We left the hotel around 9 and bused north out of Seoul toward the DMZ. Our tour guide Grace was with us the whole day keeping things moving and giving context along the way.
The first stop wasn't even at the border. We sat down with a woman who defected from North Korea in 2019 and brought 11 family members with her. The route alone was a lot to take in. You bribe the border guards in USD just to cross the river into China, then pay Chinese brokers $7,000 per person to get from China to a refugee camp in Mongolia. Her husband's friend had already defected and helped fund the whole thing. And that was before COVID. She said now, with North Korea and China having locked the border down and building fences through the river, it would cost around $150,000 and brokers still won't take you. For most people that door is just closed.
She talked about what day to day life was actually like. No reliable electricity, no consistent hot water. She said having both around the clock was genuinely shocking when she first got out. Back home, watching Korean media was a serious risk. People got it smuggled in on drives from Chinese traders, but young people still did it. After making it to South Korea, intelligence debriefed her for two full months, asking questions so specific that one wrong hesitation could flag you as a spy. Things like your teachers' names and the exact layout of your school.
They were pretty strict about photos throughout the day, so a lot of what we saw I only have in my head.
After the defector interview we went underground into Tunnel 3, one of four known tunnels North Korea dug after the Korean War to move troops south toward Seoul undetected. There are suspected to be more that just haven't been found yet. You crouch walk the entire way down through narrow rock, and it ends at three concrete walls blocking the passage with a counter tracking the days since it was last accessed. At the very end I was a little more than a football field away from North Korea.
Last stop was Dora Observatory, where you look out over the border through binoculars. You can see the North Korean flag flying over Propaganda Village, a place that exists purely for show with nobody actually living there. Looking across, the contrast is pretty immediate. South Korea is green and built out. The other side just looks empty and still.
When we got back to Seoul there was a Buddha's Birthday parade going on right outside the hotel. We grabbed dinner, took in the parade for a bit, and ended the night at karaoke with the group.
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