D M Z

Koreans are pretty obsessed with peace. When they say hello, it literally translates to the question, "Are you at peace?" and when they say goodbye, "Go in peace." Despite the harmonious greetings, there's a little dispute going on between North and South Korea that maybe you've heard about. That silly Kim

Jong Il is not easy to get along with.

To get our peace of the action (pun intended), yesterday Andrew and I toured the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. It runs the whole width of the Korean peninsula and it's very heavily guarded with soldiers, barbed wire, landmines, and probably dragons too. I was very interested to check it out but Andrew kept pointing out that it's an entire Saturday looking at a fence. Can't argue with that one.

I'll spare you all the facts because a little Wikipedia search can teach you much more than this blog, and plus we have to keep a little mystique so you all want to come visit us and do the DMZ tour yourself. But a few pictures and a few stories are always worthwhile.

The first part of the tour was through Camp Boniface (American and South Korean soldiers living and working "in front of them all") and to the Joint Security Area. The JSA is where the two countries meet literally face to face. We were instructed not to point at the North Korean soldiers or communicate with them in any way. Here's what we saw:

The building across the way is in North Korea and it's where the 1953 armistice was signed to end the Korean War. The soldiers with their backs to you are South Korean soldiers staring into North Korea. They're standing in modified Tae Kwon Do position and wear dark glasses to be intimidating. At the top of the steps over on the other side are North Korean soldiers checking out us Americans with binoculars. The blue buildings are half in each country and the little concrete ledge you can see on the ground (at the soldiers' waistlines in the picture) is the official line between the two countries. Next we went into the blue building on the left and got to step into the half that's in North Korea. So technically we visited North Korea yesterday.

The second part of the tour was a few miles away at what's called the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. At the infiltration station, we learned that South Korea discovered this tunnel on their side of the border in the 1970's. It's big enough to fit 30,000 troops through in an hour and is evidence that the North Koreans were planning an invasion. So our tour group all put on yellow hardhats and went down an access shaft into the wet, dark, long tunnel that's several hundred feet underground. I really wanted to sing the Fraggle Rock theme song as we marched down the slope.

Here is the sign at the entrance:

The only reason we took a picture of this sign is the funny translation that was corrected. At the end of number one, it says "weak and intoxicated" people are not allowed in the tunnel. But the text covers up where it previously said that among the people not allowed in the tunnel are: "impotent and drinker." I think my favorite part of living in Korea are these funny translations.

Third on the tour of the DMZ was a vantage point on a hill overlooking North Korea. We saw a gigantic 600lb North Korean flag that's reinforced with steel cables and our guides told us that many of the buildings we see are not real (no floors inside, no windows, etc) but were built to impress the South Koreans. One town is real though and it's a baby step toward unifying the two Koreas. It's a manufacturing village run with materials and power from the South but it's physically in the North and uses North Korean workers who earn about 30 cents an hour (they're paid in U.S. dollars but only see a small fraction of their small pay). In the picture below you can see the manufacturing village. North Korea begins about where the trees stop.

Using the binoculars we could see a few North Koreans working in the fields. No Kim Jong Il sightings though. So in all we saw about five North Koreans and a huge long fence. Worth it? Heck yes. Peace out!