The DMZ is the world's tackiest war zone.
It can only be visited with an organized tour. The trip from Seoul is about an hour, and mostly follows the Han river, which is lined with barbed wire and guard posts. Our guide, who has a headset and stands wobbling at the front of our minibus, explains that this is because the river is a route infiltrators might take. She also gives us a garbled history of the Korean war and expresses vague hopes for quick reunification. She says you can tell when you're looking at the North because it's bare: The trees have all been cut down for fuel.
Stops:
1. The Freedom Bridge, where POWs were exchanged after the armistice. There's a parking lot full of tour buses, restaurants, souvenir shops selling ashtrays and mugs that say "in commemoration of visiting the DMZ", and a closed fairway ground full of rides. We transfer to a full-sized bus with tasselled red curtains. At a check-point, we're told to hold out the photo page of our passports, and a South Korean soldier in wraparound sunglasses and a fur hat comes on and walks down the aisle, looking left and right.
2. Dorasan Station, a brand-new train station on the long-closed line running into the North. The station is a concrete expression of the hope that the line will be reopened. In practice, it's an extremely expensive building for selling souvenir ashtrays. It's not completely idle: There are trains to Seoul, and there may still be freight trains running to the Kaesong Industrial Region -- an area inside the North where companies from the South operate factories employing North Koreans. The idea with Kaesong seems to be that the North gets foreign exchange, Southern companies get access to ultra-low-wage skilled labour, and both countries get something relatively harmless to squabble over.
3. The Dura Observatory, which has another gift shop, a closed exhibition hall, and a row of coin-operated binoculars. Through these, you can look at the denuded hills of the North, the "propaganda village", and the flagpoles. The South built a very tall flagpole here, and the North responded with one of the tallest flagpoles in the world, a stretched-out Eiffel tower. The flagpole war is one of the many grimly comic things about the DMZ. The propaganda village is another. The North built it to show what a prosperous place it was, but the buildings are supposed to be empty shells. The two sides used to blare propaganda at each other from loudspeakers here, too, but agreed to knock it off a few years ago.
4. The third infiltration tunnel (or "Third Tunnel of Aggression", as the South Korean military has it). The North has dug tunnels under the DMZ, of which four have been discovered. The third is 1.7km long, runs through granite, and was painted black in a breathtakingly feeble attempt to disguise it as a coal mine. Above the tunnel is a gift shop and a display showing relics of the war and some mannequins of wretched-looking North Korean soldiers digging the tunnel with pickaxes. Surrounding the parking lot outside are statues: Adorable cartoon ROK soldiers, a soccer ball, and a bronze-painted plaster sculpture of people pushing two halves of a sphere together. As with the flagpoles, the South doesn't try to match the North's craziness, but it doesn't let it go completely unanswered, either.
Before you can get into the tunnel, you have to watch an extremely loud film apparently produced by the South Korean military, whose directorial style favours cheap explosion effects and bombastic narration. It's a propaganda film. The North doesn't always bring out the best in the South. Afterwards, you pick up a yellow hard-hat and walk down a long, steep ramp into the tunnel itself, which is very rough and very low. The hard hats aren't due to some mindless safety regulation: If you're over 5'6", you crack your head repeatedly against buttresses and hunks of rock. I have to bend almost double to walk through the tunnel. It might have been faster and more comfortable to crabwalk it.
The walk ends at one of the barricades erected by the South after the tunnel's discovery. Beyond that, the tunnel is supposed to be sealed. You wonder about it being an even more effective invasion route now that the last half is a nice sloping ramp. It's easy to imagine North Korean troops streaming out, commandeering tour buses, and turning up in Seoul an hour later (depending on traffic) drinking out of mugs that say "In Commemoration of Visiting DMZ".
5. Daeseong-dong, a South Korean village inside the DMZ. Daeseong-Dong has a grim-looking cafeteria and a larger-than-average souvenir shop, which sells ashtrays and baseball caps, but also North Korean agricultural products, including North Korean wine. Something to bring to a dinner party with people you have mixed feelings about. There's more to the village than this, but we can't visit it.
After Daeseong-Dong, we pass through a checkpoint and leave the DMZ. They don't check passports, but simply count heads, with the idea that the number going out minus the number who went in equals the number of spies and defectors. For spies looking to infiltrate the South, the implication seems to be that they'll need to make away with a tourist.
6. An "amethyst factory" in downtown Seoul. The most interesting thing about the DMZ is what a just-another-tourist-attraction it is: Tour operators feel they can slip a random jewellery store onto the itinerary without it seeming odd. If you're looking for something sombre and reflective, you took the wrong half-day bus tour.
It can only be visited with an organized tour. The trip from Seoul is about an hour, and mostly follows the Han river, which is lined with barbed wire and guard posts. Our guide, who has a headset and stands wobbling at the front of our minibus, explains that this is because the river is a route infiltrators might take. She also gives us a garbled history of the Korean war and expresses vague hopes for quick reunification. She says you can tell when you're looking at the North because it's bare: The trees have all been cut down for fuel.
Stops:
1. The Freedom Bridge, where POWs were exchanged after the armistice. There's a parking lot full of tour buses, restaurants, souvenir shops selling ashtrays and mugs that say "in commemoration of visiting the DMZ", and a closed fairway ground full of rides. We transfer to a full-sized bus with tasselled red curtains. At a check-point, we're told to hold out the photo page of our passports, and a South Korean soldier in wraparound sunglasses and a fur hat comes on and walks down the aisle, looking left and right.
2. Dorasan Station, a brand-new train station on the long-closed line running into the North. The station is a concrete expression of the hope that the line will be reopened. In practice, it's an extremely expensive building for selling souvenir ashtrays. It's not completely idle: There are trains to Seoul, and there may still be freight trains running to the Kaesong Industrial Region -- an area inside the North where companies from the South operate factories employing North Koreans. The idea with Kaesong seems to be that the North gets foreign exchange, Southern companies get access to ultra-low-wage skilled labour, and both countries get something relatively harmless to squabble over.
3. The Dura Observatory, which has another gift shop, a closed exhibition hall, and a row of coin-operated binoculars. Through these, you can look at the denuded hills of the North, the "propaganda village", and the flagpoles. The South built a very tall flagpole here, and the North responded with one of the tallest flagpoles in the world, a stretched-out Eiffel tower. The flagpole war is one of the many grimly comic things about the DMZ. The propaganda village is another. The North built it to show what a prosperous place it was, but the buildings are supposed to be empty shells. The two sides used to blare propaganda at each other from loudspeakers here, too, but agreed to knock it off a few years ago.
4. The third infiltration tunnel (or "Third Tunnel of Aggression", as the South Korean military has it). The North has dug tunnels under the DMZ, of which four have been discovered. The third is 1.7km long, runs through granite, and was painted black in a breathtakingly feeble attempt to disguise it as a coal mine. Above the tunnel is a gift shop and a display showing relics of the war and some mannequins of wretched-looking North Korean soldiers digging the tunnel with pickaxes. Surrounding the parking lot outside are statues: Adorable cartoon ROK soldiers, a soccer ball, and a bronze-painted plaster sculpture of people pushing two halves of a sphere together. As with the flagpoles, the South doesn't try to match the North's craziness, but it doesn't let it go completely unanswered, either.
Before you can get into the tunnel, you have to watch an extremely loud film apparently produced by the South Korean military, whose directorial style favours cheap explosion effects and bombastic narration. It's a propaganda film. The North doesn't always bring out the best in the South. Afterwards, you pick up a yellow hard-hat and walk down a long, steep ramp into the tunnel itself, which is very rough and very low. The hard hats aren't due to some mindless safety regulation: If you're over 5'6", you crack your head repeatedly against buttresses and hunks of rock. I have to bend almost double to walk through the tunnel. It might have been faster and more comfortable to crabwalk it.
The walk ends at one of the barricades erected by the South after the tunnel's discovery. Beyond that, the tunnel is supposed to be sealed. You wonder about it being an even more effective invasion route now that the last half is a nice sloping ramp. It's easy to imagine North Korean troops streaming out, commandeering tour buses, and turning up in Seoul an hour later (depending on traffic) drinking out of mugs that say "In Commemoration of Visiting DMZ".
5. Daeseong-dong, a South Korean village inside the DMZ. Daeseong-Dong has a grim-looking cafeteria and a larger-than-average souvenir shop, which sells ashtrays and baseball caps, but also North Korean agricultural products, including North Korean wine. Something to bring to a dinner party with people you have mixed feelings about. There's more to the village than this, but we can't visit it.
After Daeseong-Dong, we pass through a checkpoint and leave the DMZ. They don't check passports, but simply count heads, with the idea that the number going out minus the number who went in equals the number of spies and defectors. For spies looking to infiltrate the South, the implication seems to be that they'll need to make away with a tourist.
6. An "amethyst factory" in downtown Seoul. The most interesting thing about the DMZ is what a just-another-tourist-attraction it is: Tour operators feel they can slip a random jewellery store onto the itinerary without it seeming odd. If you're looking for something sombre and reflective, you took the wrong half-day bus tour.
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| That's North Korea in the distance. |
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| The red triangles? Land mine warnings. |
