DMZ

Last weekend (Sunday, March 29th) Lauren and I went on an adventure with our friend, Molly. We went to the DMZ. For those of you who don't know, Korea is the only country in the world that is currently split right now. The border of North Korea and South Korea is designated the DMZ. It is a strip of land at approximately the 38th parallel. It was divided there at the end of WWII to distinguish between the US-occupied and Soviet-occupied Koreas.

Following the Korean war, this area was given the DMZ distinction, demilitarized. We took a bus tour with about 40 other foreigners up to the entrance of the DMZ. Once arriving at the entrance the guide told us it was forbidden to take pictures of the entrance into the DMZ (there were many military personnel around so I'm guessing that was the reason).

Once we got into the DMZ, our first stop was Freedom Bridge.


Freedom bridge is the bridge where POWs and families that were split between North Korea and South Korea were reunited. Standing on this bridge where so much reunification and love occurred was very powerful.




At this bridge they also had some small gift stands. This a frame that shows the currency used in North Korea:


Hopefully you can enlarge this picture to read the writings that explain what Freedom Bridge is all about:


There were a couple other attractions at this site. The Stones of Peace Wall is a piece of artwork that displays stones from 86 battlefields in 64 different countries. This was really cool to look at.



Also at this site...


The Peace Bell was another attraction at this site:



After leaving the Freedom Bridge area, we bussed over to our lunch site. It was a very traditional restaurant with the removal of shoes and sitting on the floor. Unfortunately the food we experienced here was not as grand as other times. We just weren't feeling these side dishes, can you tell?

(The preparation of those little fish does NOT include the removal of eyeballs...those suckers get stuck in your teeth seamlessly.)


After lunch waiting to go to our next stop:

Following our floss-inducing meal, we were off to the 3rd infiltration tunnel. Infiltration tunnels were tunnels dug by the North Koreans to invade South Korea (Seoul specifically) after the DMZ area had been set up. Four tunnels have been discovered by South Korean military. They suspect there are at least twenty tunnels. We went to the site of the 3rd tunnel found. They had a museum where we watched a short documentary on the Korean war then made our way down the long ramp to the actual tunnel. Here are a few photographs of the area, unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures inside the tunnel itself :(






The tunnel itself was amazing. The 350 meter ramp to the actual tunnel was pretty brutal walking down (but more-so back up). Once down into the actual tunnel, I had to duck through most of it (Lauren could walk standing up through most of it). It was very eery down there. That tunnel could put 30,000 armed troops into South Korea in one hour.

After leaving the tunnel, we made our way (via bus) to the next stop at the South Korean observatory that allowed you to see, from a distance, North Korea.

The city in North Korea we were looking at was Pyeongyang. Pyeongyang, unfortunately, is a propaganda city built for the onlookers from South Korea. The city was built to give the impression that North Korea was an abundantly prosperous country. It was from quite a distance, so it was tough to get photographs. Beyond that, if you wanted to take photographs, you had to stand behind a certain yellow line (see the video for what I am talking about)

Here are some photographs of North Korea (it is crazy just writing that):



In this next photo you can see a tall line (above the lady's head). This is the flagpole with the North Korean flag. South Korea had erected a flag right next to the boarder that flowed nicely in the wind. Upon seeing this flag, North intended to "one-up" South Korea by putting an ENORMOUS flag on a GIANT flag pole right across from the South Korean one. Unfortunately the flag is too large to wave in the wind without gale force gusts. Haha, rather humorous if you ask me


The final stop of our trip was to the Dorasan Train Station. This station is not a fully functioning station right now. It is built for the future international train travel in from South Korea. As of right now, North Korea allows one train bringing raw materials from the Dorasan Station to Pyeongyang once a week. The train is then loaded with the goods to be brought back into South Korea to be sold. The dream is that someday this station will be the gateway to North Korea, Asia, and Europe via train.


And that concludes our trip to the DMZ.