The most interesting part of our trip to South Korea was our trip to North Korea, or at least a couple of steps in. The tour that we booked meant that we had to be at the military base by 7 in the morning, so we had to wake up at 5:30 and be on our way by 6:30. Fortunately, we lived only a few stops away.

I was afraid that there would only be a couple of people (or we would be the only people) on the tour, but we actually filled two tour buses! (although each bus was only like 40% full – I guess they were afraid American people were fat). There was also quite a bit of disparity between the prices paid. We paid USD$46 each, but when we were checking in, the couple in front of us paid USD$87 each! The tour was in English, but our guide was Korean and had a heavy accent. He described various landmarks on our 1.5 hour drive down (with some mandatory souvenir shop breaks) but most of what he said was incomprehensible.

About 10km away from the Joint Security Area, we passed through a check point, and they said we couldn’t take pictures anymore. After a couple of minutes, we arrived at the gate to the Demilitarized Zone. Normally, one would transfer onto a military bus, but they gave us some bad news saying that we wouldn’t be able to proceed to the #3 and #4 checkpoints, so we were able to stay on our non-protected bus. We also gained an english-speaking, military tour guide and were told absolutely that we couldn’t take any pictures. The DMZ itself is forgettable, there are a lot of trees and it is said to be home to a lot of endangered animals (I would endangered if I lived in an area with a lot of land mines too).

Once we arrived at the JSA, we were able to take pictures again. But we had to walk in double file everywhere. There 2 things to visit here, one was a general landing area where you could see the conference rooms and look at North Korean soldiers looking at you. There were more rules here, you had to stay within a certain area, and you couldn’t point because the North Koreans would think you’re an officer and take you down first. But you could point and shoot with your camera no problem.

The second place was in one of the conference rooms where they discussed things. These rooms were half in South Korea, and half in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, so once you walk across the middle of the room, which also served as the Military Demarcation Line, you were in North Korea.

After that, we drove over to an observatory which overlooked a large area of the DMZ. Here we couldn’t take pictures either, except for behind a yellow line which was sufficiently far away from a wall in front of it so you couldn’t actually take any pictures of the DMZ. After lunch, we headed to the third tunnel.

The third tunnel is one of four tunnels that the South Koreans found from North Korea, intended to be used to invade Seoul. A couple of tunnels could send 30,000 troops through every hour! We were able to descend a 10° slope down into the tunnel and then walk ~250m along the tunnel itself. We had to wear hardhats because the clearence wasn’t very high either.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: asia09, korea, travelling