My day under NORTH KOREA

Day Two in South Korea took me the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Between North and South Korea, near the 38th parallel is the line of demarcation, and two kilometers to the north and south of this line is the DMZ. Basically no military activity in the zone.

I had really wanted to visit Panmunjom, which is the meeting point for the U.N. and North Korea. It is directly on the border of North and South Korea, but that didn't work out. So we settled for a tour of the third tunnel.

What is the third tunnel you ask. Here is your history lesson for the day with no additional charge. This information is on a plaque located in Panmunjom. On November 15, 1974, members of a Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) patrol inside the southern sector of the DMZ spotted vapor rising from the ground. When they began to dig into the ground to investigate, they were fired upon by North Korean snipers. ROKA units secured the site and subsequently uncovered a tunnel dug by the North Koreans which extended 1.2 km into the Republic of Korea.

In March 1975, a second North Korean tunnel was discovered by a United Nations Command tunnel detection team. In September of the same year, a North Korean engineer escaped and provided valuable intelligence concerning the Communist tunneling activities. Acting on the information, a tunnel-detection team successfully intercepted a third tunnel in October 1978, less than 2 km from Panmunjeom. This is the tunnel that is open to tourists.

To date four tunnels have been discovered, and South Koreans believe that there are more to be found. The UN and ROKA have fielded tunnel-detection teams which drill around the clock in the hope of intercepting these "tunnels of aggression".

South Korea has built an entrance into the third tunnel, to allow visitors a glimpse into this area under the DMZ. In order to get here, we had to take an hour long bus ride from Seoul, then ride a monorail 73 meters below ground. It was totally worth it. The tunnel wasn't very tall, so we had to walk through it like hunchbacks. We obviously couldn't go all the way through the tunnel because then we would end up in North Korea and the North Koreans might not be too happy about it. In fact, there were three doors that had been put up, by the South Koreans, to prevent the North Koreans from coming south and to prevent tourists from going north. We did get to go far enough into the tunnel that we were directly under the DMZ. All through the DMZ there are land mines. Only a small percentage of them have been found and dismantled. So when we were under the DMZ there were land mines above our heads, slightly scary thought.

This is Gini and me after our tour of the tunnel. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed in the tunnel. They were very adamant about this, so I don't have any pictures of the adventure.

Interesting fact: North Korea didn't want to admit that they built this tunnel to sneak into S.K. so they had put coal dust on the walls, to make it look like the tunnel was used for coal mining. Unfortunately, there is no coal in that area of Korea.

The adventure continues: So we got back on the monorail to ride to the top in comfort. Everyone fastened their seat belts and settled in for a nice peaceful ride. No such luck. Fifty meters up the tunnel we felt a strong jerk and the monorail came to a complete stop. We waited for a few minutes then started moving again. We thought it would be a nice ride to the top, again no such luck. We did that whole jerk, stop thing two more times. It turns out there was some sort of electrical problem and we ended up having to walk up the steep incline out of the tunnel on the rail tracks. It was quite an adventure.

South Korea still hopes that one day the north and south will be unified. This ball represents that reunification. Gini and I are doing our part to help put Korea back together.


Here you can see a little better inside the ball. North Korea is depicted on one side and South on the other side.
Just having a little fun. The Japanese people thought this was a good idea and they totally copied us.
Visiting the DMZ was quite an adventure and a very interesting history lesson. I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to go.