The DMZ (Seoul 2019, Day 2)
For our first full day in South Korea, we went on a tour of the DMZ. We had booked a private tour a while back, and while researching tour options, we discovered that there is no actual private tour of the DMZ itself. What we could do instead was book someone who would drive us there and back, and accompany us in the DMZ and explain things to us, which was the best option of the various other tour options that we could find.
The area of the DMZ that’s open for visitors is about 90 minutes away from the heart of Seoul. However, when we left at 8am on a weekday, it took an hour just to get out of the city because the traffic in downtown Seoul was bumper-to-bumper for miles. Once we got out of the city, it was less congested and we got to see some other non-touristy areas of Seoul from the freeway.
As we entered the DMZ visitor site, we started the process of joining the actual DMZ tour. We don’t have too many photos here, mainly because we wanted to bring as little as possible while we were in this area, but we did take a few photos from our phones.
Once we got past the entrance booth, we parked in basically a large bus depot. There, our tour guide Steve went and got our actual tour tickets from the ticket booth, and pointed us to the bus that would be driving us into the various sites in the DMZ. We got pretty lucky because there were only about 10 other people in the bus, so it wasn’t packed like it could have been had we gone on a busier day.
The bus drove us to our first stop, Dorasan Station, but first, we needed to stop at a security checkpoint. There, someone from the military boarded the bus to check everyone’s passport before allowing the entire bus to go through. They confirmed that none of us were a threat, so we continued driving to Dorasan Station.
The modern exterior of Dorasan Station
From what I remember, this is the northernmost station in South Korea, and was supposed to be used to connect South Korea to North Korea. It seems mostly symbolic now, as there were no trains going between the two countries when we were there. It was almost empty inside, but there was a large display of various photographs of the many political dignitaries who have visited, including the visit from Trump:
There was apparently a train scheduled on the timetable, and someone arriving from another train:
There was no one at the ticket counter, so I don’t know how you’d even buy a ticket for this station had you wanted to actually go somewhere.
Our next stop was the 3rd infiltration tunnel. According to Steve, the North Koreans had been digging tunnels from the north into the south for many years. If I remember correctly, I think he said that the only way South Korea knew these existed was because a defector or captured soldier informed them that North Korea had made significant progress digging these tunnels. In order to locate them, the South Korean military dug holes with water in the ground, and if air bubbles formed, they had found one of the tunnels. The 3rd tunnel is the most well preserved of the four that they have found so far, and it has now become a main tourist attraction in the DMZ:
In order to enter the tunnels, we needed to remove everything out of our pockets, so we have no photos of inside the tunnel. They gave us each a hardhat, and we rode a slow train that would take us down to the tunnel itself. You could also just walk down there, but we paid for the train instead :)
The tunnel itself is quite short, even for me, so those hardhats came in extremely handy, especially for Nick. He couldn’t just duck and walk through the tunnel, he basically had to squat walk through to the end, and I’m pretty sure he hit his head a few times along the way. I can’t remember how long the walk was, but it was long enough. Once we got to the end, the tunnel was sealed with a large metal wall with a door and a tiny window. In the window, we could see another two walls were built behind it, marking the demarcation line.
Our final stop on the tour was the Dora Observatory, which would allow us a view of North Korea. However, on the day we went, the weather was rainy, so our view was less than ideal:
Our view of North Korea from Dora Observatory. I think this might be the city of Kaesong
That was pretty much the only decent looking photo we could get, but it was still fascinating to get a glimpse of the world’s most secretive country.
There was one final stop at the DMZ gift shop, where we had a snack, and afterwards, we went back to the bus depot area and got into Steve’s car and headed to lunch.
I can’t remember where we went, but Steve took us to a restaurant that had a set meal. We were seated at a table, and a few minutes later, a woman started rolling a cart with a massive table on top of it full of food. She parked the cart next to our table, and slid the entire thing onto our table, it was actually quite amazing to see:
Nick and I have been to many Korean restaurants in the US, and expected many banchan, but this took it to a completely new level. Fortunately, Steve was able to explain what the dishes were, and it all tasted amazing.
The final place that Steve took us was the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul. Nick and I didn’t know much about the war; in school, neither of us learned much about it. Our visit here was very informative (although, I do admit that I’ve forgotten pretty much most of it by now, but that’s how I am with most of my knowledge about wars).
I think the most surprising thing we learned was that neither of us knew just how close North Korea was to taking the entire peninsula, nor did we know just how close the UN forces were to taking over the entire peninsula:
Image Source: Osan Air Base
It was fascinating thinking how different history would be if either side had actually successfully conquered the peninsula.
We made it back to the hotel to rest for a bit, and then decided to go to Myeongdong to hit up the night market there. I’ll write about that experience in the next post.