Let's check out the DMZ

So I went to Seoul last weekend with A, J and E. We had signed up for a DMZ tour for Saturday. The only way to actually get to the DMZ is through a tour as they do not let people loose in the area. It's probably a good decision by and large considering from the tour bus we could see that on both sides of the road were wires tagged with triangular signs that read: "MINES." 

It was an interesting trip to have done if not overly exciting. Our first view of the DMZ came just after passing the Super Viking amusement park. Kind of odd if you ask me but whatever. At every stop we had about 40 minutes to peruse the souvenir shop (a bit much but the theory was if we got bored enough we'd at least want to buy some ice cream). My favorite quote of the day was the name of the first shop we stopped at: "Intangible Cultural Properties." Somebody definitely had their thesaurus out for that one!

The third tunnel was a feature stop of the trip. It was discovered back in the 70s by the South who claimed it was dug by the North right under the DMZ. The North tried to claim is was a coal mining tunnel. They supported this claim by painting the walls with coal. Hmmm not quite an airtight plan but maybe it could work....

We had lunch at a town located in the civilian monitored zone. The food was good an assortment of about 12 Korean side dishes. People who live there pay zero taxes and make about 3x as much as other farmers. This is seen as compensation for living in the most dangerous part of Korea.

My favourite part of the tour was the view from the observatory. It was a bit misty when we where there so we couldn't see very far but it did complement the general serious nature of the DMZ. 

Here are my photos of the tour and the next day in Seoul where we went to Insadong and ran in to the Olympic torch relay.