DMZ

We booked a DMZ tour for today as we visited so much of Seoul already and as the UN zone between the Korea’s is mysterious, so why not check it out ourselves? The bus leaves at 7.30 from Hongik metro station so we leave our apartment at 6.30. We forgot to charge our transport cards and since we have to take 3 different busses to get there it’s faster and cheaper to take a taxi.

We arrive at the pickup point at 7.00 so the first thing we do is charge our transport cards so that they are ready for a next time. We eat breakfast in the bus (banana’s and gimbap). The first stop is the Gamaksan Ungye Bridge. A nice walk up hill through a forest and passing through some remnants from a battle held in the area, the bridge is built at the site of heavy fighting during the war and leads to a waterfall.

Next is the Memorial Park where our time slot for the dmz is decided and where we can watch some bridges and Memorial sites, have lunch and even try one of the attractions of the local amusement park.

We enter the DMZ, which is signalled by a blue line on the road, now we’re in UN territory. A few minutes later, all passengers are checked by the Korean army and we have to have all our passports ready.

We drive to the third infiltration tunnel, built in 1978 by the North Koreans. It’s now a tourist site, we all get helmets and have to first decline 385 meter by walking through a long 11% steep tunnel. Zeno falls a sleep. Then, we have to bend our heads and walk more through a 1.60M high tunnel. The South Koreans have blocked the actual Military Demarcation Line in the tunnel with three concrete barricades. We can walk as far as the third barricade, and the second barricade is visible through a small window in the third.

Our last stop in the DMZ is the Dora observatory from which we over look North Korea and see the villagers at work in the fields. We get 20 minutes to study North Korean daily life through binoculars. We don’t see any cars, just some villages, apartment buildings, rice fields, some people walking, farming and Tim saw a scooter.

Of course you can’t go on a tour without a shopping stop, where we buy grains that are harvested at DMZ, sold as being super healthy because there is no pollution at all. We also try some soy bean ice cream, but it looks and tastes like carton board.

It’s a 40 minute ride back to Seoul. We arrive at 16 and decide to spend the final hours of this sunny day in a palace. Deoksugung Palace is a short metro ride from our drop off point so we pick this 4th of the 5 grand palaces. It is unique as it also features some neo-classical western buildings and was used by the Korean emperors until the Japanese took over in 1910.

In one of the neo-classical buildings hosts a branch of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. There is an exhibition on Korean figurative embroidery, with beautiful painting like pieces of art featuring many crane birds. We never saw such art before and are impressed by the effects of the light on the wires.

Then we relax a bit in the shade and the children entertain the Koreans in the park before we walk back to our apartment as it’s such nice weather and the whole of Seoul is out and about. Cleo plays in the many water fountains along the way and we admire to open air library on a square with people reading books in beach lounge chairs.

We go to a local Korean restaurant for vegetarian bimbimbap and some tofu pancakes and egg rolls for the children. Zeno and Cleo are finally used to the Korean food and even use the different condiments on offer. Cleo gets another ice cream after all the walking she has done and sprints ahead, the ice cream man was just about to close when we surprise him with our order and everyone’s delighted.

Five minutes later we are back in our apartment, Tim does some sunset photography from the rooftop and the children play and read in their bedroom before we enjoy a bed as the coming two nights will be spend in a plane…. We don’t think about it too much yet and just enjoy every final minute of our adventure.