Well not really. I mean technically I DID enter North Korea at one point, but it was only a few feet, and it was inside a building. And I had guards. However, at any moment the communists could have come bursting in. Talk about a close call!

In case you can’t tell I went on the tour up to the North Korean / South Korean Demilitarized Zone. You know, the DMZ, the 38th parallel, the dividing line between the Koreas for the last fifty years, and one of the most heavily armed tracks of land in the world.

I have to admit, I thought it would be slightly more .. sobering. I mean, I realize there is still very much a possibility of conflict here. North Korea has made dozens of raids and aggresive moves in the years since the signing of the Armistice ending open conflict between North and South Korea. They’ve tried to assasinate the South Korean president twice at various points. They’ve killed American and South Korean soldiers without provocation. They even captured an American naval vessel and held it’s crew hostage for a year at one point. All that being said, the entire thing felt very Disney World to me, more like a tourist attraction than a DMZ. It was a good trip though, and well worth the twenty five bucks it cost to sign up for it. If nothing else, it was a chance to see something that I believe will dissapear from the Earth within my lifetime. Plus I got out of Songtan, which is always a good thing.