DMZ

Today I traveled to the DMZ. To start I met the new occupants of the guest house who arrived later last night and are from New York. They are nice people. I wandered down to Anguk station and hopped onto the subway to DongGuk station. (In mandarin this would be Dung Guo so quite similar.) I wandered off to take photos of the park in front of the university while waiting for the tour to start. We got off to a bad start. There was probably an accident on the road and the delay meant that we had to skip the first park. Our guide was from the Korean Veterans Association. We headed on to lunch, Bulgogi, a simple Korean fare of fried beef (fried on the table) and various side dishes. Simple and good.

We then headed into the DMZ. First we visited a park on the South Korean side. Here we saw the rail bridge and remains of the previous bridge across the river. I suppose the previous bridge was destroyed in the war. We then crossed over the bridge, littered with what I presume were anti-tank devices, such that driving in a straight line was not possible, and off into Camp Bonifas. Here we saw a slide show and then headed off in to the JSA. There was actually a meeting taking place between the two sides, so we could not enter the room. However we got to see the guards from both sides in place, which is something not normally seen. We guessed that they were discussing a certain nuclear bomb test in the last few days. Here we were able to see into North Korea and take photos.