Further Wanderings

Our second spell in Seoul wasn’t nearly as action packed as the first time around, but it still had plenty of action.

And in fact the busiest, most action packed day was the one immediately after our arrival. During our first visit to Seoul we’d tried to organize a tour to the DMZ but discovered that we’d left it too late to get one that was both good (included most of the sights) and inexpensive (under about US$100.)

The DMZ is a legacy of the Korean War. The war in fact never really ended. South Korea wasn’t a party to the armistice agreement that ended the fighting, so the north and south have technically been at war with one another ever since. And the “border” isn’t actually a border at all. It’s just a line that everyone agreed to pull back to (and 2km behind) when they stopped fighting. This left a 4km wide swathe of land along the “border” that neither side was permitted to enter, except under specially controlled circumstances, lest misunderstandings ensue and the war start back up again.

The status of the DMZ means that the area on either side of it is one of the most militarized on earth (the South Korean “civilian control line” past which civilians are not generally permitted extends about 20km further south beyond the DMZ, and is filled with soldiers, mine fields, electrified fences and fortified guard posts. (This level of inhospitablity has also meant that the DMZ has remained free of poaching, logging and pretty much all other human interference for almost 60 years so that it has effectively turned into an unintentional nature preserve.)

About the only place it’s possible to get inside the DMZ and right up to the border is just north of Seoul at Panmunjeom, the area where the armistice talks, and all North-South negotiations since, have taken place. This is where we were headed.

Three ROK (Republic of Korea, i.e. South Korean) soldiers right near the North-South border at Panmunjeom
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The trip back to Korea from Japan was also by ferry, and was at least as comfy and pleasant as the trip there (and shorter too… Fukuoka-Busan took only 6 hours as compared to the 19 for Busan to Osaka.) As with the first ferry, there was a jimjilbang (I’ll use the Korean name for public bath this time , Noraebang (likewise, Korean for Karaoke rooms) and various other entertainments that made the trip fly by.

We only had a single night back in Busan, and were staying with the lovely Alice this time as well. Almost the whole time we’d been in Japan we’d been pining for Korean food. Not that our Japanese meals weren’t good… several were fabulous. But Korean food has a strange way of growing on you, so we were delighted to spend our evening in Busan at dinner with Alice and a couple of her friends and diving back into Korean cuisine with mouths open wide.

That evening Sarah went out to an open mic night with the dinner crowd while I headed back home to bed to nurse the cold I’d picked up in Japan (the second so far in just over a month of travel. Boo!)

The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch the bus to our next destination: the provincial city of Gwangju.

The new harbour bridge under construction in Busan, South Korea
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In Seoul, Suwon, Donghae and Samcheok, we'd experienced a fair cross section of Korea's cities from large to small.  We were keen to see a bit of rural Korea too.  This was especially true given the sense of sameness that ... [Continue reading this entry]

We managed our trip out of Seoul simply enough.  A quick subway ride to the express bus terminal, some help finding the proper counter to buy our tickets from a friendly young Korean (who was obviously in a hurry to ... [Continue reading this entry]

The first entry about Seoul was pretty much taken up with stuff we did in our jam packed first few days in the city. While we were certainly far from sedentary during the remainder of our stay, things went ... [Continue reading this entry]

Whew!  What a busy few days it's been. But then that seems entirely in keeping with Seoul's nature.  A population of 10 million people, a metropolitan area that is home to almost half of Korea's 40 million inhabitants, headquarters to some ... [Continue reading this entry]