Temperature: 6 | 16
We were up very early today as we had quite an interesting tour planned. We excitedly jumped on the subway with our coffees and headed to the meeting spot where we met our tour guide and about 20 others who would be joining us for the day. We had decided to do a tour from Seoul to the Demilitarised Zone, which is the border between South and North Korea. We’d actually been recommended to do it but after doing a very small amount of research, we thought we probably weren’t really interested in it. We then continued to see some raving reviews, and after researching it properly we realised it sounded much better than we’d originally thought and with the budget in a bit of a surplus at the moment, we thought, why not?

We had about an hour bus trip to a huge facility where our tour guide quite literally ran from the bus and jumped in line to secure us all tickets. Weirdly, you cannot actually book a time slot to visit the area, instead everyone just rushes to this huge building and waits in line. Fortunately we managed to secure tickets for 10:10am, and being about 9:30am now, we had 30 minutes to wander around this area which held many memorials for the families who were separated between South and North Korea. Our tour guide was very informative and we both felt like we walked away knowing so much more about the situation, although probably more me as I have learnt this year how stupidly naive I am to history.

By 10:10am we jumped back on the bus, ready to cross the border but of course not before some thorough checks by the military. They jumped on the bus and cross checked our passports a few times before giving us the ‘A-Okay’ to continue in.

Our first stop was a huge lookout where we had hoped we’d be able to see ‘life’ in North Korea. We headed straight up to the top where we all jumped on a set of Binoculars each and we peered across the border into North Korea. I can not explain to you how bizarre it is to see locals riding bikes, working on the farm or even taking an afternoon stroll, knowing that their life is so ridiculously different to ours, yet they have absolutely no idea. From our viewpoint, we could actually even see the village that Kim Jong Un grew up in. We obviously saw plenty of statues of Kim Jong Un spread out everywhere but our favourite was a huge sign that was directly obvious from the view point that read ‘Our country is the best’…

After an hour or so there we headed back down to the bus and headed to the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. There is 4 discovered Infiltration Tunnels which North Korea built in an attempt to ambush Seoul and overtake South Korea. It is understood that the North Korean engineer who assisted in the design of these tunnels actually ended up successfully escaping to South Korea, where he spilled all the details of these tunnels. It’s believed that North Korea then stopped their works on the tunnels, knowing the engineer had escaped and likely given them up. It took South Korea 3 years to actually find all the tunnels, and throughout their unsuccessful searching, they began placing huge water pipes in the area. After 3 years passed without discovery, North Korea must have assumed they’d given up and they went back to work on developing the tunnels. South Korea discovered the first tunnel after the North Koreans ruptured a huge water pipe, causing an obvious water fountain to form above ground. Its believed there is probably 15-20 tunnels in total, however at this stage only 4 have been discovered. A little bit of history for you all!
Our tour guide made a joke, thanking the North Koreans for building this tunnel as South Korea has now been able to make it a tourist site, bringing them a huge income!! The actual walk down to access the tunnel was very steep and quite long however once we were inside the tunnel it was very small and very wet. We wore hard hats on our head, fortunately as Connor and I whacked our heads more times than I can count, despite being entirely bent over. We were quite jealous of the tiny lady in front of Connor who walked straight the whole way, not once having to watch her head!!

By the time we reached the end of the tunnel, we were only 170m from North Korea but of course its heavily blockade with some pretty high-tech security surveillance. The walk back up the access point was more than a workout however we managed to get back to the top, although embarrassingly out of breath. We had a bit of spare time to wander around the Tunnel Museum, which was quite interesting although we were quite pleased to see that our guide had already told us all the information, and more.

We then pilled back on the bus and headed to the DMZ Farmers Market. If I’m completely honest, this stop seemed like purely a tourist money maker. It was sold to us as a way to support those families who live in the DMZ areas, and we had expected a market with lots of food, fruit, veg and maybe some souvenirs however it was actually just a small, quite overpriced supermarket and ice cream shop! We took the opportunity to stretch our legs and buy a coke and some chips before jumping back on the bus to head back to Seoul.

Overall, the DMZ tour was certainly worth the $80AUD but left us both feeling bizarrely unhelpful to the whole situation. It is so obvious that South Koreans fear what North Korean are capable of, and what they may be working on however our guide made it very clear that majority of the South Korean population continue to hope for some sort of civilian reunification in the near future.

We headed back to our accommodation to rest the legs for a bit, before then headed back out for dinner. We decided to enjoy some more Korean Fried Chicken and although still very good, it was not quite as good as the first night. We ended up rushing the end of our dinner as we had booked tickets for the Nanta show and upon rechecking the time, we realised it said be there an hour before. We quite literally ran the 15 minutes to the show, can confirm a tummy full of fried chicken and running doesn’t sit well with either of us!

We arrived 15 minutes before the show and with no issues at all, we headed straight in to find our seats. The show turned out to be so good! Connor had booked it and I had no idea what to expect but it was really, really good. I can only describe it as a bit of a comedy skit with no talking, but where the actors use props to make lots of music – it sounds bizarre but it flowed really well.

On our walk back home we passed a Karaoke booth and decided to head in for 30 minutes of singing! I’m glad it was just the two of us as I’m sure we would have deafened anyone else in the room.

After a huge day out and about, we headed straight home to bed.