#wanderingseouls DAY 41 OF 139 / Demilitarized Zone, DMZ

If you're wondering why the change from 143 days down to 139, it's because we switched a flight to an earlier date in attempt to avoid the harsh winter in January :b

I joined the DMZ tour with my KUBA exchange buddies today! DMZ is the demilitarized zone demarcating between North and South Korea so I figured I should at least visit it once. Furthermore, the tour was reduced to 30000KRW hahha #cheapskate

Itinerary for the day!
ImJingak (임진각) -> Unification Bridge (통일대교) -> DMZ Medial Hall & Exhibition (DMZ 영상관&전시관) -> The 3rd Tunnel (제3터널) -> Dora Observatory (도라전망대) -> Dorasan Station (도라산역)

On the tour bus with my favourite buddy/dongsaeng hongji from language exchange! We converse in a mixture of Korean & English to learn from one another, will blog about the group next time :)

 

After about 1.5h of bus ride, we're here near DMZ and you can see sourvenir shops selling North Korea Wine and even dollar notes! Haha legit. 

The food at the foodcourt was rather pricey so the tour guide recommended we snack on some street food instead. And my buddy decided we should try the fried pupa snack famous in Korea, called beondegi which she really enjoys. Uhhhhh the thought of eating it is actually pretty scary.

But anyway, I ate it without much hesitation, haha guess I'm also pretty #yolo when it comes to weird food too. Can't wait to try the live octopus one day~ The bug's rich in protein so why not..? :'D HAHA okay I had to forget that instance that it's a bug and just eat it, it's not nasty but not tasty either, not as crunchy as I thought it'd be. Wonder how they capture so many of these?

After filling our tummies, we went to Imjingak, basically a resort of sort in Paju (out of Seoul we're) and there's a sky lounge for us to see North Korea using the observatory binoculars.

Next stop to the DMZ exhibition hall where we watched a short video clip and learned more about the division of Korea. It was a little depressing to watch but interesting to learn about the history and the latest incident of the war just happened in 2010 ):

Opposite the exhibition hall was the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. After the Koreans decided to ceasefire (sth like tt) upon agreement, the North Koreans built 4 tunnels which led to South Korea underground which is most probably for attack purposes. So far 4 tunnels are discovered and there might even be some undiscovered ones. The tunnels were also coated with coals so that the NK could assume it's a coal mine, not some tunnel filled with dynamites :/ No pictures were allowed in the tunnel so we had to keep all our belongs in the locker. The accessible part of the tunny adds up to about 1km to and fro in total but the long slope in the cold temperature kills. Half the tunnel required us to crouch since the tunnel doesn't have high ceilings so it's quite tiring. The helmets definitely shielded our skulls from hitting those rocks there hahaha

Next stop, Dora Observatory where we looked through the observatory and saw more parts of North Korea including their flag highly flown proudly.

Last stop of the day at Dorasan Station, a railway station with services connecting South and North Korea! It connects Seoul Station and PyeongYang (the capital of NK). It's really amazing to see how there's ways to connect between the 2 divided nations and I really wish for a unification in our time if possible, and reunite all lost families separated by the borders :')

Read that announcement, they've plans to reach out to Siberia and China via this railway!

Let's go to bukhan! AHAHA

Got my stamp proof, visited the borders, check off bucket list :)