Surfing the Korean Wave: Day 4 - Getting up close and personal (sort of) with the Hermit Kingdom

 

The view from the Dora Observatory 

I still don't know what I was thinking. Back in the spring of 1999, when I was still living and working in Tōkyō 東京, I took advantage of the Japanese Golden Week holiday period to spend a few days in South Korea's capital, Seoul. A political science major (with an emphasis on international relations) and a child of the Cold War, I should've used that opportunity to visit Panmunjom and the Joint Security Area (JSA), where North and South Korean soldiers stand only a few meters (or feet, if you prefer) apart along the Military Demarcation Line. A tour of the JSA would have allowed me to go inside the blue meeting room where the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War was signed, and would even have provided me with the opportunity to take a few steps into DPRK territory. But for reasons lost in the mists of time (and in the fog that constitutes much of my brain these days) I didn't go*. 

Fast forward a quarter century later, and this time I was determined not to let that opportunity elude my grasp this time. Except that in the summer of last year Travis King decided to dash into North Korea while on a tour of the JSA to escape a court martial, and since then tours to the area have been suspended. Still, I was determined to get to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) one way or another (legally, in any case), so I signed up my wife and I for an organized tour. This meant having to get up before the crack of dawn, and then walk more than twenty minutes, mostly uphill, from our hotel to the Myeong-dong area where our tour bus would be waiting to leave before 0700 hours. As we approached the meeting spot, we could see the N Seoul Tower in the distance (which I did have the good sense to visit back in 1999). We could also see, very high in the sky above, two small white dots which most likely were North Korean balloons, considering we had both received alerts on our cell phones earlier that morning alerting to the presence of such balloons, and warning us not to touch them should they land near our vicinity. In any event, they were too high up to photograph:

Shu-E boards the bus:

Our first stop was at Imjingak, a park dedicated to the ten million South Koreans separated from their families when the peninsula was divided between the US and USSR following the end of the Second World War**, followed by the more permanent separation brought about by the war between the two Koreas. Here, amidst the various memorials, visitors lined up to purchase North Korean currency and stamps, the only place in South Korea where one can do so legally:

Having purchased DPRK cash earlier this year in Dandong 丹东 (though most likely it was fake), we skipped the line and instead walked around the park:

An unlikely memorial, dedicated to American military personnel of Japanese ancestry who were killed fighting during the Korean War:

An altar:

Identical statues symbolizing the plight of Korean comfort women 慰安婦, one representing the North, the other the South. There was something distasteful about tourists sitting on the benches taking selfies of themselves next to the figures:

Nearby was this steam train, which had been derailed by bombs during the war:

The train is riddled with more than 1200 bullet holes:

A sign indicating where a rail line once operated. The park is also the site of Freedom Bridge, where more than 13,000 POW's were exchanged following the cessation of the fighting in 1953:

Shu-E grabs a quick bite before boarding the bus for the next stop on the tour:

Stop number two on the tour was at the site of the Third Infiltration Tunnel. Here there were models of the ROK soldiers employing their modified taekwondo stances which they utilize while on duty at the JSA: 

As the name implies, this was the third of four infiltration tunnels discovered since 1974 (though South Korean officials estimate there could be up to twenty others). We weren't allowed to bring cameras or phones into the tunnel, so click here to get a glimpse of what it was like inside. After descending a steep corridor to reach the tunnel, we walked along 265 meters (869 feet) of the tunnel (which is located 73 meters/240 feet underground) to the point where the North Koreans sealed it off after realizing it had been discovered. It was a walk my back and knees don't wish to repeat. It also quickly became apparent why each visitor was given a hardhat to wear, as without mine I would've quickly knocked myself unconscious and/or received a traumatic head injury from the claustrophobically low ceiling in the tunnel:

Outside in the welcoming open air, our tour guide Moon took some photos of me to prove where I was:

Our penultimate stop was at the Dora Observatory. Thanks to those pesky Commie balloons, the outdoor roof was closed to visitors, so we had to make do getting voyeuristic glimpses into North Korea through the interior windows. In the photo below, the forested area to the left of the fence is the actual DMZ. The DPRK lies beyond the triangular shaped body of water in the middle:

In this photo you can barely make out the competing Korean flagpoles. North Korea's is on the left, standing proud at 160 meters (525 feet) high, while South Korea's puny 98 meter (322 feet) rival is on the right (a closer look at the ROK flagpole can be seen in the photo at the beginning of this post):

It may be difficult to make out, but in the top right of the photo below we could make Kaesong city:

The blue-roofed buildings which can be barely glimpsed in the right middle of this pic are the infamous huts in the JSA, now off limits to people like us (thanks for nothing, Travis!):

What I could've seen back in 1999 or before last summer:

I took this photo from a window on the east side of the observatory. Everything you see here is South Korean territory:

Our final stop on the tour was at Daeseong-dong (aka Freedom Village), a settlement of 200 souls right in the DMZ (there's a village on the North Korean side that's also close to the border, but which apparently is a Potemkin village of facades, empty of any residents):

Of course there was a souvenir shop here. Had I been living in South Korea I would've purchased some DMZ-grown rice to take home with me:

The most dangerous border on the planet, the flashpoint to a possible nuclear holocaust, is packaged in T-shirts featuring cute cartoon figures:

We were back in Myeong-dong by early afternoon, where Shu-E and I had lunch. I'm not sure how much my wife got from the tour (the previous day as we passed a National Foundation Day celebration, she asked me why there were so many American flags being waved by elderly Koreans), but for me it was a fascinating trip, even if we didn't get to go right up to the border like so many others have done up until recently. With its mixture of tension and tour buses, it has to be the most surreal tourist experience I've ever had:

After lunch we had a look inside Seoul's very modern City Hall, finished in 2013. The interior is dominated by the Green Wall, a seven-story high vertical garden covering 1516 square meters (16,319 square feet). Inside also is the Metaseosa Seobeol art installation:

The basement features a free museum built around an archaeological site from the Joseon dynasty, unearthed during excavation of City Hall:

Among the finds was this clump of thousands of arrowheads of different shapes stuck together:

Just in front of City Hall is the old seat of government, built in 1926:

One of the good things about life in the Foreign Service is the knowledge that no matter where you travel in this world, there's a good chance you might know someone who is posted in that particular location. Which is how we came to have dinner that evening with Chris and Sabrina, whom we know from our time in Vilnius. On our way to the Jordanian restaurant where he had dinner (as good as Korean food is, it has its limits) we took this photo of the N Seoul Tower:

And after being treated to a delicious meal by our most gracious hosts, we had a group photo taken on the same bridge:

It's remarkable ("alarming" might be a better description) just how close South Korea's capital is to the border of a country that continually threatens to annihilate everything and everyone living on the southern side of the DMZ. We would have one more day in the metropolis before heading out to the hinterlands. Stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the competing national anthems:

"Aegukga" 

"Aegukka" 

* It was also while living in Japan's capital in the late Nineties that I seriously considered joining a tour to visit North Korea. My plans were crushed, unfortunately, when I learned that U.S. citizens at that time were not being allowed by DPRK authorities to participate in these tours. Had I been able to go, I wonder how that would have affected my later security clearance after joining the State Department.

** My father was stationed in South Korea before the Korean War, part of the U.S. contingent patrolling the 38th parallel separating south from north, though these U.S. troops left the country in 1949, a year before the invasion by the North in June 1950. He once told me that Korea was the coldest place he had ever been.