Welcome to Korea. It is dark and bleak today, as it is everyday. The entire country is shrouded by the blanket of harsh communist rule, where the government seizes your possessions and kills the Internet. Winter is cold and lasts all year long. The sky is grey but so is everyone’s clothes. The air is smoggy, and it smells of oppression and old potatoes. People never smile; they just wait in line for days to get a loaf of stale bread. And all meals taste like boiled cabbage. In the distance you hear someone dying.

Wait, that’s North Korea. I’m in South Korea…and having a great time! I’m sitting here in a restaurant, half-drunk on something called makgeolli, watching porn on my Samsung Galaxy phone. (Totally kidding about that last one. Everyone knows I only buy Apple products.)

Seoul is an extremely modern and hi-tech city, even more so than Tokyo. From its airport to subway system to taxis, everything here is computerized and extremely easy to use. (But really, the technology of both cities is streets ahead of the USA.)

Palaces
Seoul has many very old palaces but all were burned down by the Japanese during the invasion several centuries ago, so everything was recently rebuilt. Their most well-known one is Gwanghwamun, where they have a changing of the guards every hour. Pssht, I could do their job.

Tea, Gangnam Style
Apparently last year, a chubby young Korean guy made a song video about a neighborhood called Gangnam and put it on the international worldwide webs, and then lots of people watched it. I decided to check out this upscale neighborhood. There were plenty of elegant high rises but nothing overly flashy. I had me some fancy tea at the top of the Park Hyatt Seoul and got a nice view of the area.

And in case you’re wondering, no I never saw Psy.

Sit back, relax, and read about the wildest part of my trip. You’ll learn some fascinating history too.

The demilitarized zone refers to the border between North and South Korea. When the Korea War ended in 1953, an agreement between North Korea and the UN created a buffer zone around the border between the North and South. This buffer extends 2km north of the line and 2km south of the line, and is known as the demilitarized zone, or DMZ. Thus, the DMZ is a 4km-wide strip of land along the entire length of the border that was set up to prevent the two sides from directly interacting with one another, possible causing them to enter into war again.

Despite the fact that it’s “demilitarized”, the military at the edges makes the DMZ the most heavily militarized border in the world.

I went on a tour of the DMZ, offered by the local USO, which is based at Camp Kim here in Seoul. Our tour was given in part by civilian South Korean tour guides and also active-duty US Army military police. Per their very strict dress code, I wore the blandest most boring clothes I had; didn’t want Kim Jung Un getting jealous of my style and overreacting.

The ~40 of us were taken by bus to Camp Bonifas, a base near the DMZ run by American, South Korean, and UN military. There we were met by the US Army who gave us an overview of the area and then made us sign our life away with paperwork. Pretty much, it said we could die…and they wouldn’t care. They gave us an excellent slideshow overview of the area, and we also learned some of the region’s history, including notable areas with charming names such as Freedom Village, Propaganda Village, the Bridge of No Return, and the Point of Axe Murder (details below.) Then we got to visit it all.

Joint Security Area
From there, a bus took us into the Joint Security Area (JSA, on map below), a very small section of land that actually straddles the border (aka the Military Demarcation Line), where North and South Korea each have a few buildings.

Here, at the section of the border inside the JSA, the North and South Korean military stand…each side constantly facing their enemy every minute of the day. Blue buildings belong to the South, and grey the North. The South Korean soldiers stand half-shielded by buildings, just in case. This photo, and all photos inside the JSA, are looking north, as we weren’t allowed to take pictures behind us of the south. We were also told very explicitly when we could and could not take photos.

Me in the front, decades of hostility and tension in the back. In all seriousness it was very tense here. We were under constant watch by the North Korean soldiers, and weren’t allowed to point, gesture, or wave to them as any such act might have been construed as hostile, or possibly even used later as propaganda.

The blue building partially covered by my head is the UN Command Conference Room, and this building itself straddles the border too. Since 1953 this is where both sides come for face to face negotiations. Let’s go inside.

There are two soldiers in there, one to the left of the table with flag and one at the opposite end of the room (not visible in the photo). They are always standing in that tae kwon do stance. Interestingly, that table with the flag also sits on top of the border…so I took this photo standing in the South, but at the far end of the room lies North Korea.

Here I am in South Korea. Look at the bad-ass. And look at the soldier.

And here I am in North Korea. (Two-thirds of the Axis of Evil in attendance!)

At first I thought the soldiers were called “rock” soldiers because of their statuesque like pose, but then I realized it’s actually ROK soldier…for Republic of Korea. Also if you got too close to them, they would move you.

Freedom Village and Propaganda Village
We left the JSA and went to an outdoor area for the view. You can see a small blue building near a bridge, a tall pole (to our right) and a taller pole in the distance (left). The closer pole is a South Korean flagpole, at 100m high. Not to be outdone, the North then built their own taller flagpole, at 160m; at the time, it was the tallest flagpole in the world but now it’s only the third tallest. Its flag alone weighs 600 pounds.

At the base of the South Korean flagpole is Freedom Village, one of two villages in the DMZ. At the base of the North’s flagpole is Propaganda Village, as loud announcements used to constantly play praising Kim Jong Il. Nobody ever listened so they ended up taking down the speakers and replacing them with cameras that keep an eye on the South.

Bridge of No Return
There is a bridge near that small blue building. At one point the UN released their 82,000 POWs and North Korea/China released their 13,000 POWs near the bridge, and they could cross to the country of their choosing. The only restriction was that once they crossed, they could never return to the other side.

Axe Murder Incident
The blue building above, Checkpoint 3, used to have a large poplar tree next to it (look very closely at the picture above, just to the left of the leftmost dark tree, where a small statue marks where the tree used to be.) Here is that statue up close today.

That poplar tree prevented the soldiers at neighboring Checkpoint 4 to keep an eye on their buddies, so one day in 1976 they went to chop it down with axes. The North didn’t like that and ambushed them as they chopped away. The North greatly outnumbered them and brutally killed many of the South using those same axes.

Dorason Station
In what ended up being a surprisingly interesting end to the tour, we were taken to Dorason station, a train station that was built and completed in 2002 with hopes that it would connect to the trans-European and trans-Siberian railroads. Then-president Bush was present on opening day. The railway would need go through North Korea, but with poor relations between the countries this very modern station is not used at all.

—–
Our Army guides did say that during the last few weeks, there has been some irregular activity by the North within the DMZ. They have been doing unusual and new training exercises, and they’ve been firing their weapons more often (into where, though, I have no idea!)

Interestingly, back in Seoul, most people don’t seem to care about the recent increased rhetoric by the North….apparently they know it’s just that, rhetoric. Apparently some international news sources are having a hard time finding any South Koreans in a panic. I guess no good news story for CNN.

All in all, a very fascinating day.