DMZ trip
DMZ #3
Originally uploaded by Laughter317. On Saturday, a group of us (Meghan, Shatan, Drew, Jed, Shatan and I) went on a tour of the DMZ (Korean De-Militarized Zone). We went with the USO which was nice because they planned everything. All we had to do was show up at their office in Seoul by 7:30 am (too early for a Saturday).
So we met in our neighborhood at 5am and took taxis to Bupyeong (much easier at that time of day) then got on the subway to take us into Seoul. We ended up getting there a lot earlier than we needed to but oh well. At the USO office, we boarded tour buses to take us to the DMZ which is a little over an hour from Seoul.
Pretty much the whole trip there we were driving along the edge of the DMZ where the border runs through the middle of the river. The outer edge is lined with fences and wires and guard posts every 200 meters or so.
When we entered the DMZ, a guard entered the bus and checked our passports. Once in the DMZ, we couldn’t take photos unless we were in designated areas. We had our passports checked a second time when we entered Camp Bonifas. Camp Bonifas is where the UN security forces are based. We got off our bus and were loaded onto military tour buses for the trip into the joint security area (JSA), also called Pan Mun Jom.
The first stop on our tour was a briefing on the history of the DMZ and JSA as well as proper protocol for visitors to the JSA. There was a possibility that we would be within a couple of meters of North Korean soldiers so they have some strict protocol procedures in order to make sure no incidents occur within the JSA.
The JSA is an area of the DMZ that is jointly managed by both the UN forces and North Korean soldiers. There is no real division along the border, technically called the Military Demarkation Line (MDL) within the JSA or the DMZ in general, just a line of posts and signs marking the MDL. The DMZ is fenced and heavily guarded on the outside of the 4km wide corridor. The JSA is really the only place where North and South Korean forces really get near each other though. Most of the guard posts are a few hundred meters away from the MDL but in the JSA the buildings are in very close proximity.
After we finished our briefing, we got back on the buses for the trip into the JSA. We weren’t allowed to take any photos from the time we left Camp Bonifas until we got off the bus in the JSA so I don’t have any pictures of that part of the DMZ. It was very beautiful though. There were lots of trees and plants and birds. We even saw a small flock of cranes in one of the fields. There is a small village of about 250 inhabitants on the South Korean side of the DMZ (which has very strict rules for its inhabitants) so there are lots of rice paddies and ginseng fields around the JSA. There is also a village on the North Korean side which the South Koreans call Propaganda Village because they used to have a loudspeaker broadcasting propaganda 6-8 hours a day. Apparently very few people actually live in the North Korean Village. Each side was allowed to keep one village in the DMZ as a provision of the cease-fire agreement.
Once in the JSA, we were taken through the Freedom House and out onto a porch facing North Korea. We were probably only 10 meters from the MDL at the time. Along the MDL is a row of 5 or 6 buildings where negotiations take place. The UN buildings are painted blue and the North Korean buildings are painted tan. The MDL runs right through the center of each building so half is on each side. Behind those buildings is a large North Korean building. You can see this all well in my pictures on Flickr.
We got to take a lot of pictures from this porch before they took us into the main negotiation building. The MDL runs down the middle of the building. It’s marked in the room by a row of microphones on the negotiating table. The door to the North Korean side of the JSA was locked and there was a South Korean soldier standing in front of it, so we were able to walk around freely in the room and technically I was in North Korea for about 10 minutes. We only saw one North Korean soldier while in the JSA. Apparently you see a lot more if they’re giving a tour at the same time. Even still, you could feel that you were being watched by people within the buildings.
After we toured the negotiation building, we got back on the bus and went over to a guard post on the hill. When we were behind the post we could see the North Korean village (and its 160m flag pole) as well as the “Peace Museum” in North Korea where the cease fire agreement was signed in 1953. It was weird because at that location we were surrounded on three sides by North Korea because the MDL creates a little finger around the JSA. It was a bit weird. We stayed there for a while and then got back on the buses and went down to the Bridge of No Return and site of two incidents surrounding attempts to cut down a large poplar tree.
The poplar tree was blocking the view from the guard post on the hill(CP#3) to the guard post at the end of the Bridge of No Return (CP#4). In the early years of the JSA, North Korean and UN forces were allowed to roam freely within the JSA and the North Korean soldiers had taken advantage of this by building guard posts along the access road to South Korea and at three points surrounding CP #4. Since the tree blocked the view of CP #4 from CP#3, the UN forces wouldn’t be able to see it if it were attacked. So they decided to trim the tree. During the first attempt, a small group of tree trimmers was accompanied by half a dozen UN coalition forces. They were attacked by 30 North Korean soldiers (it was caught on video) who proceeded to kill two of the UN soldiers with axes taken from the tree trimmers. Not pretty. Three days later, Operation Paul Bunyan happened. A 16 -man engineering crew was accompanied by a 90-man security detail. Behind them a large group of aircraft was flying and aircraft on a base and an aircraft carrier were ready to fly in if needed. Fortunately, there was no violence that day. After these incidents the JSA was divided along the MDL and troops could not move freely. More information about the axe murders and Operation Paul Bunyan can be found here. I don't think the post names are correct in this article though. Mine are based on the map.
After leaving the JSA, we returned to Camp Bonifas and our tour busses. Then we had lunch and then visited an observation tower where on a clear day you can see nearly 10 km into North Korea. It was too foggy to see much on the day we were there though. After the observation tower, we visited one of 4 North Korean insurrection tunnels that have been discovered in the past 30 years. This one (Tunnel 3) extended about 300m into the South Korean side of the DMZ. To get into the tunnel we had to go down a very steep access tunnel. It was a big rough…350m at a 12% slope. It was really hard to climb back up it. The insurrection tunnel was less than 2 meters high (I could stand fully upright in most places but just barely) and about the same size across. Apparently about 30,000 troops would have been able to march through it in an hour if it was completed. The UN forces discovered it after being tipped off by a North Korean defector. The North Koreans had tried to disguise it as a mining tunnel but there are no coal deposits in that area. They also tried blaming it on the South Koreans which didn’t make a whole lot of sense since the blast marks from the dynamite all lead from North Korea and there was no outlet on the South Korean side. At the same site as the tunnel, there was also a museum on the history of the DMZ. Unfortunately, we couldn't take any photos in the tunnel or at the observation tower.
We got back to Seoul around 3:30 completely exhausted but it was worth it. The whole trip was incredibly interesting and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
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