Day 299 - DMZ

---

One of the highlights of our year away’s original itinerary was paying a visit to North Korea. Much to our disappointment organising the practicalities of this turned out to be impossible, in the main because we wouldn’t be in the UK to go through the visa formalities. So we decided that rather than try and sneak in we’d better just wait and go another time, but for a bit of a look we travelled today up to the so-called DMZ (demilitarised zone) between North and South Korea. And what a great experience it was.

There’s almost no end to what we could write about the things we saw today, so we’ll stick to the highlights and a bit of context. After World War 2 the Korean peninsula was divided into a communist North and a democratic South, with a border at the 38th parallel. Then the Soviet-supported North invaded and after a few years of fighting the ‘front’ was roughly where it had began. The deal they struck to end the war stipulated that both sides should retreat 2km from the front, and so ever since (over 50 years) there has been a 4km wide zone separating the 2 countries, and a million soldiers on either side just in case things turn nasty. On the Western side there is a unique place called the JSA, or Joint Security Area, which is where the 2 Koreas come to chat. Meetings take place in a small building that has half in North Korea and half in South Korea. The table is similarly on the border and in fact the border is marked by a microphone lead running across the table. Both sides have guards at this point who never make eye contact or chat, with the quirky fact that the North Korean guards actually look more towards their own territory because they are more concerned about defectors that a South Korean incursion. We wanted to go into the room but the North Koreans had a tour party of their own and only one country can go at once - they like to use this fact to stop South Korean-side groups entering. South Korean nationals are only allowed to attend after going through a year or so of vetting though.

After the JSA we had a look at North Korea from a hillside and their flagpole which they built after South Korea built a very tall one. The far taller North Korean flagpole is the tallest in the world, which just demonstrates how effective their particular style of running the country is. Finally we went underground to visit a tunnel that was discovered in the 1970s coming from the north in an area of little coal, where the walls had been amateurishly painted in coal dust to ‘back up’ the North Koreans’ claims that they were looking for coal but must have taken a wrong turn. It just so happened to end 500m past the DMZ and could have carried 30,000 men through in an hour. More recently they have admitted building it and at the same time put in a formal demand for a share of the tourism receipts! Don’t you just love this kind of thing!

On a more positive note, we also visited a brand new and enormous train station that the South Koreans have built and which really does indicate their desire to see the Korean peninsula united again, a vote for the future so to speak. When and how this happens are anyone’s guess, but you certainly get the impression that it’s kind of inevitable eventually. We hope so, but not before we’ve had a chance to visit the wacky world of the North in its current condition.

Overall it’s up there with the most interesting days of the almost 300 we’ve been away for. We’d hugely recommend it as one of two things you simply have to do when you visit Korea (the other happens in 2 days time…).

---