My ride arrives in the dawn’s early light and I’m shuttled around Seoul in a mini-van picking up other passengers who will be on the tour of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) the most heavily fortified border in the world. There’s an older couple from Dijon, France who have been traveling for nearly a year, a young lanky boy who’s also French, along with a foursome from Singapore and a Japanese kid in a bright orange ski jacket. We’re taken to a larger bus with frilly curtains (seemingly de rigeur in this part of the world) and a booming microphone jolts everyone awake. Our tour guide is a young woman who is given to jokey, rambling asides that fall flat in front of her bleary-eyed audience. Many of these digressions seem to concern either: A) her search for a “hot guy” or B) what strategies men should do to get ahold of “hot Korean girls.” Looks and wealth occupy nearly all of her off-topic patter, confirming one unfortunate Korean stereotype.

“Has anyone seen our president?” she asks? If you see a picture of him close your eyes 'cause he’s such an ugly guy," she says apropos of nothing as we rumble towards our destination. Thankfully in between her hopes for a hot soldier to inspect our passports and Korean girls’ penchant for plastic surgery, we do get some historical perspective. Once we get out of Seoul’s strangling traffic the highway opens up to a somewhat bleak landscape and she points out the barbed wire fence lining the roadway dotted with small white rocks. If any of the painted stones are missing the army will know that a North Korean spy attempted to cross the fence, she explains. She warns us about not following instructions once we're in the DMZ area and tells the cautionary tale of a woman who having woken up a bit too early on a tour of the North, wandered off down to the beach and was shot dead by North Korean soldiers in mysterious circumstances. Since then tours to the North have all been curtailed. On another tour, to the Joint Security Area, visitors come face to face with North Korean soldiers, who we’re told try to stare down visitors and intimidate them. On that tour visitors are told to avoid jeans, leather jackets and clothes deemed "faddish", which might make them a target for kidnapping by North Koreans. They can snatch you “like that” our guide tells us with a snap of her perfectly manicured fingers. Our first stop is rickety Freedom Bridge, a significant landmark where prisoner exchanges occurred during the Korean War and a rusty bullet-riddled locomotive is testament to the brutality of the conflict still dividing Koreans. The significance and import of this spot is undermined somewhat by the bubbly Korean pop music played through the speakers and adorable his and her security soldier figurines at one end of the bridge’s entrance. Oh Korea, must you find the cute in everything?

On a clear day you can see Kim Jong-Il

Beyond the Freedom Bridge we enter the actual DMZ area, a wide swath of no-man’s land that’s apparently still riddled with mines. It gets a bit quieter on the bus and even our sarcastic guide gives the jokes a rest for a moment. The men charged with the arduous task of clearing this area have a harder time than most, as these particular devices contain absolutely no metal, making detection nearly impossible. Curiously, the area neglected for so long by humans, has become a haven for wildlife of all kinds. They’ve thrived to such an extent it’s now a recognized animal sanctuary, where birds, deer and all kinds of animal life thrives. Bizarrely, there’s even a brand of spring water called DMZ whose TV ads feature frolicking animals bounding through the wilderness.

Soldiers with ridiculously young faces line our route, saluting the bus as we go past. At the checkpoint, a kid with his armored helmet pulled over his eyes boards the bus, scans our passports and checks the names against those on his clipboard. Our guide breaks the tension by complaining over the PA that the young soldier is too short for her, not bothering to wait until he gets off, apparently confident he only speaks Korean.  She also remarks that security has been extra tight for the last couple of days since a large cache of weapons was found on a cargo plane emanating from North Korea and seized in Thailand.

The highlight of the tour is the so-called 3rd tunnel – one of several underground passages built secretly by the North with the aim of launching a secret attack on Seoul. After initially claiming that it was in fact the South that had built the tunnel, the North’s next story was that it was digging a coalmine.  Since no actual coal exists in the vicinity they painted the tunnel with sticky black paint, which the guide suggested we touch. Entering this passageway into history feels eerie and towards the end of the long claustrophobic walk we are actually in North Korean territory for a brief moment.

Back above ground a 500-won coin buys a glimpse across the hill to the land of Kim-Jong Il. I glued my eyes to the binoculars' viewfinder and saw the fake propaganda village the great leader built – empty shells of buildings to suggest prosperity – and the golden statue of the “Dear Leader” himself, a perverse echo of the golden Buddha idols seen in temples throughout Korea. Photographs are only allowed in a very clearly marked area whose painted white lines look a bit like a batter’s box and the eyes of soldiers follow the movements of visitors at all times. After the tour is over and the bus rolls back into Seoul our guide goes on a rambling, apologetic spiel which can only be described as an appeal for Korean culture itself. Acknowledging that to the outsider Koreans can appear rude and unwelcoming, she pledges to do better and hopes we'll return to her country again. 

Trip Wolf

Throughout my two-week stay in Seoul I kept passing dingy-looking little snack bars with neon signs depicting cartoon chickens or crudely drawn animated characters. Squiggly Bart Simpsons and strangely deformed Donald Ducks appeared in front of smoky glass windows or at the bottom of dark narrow staircases. Those are "hofs" my friend said, somewhat dismissively, whenever I asked about them. Finally on my last night I got my wish and we headed for one, chosen at random in the Bukchon area (one Hof it seems is as good as another). They are essentially cheap beer-drinking hangouts that also serve surprisingly hearty snack food (drinking without eating seems an unpardonable sin in Korea). Usually poultry is on the menu, hence the endless depictions of wild-eyed neon chickens sipping mugs of lager.

Inside it feels like being in a legion hall, the cacophony from the drunks at a neighboring table filling the cramped, unglamorous space. An ashtray is brought to the table and for the first time in years I get to enjoy the pleasure of drinking and smoking in public while inside. “Chicken, beer, and smoking, my three favorite things I say." Me too, my Korean host agrees and it's on. Although full from dinner, I nibble at the two kinds of chicken that arrive, prepared by a chef that looks like a Korean version of Mel from Alice. Whether it's the free-flowing beer, casual atmosphere, or spirit of the Hof, my Korean hosts open up about their country for the first time. They talk about the conservatism and conformity of Korean society. My host criticizes Koreans for being too single-minded about success and says they don’t know how to have fun, washing down her chicken with a swig of beer and a drag from her cigarette. Her boyfriend talks about his parents saying he and his dad don’t talk much. He ‘s from an area of the country known for its diffident men. The joke goes that the men from that part of Korea are capable of uttering only two sentences – “Where’s dinner?” and “I’m going to bed.”

The beer keeps coming and it's time for the fish course. There's a sardine-sized variety I'm instructed to eat whole – heads and all and an even smaller one piled up in the corner of the plate. For these two-inch long creatures my hosts carefully remove the minuscule heads and guts they tell me are too bitter (they're right.) The only other patrons are a foursome of businessmen at the next table who suddenly laugh in unison at someone's joke. I ask what they're talking about. It's the traditional tango of deference between a senior and junior employee that I had been told is a common after-work practice. “No, but it was thanks to you that I was able to succeed,” is the snippet translated for me and I get the picture.

On the corner TV set there's a scuffle that had occurred in the Korean parliament that day as rival factions struggled for control of a microphone. “Oh, they’re always fighting,” says my host with a sigh. Finally it’s time to confront my final culinary challenge. A steaming bowl of bundaegi arrives - the caterpillar larvae I've been seeing in large vats on the street. I've been told repeatedly that they're delicious but I can't get past the smell and their very larvae-like appearance. "Next time" becomes my cowardly mantra. "Next time" has arrived. I stare at the steaming bowl of what look like small soft-shelled armadillos and take a deep breath. They definitely taste better than they look but unlike my host who gobbled them up like candy I'm not sure they're something I'd crave. We stumble out into the night and I'm as satisfied as I've been in a long time.

Trip Wolf