Seoul - DMZ tour

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This story really starts before I even get to South Korea. At the end of September I booked myself a two month trip to Bali, Indonesia. I specifically chose to fly Korean Air, and paid a bit more for the privilege, because I enjoyed flying with them so much before. I was scheduled to leave at 11:50 pm on Tuesday the 23rd and arrive on Thursday the 25th with a 12 hour layover in Seoul. At 1:30pm on Tuesday I got an e-mail from the third party website through which I had booked the tickets "your flight is no longer operational, would you like to reschedule to Thursday the 25th or cancel your booking for a full refund? Please respond ASAP" W.T.F. I wanted neither of those things, I wanted to leave when I was scheduled to leave! I think I rather understandably freaked out. I couldn't find a phone number to call the travel agent anywhere so I e-mailed back asking them to please call me to discuss my options and then called Korean Air myself. After a bit of backing and forthing I finally convinced them that it was really very important for me to be on a flight that night and not two days later since leaving Thursday means arriving on Shabbat so that wouldn't even work. Weirdly enough they had another flight that same night, at 11:30 instead of 11:50 that they had not previously offered me and they were willing to put me on it. The only resistance I met was because I had ordered a kosher meal and they were concerned I might not have one with such short notice on my new flight. I was all "that's fine, I understand I can deal with it" and the woman is telling me "but, people who keep kosher, they take it really seriously" but totally missing the forest for the trees here (I can't fly on Shabbos, I can feed myself). Anyways I did make it to the airport and onto my flight and although the ticket agent predicted I could only end up with a middle seat I was lucky enough to get an aisle seat in what was a 100% full flight due to the cancellation of my scheduled flight. It wasn't particularly a pleasant experience but I just watched a movie and dozed off and on until we arrived in Seoul.

We got in at 4:30am so I had a bit of time to make my way through passport control and customs and then wander around the airport thinking about how I wanted to spend my day. I had a major deja vu moment when I found myself going up the escalator to the internet lounge, getting there and realizing that you need 500 won coins to operate the computers and remembering vividly how that was EXACTLY what I did the last time I came through Seoul on my way to Southeast Asia. Like last time I sighed and went back downstairs to exchange money and then came BACK up again to use the computers. I had kind of already done most of the touristy things there are to do in Seoul so I wasn't exactly sure what my plan should be. I signed off the computers and walked the length of the airport terminal and started noticing travel agency desks that arrange day tours for people in just my situation. Nothing really looked that promising until I passed a desk advertising a DMZ day tour. And just like that I was signed up! I had spent enough time in the airport that it seemed now I was going to have to rush though. The agent took my money, gave me a reloadable travel card to use on the metro and gave me a map. I had to take the train to the Hognik University stop, then find my way to exit 1 and ONLY exit one, come out the exit and find the Dunkin Donuts and wait in front of it. It was very Amazing Race. I made it there with no problem and arrived around 8:05 for an 8:20 pickup. The only thing that really worried me was that there was no sign or anything other than the Dunkin Donuts itself that indicated I was in the right place. The time passed and eventually a group of people gathered by the Dunkin Donuts looking like tourists. I asked an older American couple if they were there with Hana Tours, they didn't know but they were going to the DMZ so I figured these must be my people. We stood around for a bit, chatting, and a large tour bus pulled up. The guy in charge of the group said it definitely wasn't our bus and to keep waiting. Turns out it was MY bus and I was with the wrong group. Eventually the poor tour guide looking for me while using an Korean version of my last name, which I can't even begin trying to reproduce, found me in the crowd and got me on his bus. The guide gave us a bit of basic history on the way up there, including that North Korean people are descended from a line of "warlocks" and that is why they are so fierce. Pretty sure he meant to say "warlords" but that couldn't stop me from giggling.

We drove about 45 minutes or so to Imjingak park, which is outside of the DMZ, where we stopped while the guide filled out the necessary paperwork and we had a chance to take a look around at the amusement park (pretty incongrous) the peace bell and a memorial altar I believe for the use of those who have relatives buried in the north. Then it was back on the bus and through the checkpoint, across the bridge and into the DMZ. We passed by a small village which has only a very few inhabitants who make their living farming in the DMZ and then through woods marked with "MINE" signs and to our first stop which was the "third tunnel." The tunnel was one of four that were discovered by the South Koreans built under the DMZ in the direction of Seoul. They assume more exist as well. Before going into the tunnel we went to an education center and watched a super short, confusing film about the tunnel and the DMZ. The film was written in really poor english but narrated with such confidence that it was almost trippy as the words filtered into your consciousness, like "yup, yup, yup, wait, what? no, no that's not what you meant." It ended with the statement that the DMZ will remain forever, until there is peace between the North and South. Well, hang on for a second, either the DMZ will be there forever or it will be there until there is peace but your sentence doesn't get to declare both things!

Then we were walked through a tiny exhibition about the DMZ and the tunnels and then it was into the tunnels themselves. The walk down is crazy, it's 350 meters long and at quite a steep angle. At the bottom, wearing your hardhat you can walk along the tunnels, which drip water and see the marks where dynamite was placed into the walls and where the North Koreans smeared coal on the walls as they left so they could claim they were just mining. It is really terribly depressing though, because the tunnels were all dug by South Korean POWs. It's also fascinating and almost Kafkaesque because the North claims the tunnels were dug by South Korea, even though all sorts of physical evidence points the other way (including that they start in North Korea and don't even reach South Korea...) but also that they were just mining and it's this crazy like doubletalk/doublespeak where you wonder how it's possible to make such blatantly ridiculous claims against all the facts. When I had, huffing and puffing and sweating, hauled myself back up the 350 meters uphill all the way to the surface again we were back on the bus and on to the next stop. This was the overlook into North Korea. The weather up in that area is notoriously hazy, but we were able to see into the valley and to a factory that is owned by South Korean companies but run with North Korean workers and see a bit of a bridge and some flag poles near an empty show village. It was really cool. Like looking into another world. Sadly you aren't allowed to take pictures unless you are standing like 10 - 15 feet behind the wall at the edge and so that combined with the haze and the crowds of people means it's almost impossible to get a good picture. The guards are zealous too, if they catch you taking a picture they will delete it. From the overlook we went down again and to the train station. It's shiny and new and impressive looking. Also it's pretty much useless. The South Koreans asked to build a rail line through North Korea so that they could ship into the rest of the world over land instead of just by sea. The North Koreans agree (in exchange for food and goods etc). The fancy terminal was built, the customs area was built, space for warehouses to house goods coming and going was marked out. They ran one celebratory train when it was done, had lunch, took a picture and then the North Koreans said "thanks for all that stuff you gave us, no rail line for you" and that was it. Now I think twice a day a train comes up and terminates there just to keep the track in usable condition. I bought a ticket for 50 cents that let me go all the way into the station and down to the track where you can take a picture of the arrows pointing to Pyongyang and Seoul. We wandered around there for a while and then it was back on the bus to our final destination. We stopped last at the little village in the DMZ so that people could buy North Korean goods and liqour and soy beans dipped in milk chocolate. Around midday we were on the way back to Seoul. This is when the guide collected the money from everyone and I realized that coming from the airport meant I was price gouged. I think what really happened is that they charged me the price including a lunch that I didn't receive. Back in Seoul we stopped for a moment at a government run store selling products made with really strong....ginseng? maybe? I don't remember it was super expensive and none of us were interested in buying. With that the tour was done but our guide did take us to a place across from the palace I had visited on one of my previous trips for a South Korean lunch. I sat and chatted with an Irish girl until it was way past time for me to be on my way. I was just a little too blase about how easy it would be to get from where we were back to the airport. Instead of just hopping onto one train I had to get a metro to the train station, get through the train station, which was huge, down into the train platform, figure out which of the airport trains I was meant to take, stop and ask about it, then try and fail to load money onto my travel card and then get down to the platform in time to see the train leaving without me. This was really bad because the next train was coming at 3:39. My flight started boarding at 4:40 and left at 5:10. It was an hour to the airport. So I was going to arrive to the airport at the moment my flight started boarding and still have to clear passport control and security. I was stressssssing. I resolved that I would just have to run, run as fast as I could. And that's what I did. We got into the airport station and I took off. Thankfully my travelcard let me out even though I really don't think I had enough money on it and then I just sprinted through the airport and asked people to let me to the front of all the lines, which they were nice enough to do and I arrived to the gate even before they were ready to board my row! It all worked out but it was close enough I would never want to do it again (and yet, something tells me I will).

My flight to Bali Denpasar was wonderful. The flight was only half full. The flight attendant brought my kosher meal out fully wrapped so I could inspect it before she heated it up (something I don't recall happening before) and then once I had eaten I just staked out an entire empty middle row to myself, put on the Avengers movie and slept until we got to Bali.

I fully intended that this blog would have pictures but apparently my computer is lacking the adobe plug in required to make that happen. I'll hope the next computer is better set up for that going forward.

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