Asia 2017 - Day 11: DMZ Tour

DMZ Tour

My pickup time was around 07:30am and the coach was full. You may be surprised but these tours are very popular. We made the drive north to the border and made a rest stop at Imjingak Park.

Imjingak Park

Entering Imjingak Park is the last stop before you enter inside the DMZ area properly. Here there are memorials of the Korean War as well as Freedom Bridge in the distance. This is where prisoners of war would be sent from the North back into their own country in the South.

Freedom Bridge

3rd Infiltration Tunnel

The next stop was the 3rd infiltration tunnel. The Third Infiltration Tunnel is one of four known tunnels under the border between North and South Korea. It is just 44km from Seoul and was discovered in October 1978. I had a walk half way down but turned back as the head space started to diminish, unfortunately no photos are allowed here.

Dorasan Observatory

Here you can get a great view of the border and see the North Korean city of Kaesong. You can even see the North Korean flag blowing in the wind if you use binoculars provided for 1x 500 Won coin. You can see where the North Korean side starts because they have cut all the trees. This was done for 2 reasons. One was to use it for firewood, the other is so its harder to escape without been detected by the guards.

Looking into the North Korean city of Kaesong

Dorasan station

We then moved onto Dorasan station. This was built in 2002 in happier times and would actually be used for a full year between 2007-2008 to transport South Korean workers by train into the North to work at a factory. But this unfortunately stopped in 2008 after an incident occurred. If the countries were to ever unify the infrastructure is in place to travel from Seoul to Pyongyang by rail. These days it is the end of line and is mainly used by tourist to and from Seoul 4 times a day.

We then went back to the city of Seoul for lunch, in the afternoon I would walk to N Seoul Tower.

Platform for Pyongyang

N Seoul Tower

I purchased a return cable car ticket for 8,500 Won(£6) and made my way up Namsan mountain. The view of Seoul is great and its here you really notice that Korea is 70% mountainous.

View of Seoul from Namsan mountain next to N Seoul Tower

My video from this day can be found here:

Next Day: Arriving in Tokyo, Ueno Park, Tokyo Skytree, Meiji Shrine and Shibuya Crossing