DMZ Day

This last Saturday I had the opportunity to travel with some of my fellow teachers to the DMZ. Which is the border between North and South Korea. It was actually pretty fun. Lots of food, buses, trains, and subway.

To see the border we actually had to take part in a tour. Our first bus stop was at a kind of museum. The museum highlighted all of the North Korean conflicts and invasions that have occurred over the last 50 years. The museum was ripe with symbolism and hopeful of the two countries reunifying in the future. We watched a short video that basically proclaimed the two countries were on track to reunify. I found this contradictory to a lot of the information in the museum. It was interesting to see the spin they put on things.

The highlight of this stop though was taking a tram down into a North Korean dug tunnel. The tunnel located 54km from Seoul, is one of four that has been found. They guess there are probably 10 more undiscovered that are located on the border.

We then went to a look out that let us peer into the North. It was a foggy day and there was not much to see. Apparently on clear days there is a town visible in the distance. I was told that the town functions with piped in noise and is not really inhabited by people. It is maintained for appearances by the North. From the vantage point we could see the national highway that runs between Seoul and Pyongyang. The highway was completely empty and I believe is only used by diplomats.

Our last stop of the tour was to a newly built railway station near the border. The South built it in hopes of running rail lines in the North when the 2 countries reunify. So this brand new train stations was built symbolically but has yet to run any trains through it. They speak as if there is little standing in the way of reunification. It's quite interesting.

Here are some pictures from the day.

This picture is from the museum. It's hard to see but two sides are pushing the globe back together. On one side is South Korea and on the other is the North.

The bottom picture is me and some of my fellow teachers.