Two weekends ago I went with my friends Renee and Samantha to the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), the strip of land which separates North Korea from South Korea. We woke up early on Saturday at took a guided tour around. The DMZ is the most heavily armed boarder in the world. It is about 2.5 miles wide and 150 miles long.
We started our tour at the JSA (Joint Security Area) which is the only place where the North and South actually come together and don’t have a buffer zone separating them. In the picture above we are standing in South Korea and the big grey building in the back is North Korea. It is the area where all negotiations between the two countries have been held for the last 50 years.
After that we went to a viewing area where we could see the two villages located in the DMZ, one ran by the north, and one by the south. The one ran by the South is run by the government of SK. You must have ancestral ties to live there and only women can marry into the community (sorry lads). It is the only place in the South that has a curfew, and you have to sleep in the village a certain number of nights per year. Most of the people who live there are farmers for the area surrounding the village. And, according to our US Army guide, the are LOADED. It makes perfect sense that they would get paid lots of money to live and work so close to the North. Apparently they all have multi story houses, satellite dishes, sports cars…etc. The village that is run by the North is call ‘Freedom Village’ by the people in the North, and ‘Propaganda Village’ by the UN military. It is uninhabited barring some token caretakers. It is made to look like a modern village, but with binoculars one can tell that nobody lives there.
This is the largest flag and flagpole in the world. It is in Freedom Village and is 525 feet tall and takes 50 men to raise or lower. They said it takes a mighty big gust of wind to get it flying, so I guess we were lucky we went on such a cold and windy day. The flag was built to make a statement after the village in the South constructed a flagpole 328 feet tall. Ha.
Other highlights included visiting one of the incursion tunnels where the North tried to digg their way into the South. It is about a mile long and 500 feet underground. It was one of the areas where we weren’t allowed to take photos, but we could put on hard hats and hike part way down. I also liked learning about the wildlife that lives in the DMZ. It has basically been uninhabited for over 50 years and has a lot of really cool birds flying around. In the spring and summer you can see lots of special foliage found only there and a few months back TIGER TRACKS were found!
It was an incredibly interesting and educational experience and really helped me better understand some of the history between North and South Korea.
Ahhh your beautiful luscious red curls I love them, lets trade : )
i’m reading backwards (from most recent to now). i’m realizing how much i appreciate the combination of your love of life and desire to get out there and see and experience things, your keen ability to perceive the world around you, and your well-developed ability to put what you see into words combine into how nice for us (your compadres). It was so, well, useful, to read your words about the DMZ and North Korea. i mean, people write about all kinds of places all the time, but what you recall for us is what is actually interesting – i guess because you seem to answer the questions you would ask and you always ask such good questions. ANyway. Hooray is what i say. Hooray hooray hooray.