Bird watching in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ)

Last Saturday we went up to the DMZ on a "bird watching" tour. John, who is a teacher at Carla's school found this tour and a few other teachers and us decided to go and see what it was like.

The DMZ is about a 2 hour drive north from Seoul, where you follow the Han river for about 50km, and then travel along the side of lots of smaller rivers. It really is quite scenic and was strange to see quite a few of these large rivers nearly completely frozen over, or at least a thin layer of ice on top over a large area and then clumps of ice floating in other areas.

We went up on a tour bus, and there is one thing that is amazing, in buses or taxis, during summer the aircon is put on and the car is around 15c making it sometimes uncomfortably cold, in winter, the heat is put on to over 30c. There seems to be no in between setting, either hot or cold. I was sitting in the bus in a short sleeve shirt and was still hot, while the temperature outside was around -6c.

We first had to check in to the DMZ at an area called Goseokjeong, and hand over our passports to be registered. While there we went for a walk down to a river that was frozen over, and had a frozen waterfall. It really was nice. Of course the guys had to try and walk on the ice, but it was really thick so it was no problem.














Statue of Kkok-Cheong Im (Robbin Hood)
Near to where we parked, there is a statue of Mr. Kkok-Cheong Im, who is said to be the Korean version of Robbin Hood. Around the 1560's increased taxation put many of the local working class into absolute poverty and the large landowners took over. Mr. Im organised raids on government warehouses and gave the grain back to the people who needed it. I don't think it lasted long, and Mr. Im was beheaded in 1562.

We went from here to the 2nd Infiltration Tunnel. This tunnel was made by the North Koreans and discovered in 1975. It was discovered when 2 Korean military guys heard some underground blasting in 1972 and then took 3 years to find the tunnel. Now this is over 20 years after the "end" of the Korean war (as they are technically still at war and only on a cease fire).

2nd Infiltration Tunnel
The tunnel was alright, we were not allowed to take any pictures inside or of the guards around. The tunnel is around 3.7 km long, and goes under the DMZ, from the North Korean side, into the mountains on the South Korean side. The DMZ itself is supposed to be 4km wide, 2km's on each side of the actual border line, however the North has not fully followed the 2km rule and at times have pushed their northern fence very close to the actual border.




The DMZ and North Korea
After the tunnel we went to an observation point where you are able to look out over the actual DMZ and into North Korea. I must say, to me the DMZ itself was the best looking part of Korea I have seen. As no one can go into it, it is totally natural. The only problem is that it is littered with mines.

South DMZ fence





Cranes... if you look carefully
Oh, I nearly forgot about the bird watching. While driving between these places, you were able to see two types of cranes that had come over from Mongolia and there were even some vultures in the distance. It was strange, because here Carla and pictures of being able to sit quietly in a hide, and watch the birds or whatever, but we went driving by in a bus at 60km an hour with the guide saying that there is a crane out the left window. Not the best way to bird watch.

White Horse Memorial
We did see some other sites along the way, including a burnt out building which was the North Korean Labour Party building and the White Horse Memorial, which is a hill with a monument where major battles took places during the war.

It was a long drive back to Seoul afterwards as the traffic had set in, but we arrived back at around 19:00. Everyone came back to our place for wine and dinner. It was a really nice day, but as usual not exactly what we had expected. We will still need to go on a different tour with the USO to the DMZ to get a better overview.