The DMZ tour is a popular attraction for visitors to Seoul but it was a pretty bizarre experience. I did a day trip to the old De-Militarised Zone when I was in Vietnam, so I felt like a bit of a DMZ tourist when I booked the trip. You board a minibus with other foreigners and are driven north with a guide giving some background about the Korean War in the 1950s and the division of the country into two halves backed by opposing superpowers. She checked that there were no Japanese on the bus (they'd all taken a different van) and proceeded to slate them for military aggression and historical revisionism. There seemed to be a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment around; their embassy was constantly guarded by police with anti-riot shields. The guide told us an interesting story about the founder of Hyundai, who grew up in North Korea and ended up stealing a car and driving down to the South. After he'd made his fortune, he sent 1000 cars back to his village as repayment.

We stopped first at a monument set up for Korean families separated or affected by the split and a bridge leading into North Korean territory. We then went to a kind of visitors' centre to watch a cheesy explanatory short film and read the information boards. We were led down a deep, long ramp into a cramped, damp tunnel that was one of many constructed by the North Koreans. A South Korean spy found out about the existence of lots of tunnels leading from North Korea under the DMZ into South Korea, but only a few have been discovered. When confronted about them, the North Koreans denied all knowledge, despite all evidence to the contrary, then said that it was for coal mining. We descended into the tunnel with a bunch of other tourists in hard hats and it was all very strange to think that the North Koreans had slaved away on this tunnel built for military aggression purposes - presumably as a way of possibly invading the South, and many had probably died in the process, yet it's been turned into a tourist attraction. Apparently, North Koreans have to spend 10 years in military service. Our guide said she thought that North Korean attacks were unlikely given the amount of economic aid the South sends them. It was weird to see everyone with cameras out, snapping away at military installations and personnel.

The next stop was a DMZ observation point where you could take pictures of North Korea in the distance as long as you stood behind a line. You could also look through binoculars and see the North Korean 'propaganda village,' built for show, and a 20ft tall statue on the hillside of Kim Il-Sung, who is still technically in power despite being dead. North Koreans are required to pray at statues like these every day. The DMZ is actually an almost pristine eco-system in spite of the estimated million landmines in it. The South Korean side is forested but there are no trees on the North Korean side because they were all cut down for fuel. I stood and peered at North Korea, wondering what it was like over there and thinking how anachronistic it seemed to have this divide when the Cold War was over, and that such a closed, renegade regime exists in this age of satellites and technology and globalisation. The South Koreans seem very hopeful of reconciliation, but I wonder when this will happen and with what consequences.

We went to Dora-San station, which is the last point on the South Korean railway before North Korea. They are hoping to join it with North Korea at some point, so that there will be a continuous railway route from Seoul right through to Lisbon. People seemed to be quite excited about this idea and I got the impression that the South Koreans feel very cut off in some ways at the end of their peninsula. There was a speech by George W. Bush, who'd visited the station in 2002, and his signature on a sleeper (note erratic capitalisation). Lorraine sent me a link to an article she read in The Guardian about missile test which quoted the North Korean foreign ministry calling Bush "a hooligan, bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country. He is a half-baked man in terms of morality, and a philistine whom we can never deal with." Classic. I got a naff stamp in my passport and had an even tackier picture taken with a soldier, then we headed back to Seoul.