Mini-Series Post #6: No Turning Back

A few months ago, I remember feeling extremely nervous thinking about the fact that I would be living a mere 55km from the DMZ (and North Korea!) for a month.  There is nothing more frightening than living next to the most secretive country in the world:

This image, courtesy of Google Maps, shows North Korea as a blank chunk of land.  We have no knowledge of the cities and roadways.  (Please note the Korean text on the map; my internet is almost always in Korean here.)  What is scarier than the unknown?  A universal unknown, like death?  I'm not quite sure I can think of anything.  Fifteen HISS students, primarily from the States and the Netherlands, have decided to take a tour to the Joint Security Area (JSA) and Panmunjom (located inside the DMZ) on Wednesday, July 20th.  The tour departs at 8:50 a.m. from the Panmunjom Travel Center in Lotte Hotel.  It costs W77000 per person, but in my opinion, such an opportunity is completely worth the expense.  There are very strict tour rules, including background checks for visitors from certain countries, dress code, and age restrictions.  Americans are not allowed to wear clothing promoting the U.S.  All visitors are required to wear pants (without holes), shoes (not flip-flops), and shirts that are plain and cover the shoulders.  A friend who has taken this tour, Gera, told me that this is required because the North Koreans sometimes take photographs of the South Korean and foreign visitors and use them as propaganda, telling the North Korean population that South Korea is too poor to properly clothe its people.  

Panmunjom is the closest location to North Korea for visitors to see.  It is the truce village between North and South Korea established on the ceasefire line at the end of the Korean War in 1953.  At that time, only an armistice was signed - not a full peace treaty.  Tours used to run to Kaesong and Geumgangsan inside North Korea, but they have been suspended since 2008 by the North Korean side.    

The Seoul City Guide mentions these things about the JSA (p.162):  

• "In the past a gun battle and gruesome axe murders have taken place in the JSA, but the last serious incident was back in 1984"
• "The Berlin Wall seems like a child's toy compared to this sucker" 
• "It's probably the most heavily fortified border in the world - high fences topped with barbed wire, watchtowers, an antitank wall and obstacles"     

For more information about my specific tour, click here.

For those readers looking for information about North Korea, here is a very interesting documentary on YouTube called Welcome to North Korea.