GBC in South Korea: September 2014

On the 6th September Jenny (alias Jenjen), Dani, Daniel and I had a morning tour to the DMZ (한반도 비무장지대) which we have booked on the phone. You can get the phone number on this website: http://www.dmztours.com/seoul_dmz_tours.htm. The morning tour cost 40000 won and the bus picked us up in Hongdae (Hongik university station) at 8 am in the morning. The bus was fully booked. I have to admit that this tour was one of my most stressful tours I did in my life. The tourist guide was Korean and his English was quiet good. The only thing, which was negative, was the short time period at each location. At every stop we had to run in order to take pictures of everything. I have no clue how elderly people manage to get all those pictures.

Our tour was structured as followed:

Hongik university station

→ Imjingak Park

→ Bridge of freedom

→ 3rd infiltration tunnel

→ DMZ Theater/ exhibition Hall

→ Dora observatory

→ Dorasan Station

→ Unification village (pass by), but we all four fell asleep XD

→ Amethyst/Ginseng Center

→ Arrive at City Hall

You can read most of the story on websites or in books. After 2 months I just rember these one. After the second world war Japan has to to give away Korea. So the North was occupied by the Soviet Union and the South was taken by the U.S. The dividing line was the 38 parallel North. However the North was much richer, since the Soviet Union was building many factories there. According to Yoonbin, in the South many Americans left to go to their home country. Thus the South was weakened. On 25th June 1950 the North Korean invaded the South and the Korean war began. Over the years the North was always supported by the Soviet Union and by China (communist). On the other hand, the South had its allies in America and Europe. Over the years, there was never a loser or a winner. They did not manage to get peace. There was only ceasefire and a few incidents which almost broke the ceasefire. One of the incident was the discoveries of four tunnels which aimed Seoul.The North Koreans try to invade Seoul by using these tunnels. We had the chance to go through a tunnel (3rd infiltration tunnel), but only a few meters. This tunnel was in total 44 km long.