- Day number two in Korea.
Today we are taking an all day tour
to the Demilitarized Zone with the DMZ Spy Tour.
This is actually small group tours.
So we're in a van, actually there's three vans
'cause our group is so big, but small vans.
And we're following the story
of some North Korean spies that in 1968
infiltrated South Korea to try and kill
the South Korean president.
The first stop on the tour, a memorial
of where those 31 soldiers were found,
just right outside the president's house.
And then up the hill, the second stop,
it's a memorial of the police officer who spotted them.
Obviously he was killed.
And now we're gonna continue, ending up at the DMZ.
Third stop on the tour is the Bugak Skyway
or the Bugak Observatory.
It's right behind the Blue House,
which is the president's house.
You see it from downtown Seoul.
And up here you get great views
of this really expensive residential area behind.
On a clear day you can see all of downtown Seoul,
including Namsan Peak and Namsan Tower.
But what's also interesting from here,
being the DMZ tour, one hillside just over that way,
there's antiaircraft radar, there's an artillery gun.
And then on the other hill is another military outpost.
So they've gotta protect themselves from North Korea.
So we spent about 45 minutes driving in the van
on some their highways, up this winding road
to the Odusan Unification Tower right here,
where we can see into North Korea.
Today is a very clear day.
And so we can see, there's actually a North Korean village
right over there, right across the Han River,
just about a mile away.
By the way, if you hear some noises in the background,
we're also here with a group of elementary school students,
that were practicing their English, and saying hello.
And also peering out through those telescopes.
So one funny part about visiting
this particular observatory, and I mean North Korea
and the whole DMZ's not funny.
But there's a warning out there that says,
because this observatory is so close to North Korea,
that if war were to break out
that basically you could get hurt if you're here.
So, just a word of warning.
You've now been warned.
So one nice part about taking the van tour
is we get some snacks as part of
this Korean Tourism Organization trip,
which includes some banana milk,
actually it's banana flavored milk.
And they provided us some chocolate cream pies, by Lotte.
I'm looking forward to this milk.
And I got a cute little straw to drink it with.
So the highlight of the DMZ Spy Tour
is to visit the 25th Infantry Republic of Korea
Army Base, which is where we are right here.
And I've got power lines that are on my face
so I'm stepping back.
But here on the other side of that hill,
is the DMZ, there's a barbed wire fence,
and then North Korea's on the other side.
Are you curious what that looks like?
Well sorry, I can't take any photos or video.
You'll have to come yourself, 'cause only
the United Nations can take photos that way.
And United Nations I am not.
But the guards are pretty cool.
They were posing for pictures with us,
so that's pretty neat.
Friendly Republic of Korea army soldiers.
There's even a small bunker right here
you can go into, it's really small.
The DMZ's a really interesting place
'cause you can see the war has really never ended, right.
There's South Korean soldiers looking across the border
to North Korean soldiers.
But as the tensions lower and lower,
they're trying to rebrand it from
national security tourism to peace tourism.
And I also love Korea peace.
To commemorate our visit we got a Certificate of Completion.
It says, Certificate of Completion
granted to Chris Raney in recognition of visiting
the Southern Limit Line of the General Outpost
in the Republic of South Korea.
And I completed the security education
and military experience.
Best of all, it's yellow.
How'd they know?
And I also successfully completed visiting the base
without stepping on any land mines.
Yes there's a ton of them in the DMZ.
After visiting the Observatory,
they gave us patches to commemorate the visit.
And told us we could try on uniforms.
Whether we wanna join the US Army
or the Republic of Korea Army.
Which one do you think I should wear?
Bringing it back to where we started,
about those 31 North Koreans that infiltrated South Korea.
How did they get in?
How'd they get through the fence?
They believe right here is where they cut through that.
Can you see those soldiers?
Actually they're a diorama.
But this is where they believe
that invasion started so many years ago.
So at that DMZ experience where I could dress up as a guard,
the other things they let you do is they let you
write a note on a ribbon to tie it to the fence.
So we're wishing North and South Korea
to have some peace soon.
And, of course, we had a couple choices for ribbon colors,
but you know which one we picked?
Yellow.
Actually OC Girl picked that.
So what's for lunch today?
It is a little bit of North Korean style Korean barbecue.
And that is barbecue duck.
I've never had Korean barbecue duck.
But apparently it is popular in the North.
So we got the grill right here
that we put this duck on.
This is supposed to be much leaner for you than pork is.
Traditional Korean barbecue in Korea is pork.
In the US and LA it's all about the beef,
it's all about the cow meat, so.
When this duck is done I'll let you know how it is.
And we've got all the usual fixings here.
Kimchi, side items, seaweed, some tofu stew,
and then some lettuce to wrap it in.
Which you'll find you eat by hand pretty much
at every Korean barbecue in Korea, they have that.
Though almost never in LA.
In LA it's usually like a rice paper
that you wrap the Korean barbecue with.
So the other day, when you saw me cutting
my seafood pancake with scissors,
I mentioned you see scissors
pretty much everywhere in Korea.
And so here we've got the scissors to help cut up the duck
so that the duck is in bite size pieces.
Because we've only got chopsticks to eat it,
there is no knife at this table, just scissors.
'Kay I've got my duck, and I got my spicy sauce in there,
and my lettuce.
And so I'm just gonna wrap it all up.
And, by the way, there's some pretty loud YouTubers
in the back, crazy YouTubers.
Okay, so I just put it into a little thing like this, and...
People always tell me I should include maps
in my videos to help them find out where things are
and put a little pin on it to tell you where it is.
Well I've done half of it for you,
if you wanna know where we are,
we're right where the pin is.
I bet you could find that on Google Maps
in the satellite view.
The final stop on our DMZ Spy Tour
was the Korean War Memorial Museum, right here.
Admission is free.
And it goes through, in great detail,
about the history of the Korean war.
And it was really bloody.
I mean, I don't think I've come to really appreciate
before going through this museum
just how many people died,
and just how much the war went through.
North Korea to the top, South Korea to the bottom,
back and forth.
Seoul taken by the South, Seoul taken by the North.
Pyongyang taken by the South, Pyongyang taken by the North.
It's really complicated.
Come and go through this museum
and you'll get a good appreciation for it.
Now earlier I told you that
this is my third tour of the DMZ.
So what did I like about it?
Well I liked the little van that we had.
That was nice, not having to ride in a big bus.
I loved that we had a really knowledgeable tour guide
in the van, that was super awesome.
Especially having a walk through of this museum,
he was able to explain it much better
than us just reading the signs.
But what I did miss, was I missed the Joint Security Area.
The last tour we took, we got to go into
those blue buildings that's like
the border between North and South Korea.
So what I would tell you, is if you're coming
to Seoul and you're doing a DMZ tour,
I would say try to find one that has the JSA,
the Joint Security Area, in it,
and that you go in there.
Now in order to do that, you have to book in advance,
'cause they book out at least five days before.
If you can't get one of those because the JSA is closed,
or they're all booked out, then I think definitely
considering a kind of private van tour like this
is definitely a great alternative to the huge bus tour.
And by the way, if you wanna know more
about visiting the Joint Security Area
you can check out my vlog from last year
when I was here.
In that one I put all seven days in one video.
You'll find a link at the end of this video,
or in the description below, or the pinned comment I have,
to check out that seven day vlog
that includes the visit to the Joint Security Area.
So for dinner on day number three we had
some monastic temple food at a Michelin starred restaurant
that serves just vegetarian food.
That meal was so long, I'm actually gonna put that out
as a separate video, joined by Jordan.
And it's gonna be an American and Australian
react to eating temple foods.
So stay tuned for that one.
But if you wanna watch day number two,
you didn't catch that one, you can click right here.
If you wanna watch day number four, click over here.
We're gonna be staying at a temple.
And actually I don't even know if I'll be able
to upload it tomorrow, 'cause I don't know
we have Wifi, so this might be a few days
when we get back to the real world of the internet.
So I won't say goodbye,
'cause I'll see you in one of these videos.