I can officially say I survived bungee jumping at the DMZ!
Saturday and Sunday I went on my first Adventure Korea trip
to the DMZ and it was definitely an eventful weekend.
Since 13 TaLK scholars signed up for the trip we decided to
meet Friday night in Seoul and then be at the express bus terminal for pickup
early in the morning. I got there first around 10 and people trickled in until
midnight when the last girl arrived. Unfortunately we had assumed that being in
Seoul we would find a motel easily and be nearby for morning pickup.
What we didn’t realize was that the express bus terminal was
in a relatively residential area and there were no motels in sight. We took
taxis to the closest bar/club area and started searching for motels there. We
split up and each group went into 2 or 3 motels, none of which had
vacancies. When we all finally met
back up it was almost 3am and even if we did find a motel we would only have it
for a few hours. Eventually we decided just to go back to the bus terminal and
hope it was still open so we could try to sleep there. Luckily, Seoul doesn’t
sleep and the terminal stays open all night so we were able to grab some
benches and lay down for an hour. I don’t think any of us actually slept
though, which made for a very exhausted tour group!
We met up with the rest of the Adventure Korea group at 8
and got settled onto our bus to the DMZ. I planned on sleeping a little on the
bus but since there were so many new people to talk to that wasn’t happening!
We spent 2 hours getting to know the people around us before arriving at our
first stop, lunch!
Lunch was at a place called Goseokjeong. There was a museum,
some cool tanks and planes, and then rocks you could climb down to get to a
small beach. It was a really gorgeous day so eating lunch outside on a beach
was well received by all!
After lunch we went to our tour of the 2nd
tunnel. North Korea has dug a ton of tunnels into South Korea to attack the
country. Our tour guide told us that South Korea has found 20 of them but only
actually acknowledges 4 of them. The 2nd tunnel is not open to
civilians, only to guided tours so it was a pretty cool experience! At the end
of the tunnel there were these two army statue guys with guns guarding a gate
that goes into North Korea. There were a bunch of signs in front of them which
apparently say don’t take pictures or we’ll assume you’re a spy…needless to say
I took pictures. I guess if they were serious they would put it in different
languages? Woops!
To be honest the rest of the day is kind of a blur since I
was running on no sleep. We went to an observatory to take pictures of North
Korea. Again, probably weren’t supposed to but all of us did anyways. Then we
went to a bombed North Korean labor party building used to promote communism
before the Korean War. Apparently the building was also used for torture and is
known by locals to be haunted but I didn’t catch who was torturing whom. We
toured a railroad site with a train that used to go between North and South
Korea and then after our last stop at a memorial site we finally went to our
village to get our rooms set up and to have dinner!
Once we were all settled in our tour guide started up a bon
fire and we got a chance to relax. In the morning our tour guide laughed at us
for all being in bed before 1am, little did he know we had already been up for almost
48 hours!
It’s lucky that we did get sleep though because we were up
bright and early to go bungee jumping Sunday morning! Out of 40 people signed
up for the trip 36 decided to bungee jump! Our guide said that was the largest
group he’s ever had and it took about 3 hours to get everyone off the bridge.
The bridge we jumped off was called Taebong Daegyo and it was a 54meter fall. I
still cannot believe I willingly jumped off a bridge but I’m glad I can say I
did it!
After bungee jumping we went back to the village for lunch
and wandered around until it was time to leave. I got back to Mokpo around
10:30 but it was definitely worth it for as much fun as I had!
xox
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