Seoul: Children's Day Long Weekend May 3-5

Day One: DMZ tour, Insadong, and the World DJ Festival

After hectic, last minute preparations, we departed to Seoul on the evening of Friday, May 2. It was a comfortable four hour train ride to Seoul from Taebaek, and another healthy hour or more on the train to Tongducheon, the small city where the US army base is. We were traveling just as the subways were closing down, so in the end, after a short cab drive and multiple transfers, we arrived at our 30,000won love motel at about 1:30am. We quickly grabbed a bite to eat and hit the sack, getting a healthy 4 hours of sleep before getting up to make our way to the army base. It was a beautiful day, showing the signs that it would be hot before too late.

DMZ

After a two hour bus-ride to the Joint Security Area, we were given a briefing by the USO about the history of the DMZ and the Joint Security Area itself. This is a unique place where both North and South Korea share the duties of patrolling, and where any peace talks or conferences take place. Here we had to sign a waiver telling us not to talk to, wave at, make any gestures at, or even smile at any North Korean officers. Up to this point, I thought we would only be seeing North Korea from a distance, not 30m. Our first stop on the tour was the Freedom House, a building that the South built to hold reunification talks and peace talks, however, it has remained empty since they built it ten years earlier.

We were guided to the outside of the building where we could see a row of small buildings; some were painted blue, some were painted gray.
The blue buildings are South Korean, the gray ones North Korean. In the distance we could see a three-story building manned by a guard on the staircase, looking at us through binoculars. This was our first view of a North Korean. The area itself is split by a Demarcation Line, the true border. Let me explain a bit about the border, the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) is actually a 4km wide border that stretches the entire length of the peninsula. In this area, there can be no military activity. The actual border is a line called the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), which nobody can cross, except in the Joint Security Area, and even there, it is only allowed inside the buildings. In the past, when people have crossed the line, firefights broke out, creating a diplomatic crisis, and killing many people. So it is carefully watched. We were allowed inside one of the blue buildings to see where the conferences took place, and were actually allowed to step over the MDL, symbolized as a line of microphones, and inhabit very briefly, a space in North Korean territory.

After we finished viewing the tense borderline, we continued on the tour and ended up at a guardpost that overlooked North Korea. From there, one could see many kilometres into the North, including a small village known as Kijŏng-dong or “propaganda village”.
This is just inside North Korea, given the name Propaganda Village because for many years, there was propaganda blaring on loudspeakers all day every day, telling the Koreans from the South to abandon their posts and defect to the North, which if they were to actually do, they would be killed. Though there were many farmers and some people doing construction work, we were told the village is mostly uninhabited, and that the construction was just to keep the buildings from falling apart. There was another village on the inside of the South Korea portion of the DMZ, but we were banned from taking photographs, as they could reveal tactical intelligence of what lies on the border inside the South Korean side.

The last stop on the tour was the "Third Tunnel", one of four tunnels dug by the North Koreans as part of an invasion plot. When the South Koreans uncovered the tunnels in the 1970s, the North Koreans denied all knowledge, and painted the tunnels black, claiming they were abandoned coal mines, even though the walls were solid granite, with no coal in the area. There was a very beautiful garden here, only a few yards from the DMZ.



Truly exhausted, we headed back into Downtown Seoul, looking for a love motel to stay in for the night. A love motel is an inexpensive motel that is a little bit seedy but clean and simple. Did I mention inexpensive? This time we decided to stay in the market/temple district Insadong. By coincidence, we stumbled across a Lotus Lantern Festival going on. The temples were all alight with lanterns, concerts were all over the place, and giant lotus lanterns were all over the place.





After chilling out for a few hours taking in the scenery, we gave my cousin Ryan Hillstead and his wife Lisa Styles a call to hang out. By then it was after 10pm, and we were already exhausted, however, after a short phone call, we were convinced a trip to the World DJ Festival was worth the tiredness. And it was, it was great fun. Our first chance at a live music festival since our arrival in Korea, and we weren't disappointed. We ran into many of our EPIK friends while there, and dressed up in fancy costumes at no cost. The weather was beautiful, the atmosphere wonderful, and the music awesome, so all in all it was a great experience.


After a good 3 hours of chilling out at the festival, we decided to head back to our hotel, and after feigning several outrageous cab prices, we found a cab that would take us back at a reasonable price. It would not be the last time we would have cab issues on this trip.

TO BE CONTINUED....