We're up early enough to check out the local breakfast offerings before our DMZ trip starts at 8:20. It appears, however, that Korea doesn't do breakfast: the hotel coffee shop offering "American Breakfast" doesn't open until, well, later; there are coffee shops but no breakfast options and the local bakeries only sell fairly sweet cakes.
Our minibus turns up and we proceed to a number of distinctly better hotels picking up mainly Americans. One of whom, a garrulous high pitched type we discover is here because an Aussie pulled out of a Kennel Club show and they needed a judge in a hurry. So he signed up even though he could only judge one class and here he, and his wife, are all expenses paid. Americans take note: your kennel club fees are being wasted on jollies.
We eventually head north out of Seoul to the DMZ, roughly 50km away. Almost straight away, though, our guide is commenting on mines in the river and you look over and the roadside has barbed wire fencing and guard posts every 100m. Did I fall asleep? Not long later we pass an observatory overlooking the Imjin river joining the Hang river which flows through Seoul (which has 23 bridges over it). On the way to this point she's pointed out several satellite towns (of dozens of twenty storey blocks of flats) built to try to reduce the swell of the 11 million inhabitants of Seoul.
The Military Demarcation Line [MDL] (where the fighting stopped) runs through the middle of the river at this point, the DMZ extends 2km either side and you get a rare glimpse of North Korea. It doesn't look much different through the haze. I'm beginning to get a strange story told to me. The US and Australian forces that came here to fight on behalf of the South (wasn't it a UN operation?) have left the country split with a DMZ "where no foot shall tread." The South seems very keen to reunify their country, spending a lot of money in the process, but are absolutely petrified of invasion. There seems to be a government inspired paranoia that the North is plotting every minute of every day to invade. One country but our way, I guess.
We stop at Imjingan Park where a railway track crosses the Imjin over a boxgirder bridge, the Freedom Bridge, over which freed prisoners and Northeners would cross crying "Freedom!" (cue Mel Gibson). 
There's a few memorials, some tourist shops and fairground rides! There isn't long here -- a familiar theme as the trip is rushed -- and we jump on another bus, from now on the military want to take control. We're heading into the civilian controlled area [CCA] for which we need our passports. The border line is all over the show here so the geography is difficult to relate but we cross the Unification Bridge, a large road bridge over the Imjin covered in barricades forcing the coach to weave, into the South controlled CCA.
Our first stop is the 3rd tunnel (of four found to date), technically inside the DMZ (were we meant to be here?) found in 1978 thanks to a deserting NK major who helped build it. Hard hats on heads -- one size fits all, huh? -- we descend 78m underground aboard the monorail. This "interception" tunnel was obviously built for access not tourists but having got us here they could have widened it a little. At the bottom is a roughly hewn tunnel described as 2m by 2m. That's a generous description of the height, I stood up twice in the 246m you can wander in. The South is of the opinion you could get 10,000 troops and arms through here per hour, which might be true given how short the Koreans are, and so [the South] went 450m along to the MDL, collapsed the tunnel beyond then put three 3m wodges of concrete in to block the passage. I should note that the third has a doorway and a window in it. A very small doorway, though. In between [the concrete wodges] they've planted sensors and cameras. Given the throngs of tourists I should think the invaders will be spotted. You're not allowed to take pictures in the tunnel for fear that the N Koreans might know what the South know. Uh? Doesn't taking tourists down make it obvious enough? There's a small museum type place where they show you some S Korean propaganda for want of a better description.
We then go to Dora Observatory, a military/tourist watchpoint where you can see across the plain into N Korea. You're limited to taking photos where you can't see any S Korean troops which, as a side effect, means you can see very little. 
In what the South calls a propaganda village -- all the lights go on and off at suspiciously similar times -- the North has planted the world's largest flagpole, some 160m high. The South have responded with a big flagpole in a nearby village in the Southern section of the DMZ. And then the DMZ neither looks like a 4km wide strip nor untrammeled nature. Maybe some of the less busy 155km of it is in better shape.
Finally to Dorean station, the end of the line from Seoul though they've loaned all the men and materials to the North to extend the line through the DMZ to join up with the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Chinese railways which would be good when it's done. I bet they don't trust anything that comes through for a while, mind. For lunch they took us to a proper little sit-on-the-floor Korean restaurant for a Korean BBQ. Not quite the Aussie affair, nor the in-table grill from Tokyo, but a sort of lipped jelly mould where the meat was slapped on top but the juices collected at the rim allowing you a) keep it moist and b) throw some garlic into the mix. Very tricky to wrap meat and rice in a lettuce leaf, though, which is the way to go.
They dropped us off in Itaewon at half three -- not bad for a morning trip -- a noted shopping road which was much more like Kowloon as I was immediately hassled to buy a suit. Grrr. Frankly, there wasn't much to it and we escaped into a coffee bar where I was served with a disgusting caramel latte -- serves me right for choosing it. We careered around on the metro to get Helen's flight coupons to the UAL office where we eventually convinced the [different] woman to copy the coupons and put them with mine. A bit lost for things to do we thought we'd head across town to the TechnoMart Electronics Shopping Centre. It's a whole block of what looks like gadgets but also looking very closed at 6:15pm. It was getting a bit chilly -- my T-shirt and shirt are no great defence at 14C or less -- so we just headed back to the hotel.
Dropping off the bags we realised we couldn't book the hotel in Tokyo as our phones don't work here so we went out and perused the downtown restaurants, largely failing to read the Korean. We went for a semi-westernised pub, full of locals, and had two huge platefuls of chicken stuff.
Hotel Prince, Seoul N37.56158 E126.98622 Elev. 40m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.