DMZ

I went on a trip through Adventure Korea to the Demilitarized Zone with Kelly, Stephanie, Catherine and Erin. The DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) is a buffer zone in between North and South Korea. It is about 4 km wide and 248 km long. Our first stop was the freedom bridge. This area is called Imjingak and it is as far as civilians can go to the North by themselves without permission. Imjingak was built to console those who had to leave their homes in the North. It has a Manngbaedan, an altar where those who cannot go back to their homes get together and pray for their ancestors on New year's day or Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving day). A Peace Bell was put in wishing for the unification between the two Koreas. We walked on the Freedom Bridge where the sign says, “The train wants to run". The Freedom Bridge was also used for exchanging the prisoners after the Korean War.















I also got to see Kesung city from the Dora observatory. This is the second largest city in North Korea. It was hard to get a picture of North Korea because we were only allowed to take pictures behind the yellow line. Some tourists took pictures in front of the line and got their cameras taken away by the Korean military. I got to see the "Propaganda village" Kijongdong designed to give visitors the impression that North Korea is a prosperous nation meanwhile no one lives there and it is purely for show. It also has the tallest flagpole in the world with the North Korean flag. Daesungdong is the freedom village of South Korea. This village actually has some people living in it and they get exempted from military service as well as tax cuts from the government.



















This is me pushing the North and South together. I also got to go down into the 3rd North Korean infiltration tunnel. This tunnel would allow about 10 000 armed or 30 000 unarmed soldiers to invade Seoul within one hour. The South has discovered 4 tunnels but this one is the closest to Seoul. It's pretty crazy that Korea is the only divided coutry in the world. At the end of the trip we went to the Dorasan border train station, which is the last station in the South but the first station towards the North. Hopefully the train will someday run through North Korea.