I just returned from Hong Kong! And you know what that means: seventeen posts in a row which are exclusively about Hong Kong. Buckle up, idiots!
Nah I'm kidding. Although I will be posting about my trip soon (which was awesome, just to get that out of the way early), my fellow teachers and I took a different trip the weekend before I left which I forgot to write about. Well, I didn't forget to write about it. I very much remembered to write about it, but then I got lazy and probably fell asleep. So that's my bad. But on to the point: I finally visited the DMZ!
Not as...ominous as people sometimes imagine, but yes that is North Korea in the distance
We booked a tour through a company called Koridoor (plugging the link here because they did a good job, and also when I link stuff more people seem to read my blog and I'm just so desperately alone) and headed up to the DMZ at 6am, an hour I normally reserve for actually going to sleep in the first place. Our first stop was at the Third Tunnel, the site of an infamous attempt by North Korea to tunnel over 44km from their border into Seoul. I won't dump a whole ton of details about the Third Tunnel here as you can find them online and also, just, no. Photographs of this area were prohibited so I don't have anything to show you, but just imagine a very narrow tunnel through solid granite with a clumsy giant constantly banging his head on the roof. That was my experience at least, at we only explored a very short segment of it. Marching an army 44km through that environment is an idea so asinine it can only have come from North Korea.
We visited the Dora observatory next, where the above picture was taken. The observatory provides an extensive view of the border in theory; it was quite foggy and started to snow when we visited. With the help of binoculars you can view some of the buildings across the border in North Korea, including a fake city they built to show off how fantastic it is to live there. The fake city also featured a 160m tall flagpole which, for obvious reasons, was pretty easy to see. The observatory also blasts American rock and roll music as well as propaganda announcements across the border continuously. They played a Bon Jovi song while we were there, which presumably accounted for the zero North Koreans rushing across the border towards us.
Dorasan station was our next stop, which made me genuinely sad. The station was opened in 2002 when relations between North and South had shown improvement. The goal was to reconnect a train line which had been destroyed during the war and eventually allow transportation from Seoul through North Korea. In the end, this would have connected South Korea to the Trans-Asian Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway, which would have allowed travel by train from South Korea all the way to Europe.
The map for the proposed railway hangs in Dorasan station
The North Korean government did allow transportation of materials between South Korea and the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North in 2007, but closed the border in 2008. Dorasan is still in perfect condition and maintained by the South Korean government in the hopes that one day the peninsula will reunite, again allowing migration to North Korea. As their slogan reads, "Not the last station from the South, but the first station toward the North."
This was a little surreal
Finally, the highlight of the trip was the visit to the Joint Security Area (JSA). After a briefing at Camp Bonifas - during which we were given some pretty strict guidelines to follow so as not to get, like, shot and stuff - we took a bus through a gate in the barbed wire fence and entered the DMZ itself. It was a pretty weird feeling to cross into such a taboo area, especially because of how normal it all seemed. You look out the window and see trees, fields with some cranes hanging out in it, the occasional road branching off in one or two directions and it just looks like rural countryside. Then your military escort tells you the treeline is full of mines and you see the North Korean flag poking up over a hill and you remember.
We visited the JSA and conference rooms on the border, which provide the only opportunity to "enter" North Korea from the South. Essentially, you go into a conference room, and once you walk past a table in the middle, bam, you're in North Korea. So I can technically say that I have been to North Korea, but if I'm talking to anyone who hasn't read this blog, you bet your ass I'm gonna add a whole bunch of lies to that story.
"JSA conference room? No, we uh, we parachuted right into Pyeongyang. There were no survivors. Not even me."
And of course, got to hang out with some North Korean soldiers as well. From a distance, of course. A pretty big distance.
The tiny guard at the bottom in front of the door is nicknamed "Bob" by the soldiers at Camp Bonifas. He stands at attention roughly 12 hours a day.
There's at least a chance someone in the DPRK will read this blog and be pretty annoyed at me. Not about the pictures though. Just because it sucks.
The South Korean soldiers (dark uniforms) face down the North Korean soldiers, partially concealed by the buildings in case there is an exchange of fire
And that's the DMZ! Definitely worth the trip and waking up at an hour that I was fairly certain was illegal before that weekend. Hong Kong posts are coming up, provided I don't forget / get lazy again. But what are the odds of that happening, huh?! Ha ha! Ha!
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