One of the highlights of the Korean trip was visiting the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone).
This international border was decided on June 25, 1950 due to the Korean war, and it is a buffer zone that is 4km wide.
This buffer is therefore a place where there is supposedly no military presence, so as to defuse the conflict between the North and the South.
As relations are kind of “cold”, the DMZ is one of the potential “hot spots” in the world, and has a special place in “Cold War” history.
On our tour, many of the places we visited, had restricted zones which disallowed tourists from taking pictures.
I had to take pictures within the yellow lines, and could not take any pictures of army personnel as well.
One of the interesting parts of the tour was visiting one of the tunnels which the North Koreans dug to South Korea.
Intelligence tells South Korea that the North, has dug more than 20 tunnels towards the South.
Currently, they have discovered only 4!
This means that there are more more tunnels yet to be discovered!
In the 3rd tunnel, the North even painted the walls “black”, to give the excuse that they were not digging a tunnel but they were “mining for coal!”
The visit to the DMZ was certainly very interesting, and something that you must see, when you visit Korea.
1 Comment:
Ya, it's absolute a highlight. Was there 20 yrs ago and i was very moved. Saw a calligraphy that read 居安思危, meaning "to be prepared for danger in times of safety"; that image stayed with me till now.
You may like to rent the movie "Joint Security Area" an intense korean thriller based on that area. One of the best Korean movie around. See wiki for more info.
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