soupy says

When I decided I was coming to Korea, I knew I wanted to go to the DMZ. Me being me, I called yesterday to make reservations with the USO to go on their tour today. Luckily I am not traveling during the peak tourist season, or I would have had to tour with a different company.

What a surreal experience. First of all, the whole idea of the USO running tours to the DMZ is a pretty weird idea. Think about it. I mean, the gift shop at the Joint Security Area (JSA) is the perfect example. For $15 you can own a piece of barbed wire that used to line the DMZ. Shirts, shot glasses all your typical tourist crap with DMZ stamped on it. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The tour starts at the USO office at 7am. Yes, you need to be there at 7am. Two busses load up and drive to Camp Boniface. On the way, our passports got checked a couple of times (South Koreans can't go on the USO tour, but any other nationality can). At Boniface, we get to sign a waiver that we realize that we could die. Our tour guide (a US Army guy), sums up the Korean War and the state of the DMZ since then in a less than five minute presentation. After a stop at the gift shop, we head to Panmaunjeom. Panmanunjeom is the place where peace talks take place, and the only place you could go in between two countries by stepping over a concrete sidewalk. (However, I would not advise this.) We got taken inside the conference room where talks take place, and by going on the other side of a conference table, you stepped into "Communist Korea." A Republic of Korea guard stood in front of a door that would open on the North Korean side. When we exited the building, a VIP bus holding an ambassador pulled up in front of the conference room. He was getting a tour too. We watched as three North Korean guards came out and peered into the conference room from the outside (not crossing that concrete line, of course) like window shoppers. Our Army tour guide said, "they do that a lot."

There were a couple of more stops (and a couple more gift shops) that let you "see" into North Korea. Then there was a stop at the 3rd infiltration tunnel.

I walked away from the whole experience not really knowing how to process it all. The whole DMZ area seems to be set up by two kids playing war. At Panmanunjeom, on the North side had the building Panmungak. Well, a building bigger than Panmungak was built on the South's side, so the North added a building. Inside the DMZ, the North has "Propaganda Village," an empty city of huge buildings (that occasionally broadcasts recorded speeches). Well, the South has "Freedom Village." Koreans that live their have to be either defectors of the North or descendents of defectors. (Women can marry into the village. Men can't.) It has mostly rice farmers (you can buy bags of DMZ rice), and they live better than most Koreans. The residents get 17 acres and most Koreans get 3. There is a catch. Residents have to live there 244 nights a year, and there is a curfew. Another feature of the propaganda villages is the giant ass flags. North Koreans has a big one, but then the south put up a bigger one. So, the Koreans put up an even bigger one. Of course, the whole peering in the windows thing was like the icing on the cake.

A weird way to end my time here. The South Koreans view the division of their people as a real tragedy. When I went to the War Memorial, the start of the Korean war was called "6.25" but viewing the DMZ the way you do on a tour, the whole mess seems dumb.