Even though we were gonna have an early morning, I woke up even earlier because of the heat. My AC unit turns off when it reaches its set goal (18 C, the lowest possible). However, according to my thermometer, it’s 26 degrees in my room. So I spent my time in bed watching tonight’s game between IK Sirius FK and Mjällby AIF and eating the breakfast I bought yesterday. Unfortunately, they lost by 2-3 so not the best start of the day.
We met up in the lobby as usual and headed toward the subway station Myeongdong where our DMZ tour would pick us up. I’m liking margins so we were on site well before our designated time, but the bus was already there and after we got crossed off the list we took our seats.
Our guide, Moon, started directly by telling us about the day and what we would experience. We were her Moonwalkers and Then a history lesson on how it came that there is a demilitarized zone at all. I guess it’s a bit different compared to the version told north of the border. A high tempo but lots of interesting stuff and a personal story since she has relatives in the north she never met. During the ride, she collected all our passports. Didn’t really understand why, but we got them back a bit later. During the ride, a participant list was passed around and when it got to us we discovered two Swedish phone numbers! It turned out to be Maja and Freyja.
After an hour of bus ride, we arrived at a landing site called Imjingak. Here we walked around looking at different artifacts and remnants from different time periods. We also spent a lot of time with our newfound Swedish friends. There was an opportunity to buy North Korean currency. Since it was so many tours today we spent some time here until we could continue.
We all got on the bus again and passed the Paju Civilian Control Area Line (Checkpoint). Military police boarded the bus and checked off passports against the list of passengers we filled out earlier. Since Moon told us we weren’t allowed to take photos of the military personnel, I felt the seriousness of the situation. However, when one of them bumped into someone on the bus and apologized, it de-escalated the whole thing.
Onward to the 3rd infiltration tunnel. Again, lots of people so the small museum was quite crowded and sometimes hard to hear. After a propaganda movie about how South Korea tried to help the North all the time and all they got back was aggression, it was time to down below in the tunnel. We couldn’t bring anything down in the tunnel and photographing was forbidden. We also got a yellow hard hat, which was really useful 🙂
The tunnel is 73 meters below the surface and the interception tunnel, the access from the south side, is about 350 meters at an 11-degree angle. It was quite rough to go down, holding back the whole time. All the way we met people who were going up and especially in the beginning they looked really tired. We knew what was waiting.
Well at the bottom it was 236 meters to the barrier that blocks the access to the North. The roof was quite low and for most of the tunnel, I had to bend down to get past. At the end, you could look through a hole in the barrier to see to the other side. And at that point, we were under the DMZ itself, the ground above us covered with landmines.
We headed back and started the climb up the steep 350 meters again which took six minutes. The combination of exercise and the warmer temperature at the top (even though the building was AC-controlled) I was soaked with sweat. I had brought a small towel with me which got to good use. In the souvenir shop, you could buy soybean chocolate which was cultivated in the DMZ. It was said this was the only place you could buy it so I got one, let’s see when I dare to taste it.
Back to the bus and off to the observatory. The bus couldn’t go all the way so we had to walk the last couple of hundred meters. At the top, you could see across the DMZ and the border into North Korea. Not really sure how I should feel about this, I mean I have been in other countries before. But this one is so isolated. By using binoculars you could see some of the buildings and sometimes people that moved. Felt almost like a zoo.
The last stop of the tour was at a local market at the unification village. We tried soybean ice cream. It’s nice to have tried it, won’t buy it again if I’m offered. I took a nap on the way back to the town, I got pretty tired.
When we disembarked the bus we asked Maja and Freyja if they wanted to head to the café where we ate breakfast a couple of days ago. They said yes and we ended up spending five hours on the second floor just talking about pretty much everything. School and studies, politics, stories from scout camps, information flow at a Jamboree, allergies, and much more. At 21 we realized that we should probably eat some dinner so we headed out in the surrounding area looking for some food. We bumped into a bunch of Swedish scouts and since I was the only one carrying Swedish gear (t-shirt and scarf) I was pushed to the front 🙂
We found a restaurant and they only served one of the items on the menu so we got that for sharing. A bit tricky eating chicken on a bone with sticks and glass noodles that were stuck to the bottom. But it was tasty and we spent another hour enjoying each other’s company.
Since we lived the closest, the ladies dropped us off at our hotel before taking the subway home. All in all a lovely day with lots of impressions and great company. Tomorrow is the last full day in Seoul and we’ll do some laundry before heading down south.
