That One Time I Went to North Korea

So I went to North Korea. It was pretty cool.

I took a tour with Tony and Andrew that brought us to various sites involving the spat between North and South Korea. In all honesty, I thought it would be kind of boring, and I was pretty hungover so I wasn't all that excited at 8 AM, but it was surprisingly. It was really interesting to hear about the history between the two Koreas and it also kind of explained their animosity towards foreigners.

Me and Tony being tourists

Koreans being Koreans

Our first stop was at a Korean museum where we saw exhibits depicting how the border between North and South came to exists. We also saw a video that discussed the early conflicts between North and South, and the discovery of the tunnels that the North created to sneak into the South.

The Third Tunnel of Aggression

Our next stop was the Third Tunnel of Aggression. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but my stealthy self managed to take a couple. We had to wear helmets and walked about 300 meters underground (the uphill walk was brutal), and walked through almost 2 kilometers to the end. The walk was long and claustrophobic. I almost didn't make it. We had to walk hunched over most of the time, and it was dripping with water. When we reached the end of the tunnel (or as far as we could walk) we were only 150 meters from North Korea! That's probably as close as anyone could get. It felt pretty cool. I hope there were some North Korean soldiers who heard me yelling "Hey girl hey" at them.

A glimpse of Kaesong, North Korea

Our next stop was the Dora Observatory where we could see into North Korea! We couldn't take pictures from a the edge, only from a yellow line that was 10 feet away from the edge, pretty lame. You could pay 500 won for the binoculars to turn on and you could actually see a city pretty well. I think the city was called Kaesong, but I'm not too sure. I stared as hard as I could, and I couldn't see any movement going on. No cars. No people. So I'm not sure if the city was even inhabited, but I was told that that's just how North Korea was. 

Me and my awkward Korean boyfriends

The final stop was Dorason Station, a train station went to North Korea and is no longer in use for obvious reasons. You could also get North Korean visa stamps, but it wasn't recommended that you stamp your passport (don't worry Mom and Dad, as much as I wanted to, I didn't). We also got fake tickets that said we were going to Pyeongyang which was a pretty cool souvenir to have.

The Dorasan Station

At the end of the tour, back in Seoul, we were dropped off at the Ginseng Museum which was kind of interesting. Did you know that it could take up to 8 years for a ginseng plant to fully develop? That was the most interesting thing I learned in the 30 minute ginseng tour. We were then shoved in a ginseng shop with about 15 salespeople trying to sell us overpriced ginseng. One sap bought a small container of ginseng paste for 50,000 won. Another tourist trap.

Deserted train tracks

Deserted train station

The End.