to Baekdusan. North Koreans calls themselves the "Baekdusan nation." "Koreans often say that mountains are part of their DNA, part of who they are," Mr. Shepherd said in an interview. When I talk about mountains in South and North Korea, people just ease up and talk about a subject that has no enemy. It was Koreans" love of mountains, especially Baekdudaegan, that has opened doors to him in both Koreas. That hospitality will be tested next year, when Mr. Shepherd plans to request formally that the two governments allow him to hike the full length of Baekdudaegan. No traveler can legally cross the border without permission from both sides. Mr. Shepherd said that when he recently broached the idea to government contacts in Pyongyang and Seoul, their initial reaction was positive but he was also told that the final decision would depend on the political mood then. Mr. Shepherd, 47, became a minor celebrity in South Korea after he and a fellow New Zealander, Andrew Douch, became the first foreigners to walk the entire South Korean section of the mountain chain, in 2007, and published an English-language guidebook to the trail, with David A. Mason, in 2010. Armed with 10 copies of that book and an introduction from the Korea-New Zealand Friendship Society, a nongovernmental group that promotes cultural dialogue between the two countries, Mr. Shepherd arrived in Pyongyang in May 2011. He told officials there that he wanted to do something that, because of tensions on the divided peninsula, no Korean from either side had ever done: document all the main mountains of Baekdudaegan, in both North and South. And he was pitching this idea in North Korea, where much of the population suffers chronic food shortages and other privations and where hiking for fun - a favorite pastime in South Korea - is hardly known. "People go to the mountains of North Korea specifically for a purpose: to move from one village to the next, to go looking for herbs and spices, to go hunting and - where you are allowed to - to go to collect wood," he said. Literally, North Korean mountains are empty of recreational hikers. Mr. Shepherd said that North Korean officials seemed to appreciate a foreigner who had come to the North not to talk politics nor to hand out aid, but with a genuine interest in their mountains. As in South Korea, the idea of reunifying the long-divided peninsula has a strong pull among people in the North, and his contacts in Pyongyang recognized the symbolism of his project. "They thought it was a good thing for the whole of Korea," he said. I remember one of the military officers saying to the effect that, even though Korea was divided, Baekdudaegan is not, but only a bird can travel freely along Baekdudaegan at the moment. Between March 2011 and July 2012, Mr. Shepherd visited North Korea four times, spending a total of three months climbing and photographing 24 Baekdudaegan peaks. Most were in some of the most inaccessible parts of the world's most isolated country - areas where Mr. Shepherd was certain he was the first foreigner to set foot since the war, partly because, as his North Korean contacts told him, no one else had ever asked to visit them before. In North Korea, Mr. Shepherd said he could find no experienced hikers. He had to rely on old maps of North Korean mountains he had bought in South Korea. Local villagers guided him, often cutting their way with machetes through thick forests to the peaks, where he could get the photographs he wanted, of mountains extending out like waves in a stormy sea.