DMZ Part 1

Okay, this may be a bit of a history lesson so if it's not your cup of tea, just look at the pictures and be on your way. But I gotta say, everything that I heard on our DMZ trip was extremely interesting.

We boarded the bus in Itaewon around 8:00 and met our fantastic guide, Sunny. Her English was great, and her comprehension was even better... whenever you hear a Korean tell jokes or use sarcasm in English it's a treat. After another stop to pick up more people and we were on our way.

On the trip up our guide told us a lot of the history regarding the Korean war, most of which I already knew. Some of the more interesting parts were that the North attacked Seoul at 4:00am on a Sunday morning. In doing so, most people were asleep, and most of the military officers were off. Therefore, taking the south by surprise the North had a huge advantage. Most of South Korea was over taken by the North.... until the South got some help. I believe 13 countries came to the aid of South Korea, with the largest support coming from the US. Without going in to too much of the history, the war "ended" however a peace treaty was never signed so technically the two countries are still at war. Now there lies the Demilitarized Zone between the North and South that is 4km wide, 2km belonging to the South and 2km belonging to the North. This area is actually under United Nations law, which means that those living in the area (at least in the South, I don't know about the North) are subjected to different rules than those in South Korea.

Our first stop was Imjingak Park. Like any park things were spread out and we were only given 15 minutes to go look around at the different sculptures and observation deck. Of course we weren't able to see everything but we were able to see numerous sculptures (many directed towards thanking the US for their help), however most of these sculptures did not have a description as to what they were and we were left to interpret them ourselves. We also saw Freedom Bridge which was used by POW and soldiers returning from the North.

 That's Freedom Bridge in the distance

an actual train that had been attacked that the South Koreans picked up and moved to this park 

Imjingak Park lies outside of the actual DMZ, so next our bus stopped at the check point and a Korean soldier would couldn't have been more than 20 Korean age (ie 18 Western age) gets on the bus to check everyone's passport. Everyone checks out so off we headed in to the DMZ. Strict photo rules are enforced so I'm lacking in some photos for the next part of the story, and you aren't allowed to take photos from the bus either.

The next section is long (even with no pictures) so I'll post about it tonight, don't want to overwhelm anyone with too much information at once!