DMZ - At the border of North Korea

After some insistence, I want to tell you a bit about Mom and Dad's visit to Seoul, specifically our trip to the Demilitarized Zone.

They arrived in Seoul on October 26th, and after a delicious dinner of Korean BBQ and a visit to my room, we set off the next day to one of Seoul's four palaces and the traditional Bukchon Hanok Village, where many of the old houses are still inhabited today. We explored this with Daniel, one of our best friends from Maastricht who is on exchange in Hong Kong and came to Seoul for a weekend.

After more sightseeing, which is similar to our previous posts, we went to the DMZ on Saturday. We had a small surprise on the bus. It was explained to us that our tour would not actually take us to the well-known and official Demilitarized Zone, but only to the southern part of Korea. The DMZ consists of the North Korean-controlled side and the US-controlled side in the south. Further south, there is a part controlled by South Korea, which we visited. Therefore, we were unable to visit the JSA and the famous Panmunjeom (these are the blue houses visited by all presidents except Trump, and where all official photos are taken).

Our tour started at the Unification Bridge, where many prisoners were exchanged and the reunification of North and South Korean family members took place. Here, we could also see a railway that had been in the war zones and therefore had many bullet wounds. We then continued to the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel, one of the 4 tunnels known to South Koreans, which North Korea had dug for the purpose of attacking Seoul. The tunnel, which is almost 450m long and extends to North Korea, had some interesting features. For example, it was painted with black coal to give the impression of an old coal mine. However, we were surprised to find that this paint was still on the walls, despite the high humidity, which almost gave the impression that the tunnel had been blackened again for tourism purposes. The next stop was an observation platform from which we could see North Korea, which gave us all a very uneasy feeling, and finally a train station built in cooperation with North Korea, which used to bring workers to the divided Kaesong Industrial Zone in North Korea.

Overall, this was a very impressive trip!

Next, I will tell you about my second trip to Japan, this time to Tokyo!

Warmest regards, Kati