4 MINUTES IN NORTH KOREA | DMZ Full Experience

[Music] today is day five here in Seoul South Korea and before we got to Seoul we had a very long to-do list of things that we wanted to do and this was probably at the very top of mind today we were visiting the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea today we're partnering with corridor tours because you cannot go to this area on your own you have to book a tour since it's a military zone so on our way to meet up now and we have a two-hour drive to the deal let's go you show me you a military ID and password again this is really important before entering the joint security area [Music] so we've just arrived at the joint security area we met up we're getting this being the second ever callers on success in to take place in the calmness my Street America's third generation I've hidden Emily to rule over the calmness of Korea we just arrived at the jam and we had to leave all of our bags on the bus but would you take our cameras we got a slideshow briefing from a military officer from the US and now we're about to get on two new buses to go to the D so at this point things got really serious really quickly we get on the new bus with this US Army soldier and he became our tour guide for the next couple of hours through the Danzig so the dmz for those of you who don't know is basically like a four kilometer stretch of land that runs all the way across the border of North and South Korea and at this point South Korea basically owns the two kilometers to the south in North Korea owns the two kilometers to the north and there's a line down the middle that divides the two countries so the whole job was only like five minutes but we saw a ton as we were driving through the DMZ and as soon as we got to the freedom house we had to call off the bus get in two single foul lines and at that point they told us don't do anything dumb he told us don't wave don't point don't make any gestures verbally or non-verbally to North Korea because you're being watched heavily they also had a dress code to be able to go on the tour so we had to wear closed toed shoes long pants our collared shirt because I was nervous that get kicked out and I wore a t-shirt but that really wouldn't have been a problem but basically like they just didn't want you looking trashy or like have any slogans on your shirt that may offend North Korea or they could be used as propaganda they said the guards would take pictures of you and use them as propaganda in North Korea so yeah we dress up nicely so we walk through the Freedom House in our to single file lines into this conference room that sits on the border of North and South Korea so we are currently inside of the conference room this conference room in the middle this table behind me is dividing North and South Korea so we are currently still in South Korea but there's three microphones on the table and that's basically the line so as soon as you step past that table we will be in communist North Korea and if you look out the window you can actually see a line that divides to touch so it got a little hectic in there as soon as we got in there our guide was kind of telling us what was going on what the room was used for and then he said okay everybody can take out your camera and take pictures for the next four minutes and then you're putting them away and we have to leave we have an entire bus full of people and this one tiny conference room all trying to get there like one shot here I was lining out to take pictures with the guards because they told us that we could that seemed kind of weird we can also take pictures with their sunglasses so there are two guards one was stationed by the conference table and the other was stationed on the back side of the room which was technically the North Korean half of the room and there was a door behind him and they basically said if you go out that door you're in North Korea and there's nothing we can do for you I'm pretty sure the guy wouldn't let you through the door but like that was just kind of crazy so after our four minutes were up we had to leave the conference room and then come back in front of the freedom house where we had four more minutes to stand and look at conference road which is these four buildings some of them are great and some of them are blue the grey buildings belong to North Korea and the blue buildings belong to South Korea there are two guards that stand on their main building in North Korea and the guards in South Korea I have nicknamed him the soldier that we refer to as Bob he usually Bob's in and out from those pillars to maybe get a glass of water or fix his uniform because he stands there for 14 hours every single day there like obviously they've never communicated with these guys before and so they just like they give it am nick names and they talk about it like they're their friends alright ladies gentlemen we have about one more minute for all photography okay ladies and gentlemen please refrain from taking any further photographs and form two single-file line it's facing to your left just like middle school fine leader that was just the first part of our tour after this things get more relaxed we get further away from the border so we're actually able to film some more so after this the rest of the vlog is back tomorrow almost [Music] so for the second stop of our tour we have come to a train station which is the last train station in South Korea so if you were to go one more stop you would be in North Korea obviously you can't do that now you used to be able to and now there's some type of reunification efforts as I understand it so they're hoping that one day they will combine the track again and people will be able to travel from North the South Korea and vice versa obviously there's a lot that has to happen before this railroads ever connected [Music] stay around thank you [Music] so this is pretty crazy this red line right here is the trans-siberian which we just finished riding last week we ended in Vladivostok had this trans Korean railroad been open we would have been able to ride all the way from Vladivostok down to Seoul South Korea where we currently are now one day if they open it back up we have to redo the entire train seven well listen to that okay so now we're at the Dora Observatory which is this place where they have all these super high power binoculars you can pay 500 won and look through it for two minutes honestly a person walking through the field [Music] there's a lot of things that you can see through the binoculars on the observation deck probably the most interesting is the propaganda village nothing we sure how far away it is from where we are in now but from what we've been told the village is just completely empty and all of the buildings or shells they said most of the windows and doors are painted on because there's some buildings that do actually have windows and they say that you can tell there's no floors inside of the building because you can see the lights inside get dimmer as they go down and there's a flagpole over there that's a hundred and sixty meters tall it used to be a lot smaller and then South Korea built a fine 40 100 meters tall and so they couldn't be outdone so they built another flagpole that was much also they're playing some kind of like South Korean k-pop music and messages of capitalism and love is we've been told from the South Korean side over this loudspeaker so that I guess potential North Korean here and then at the same time the North Koreans are playing their propaganda music that sounds like opera but we actually can't hear from here because the South Korean stuff is so we just arrived at our last stop which is the third infantry tunnel these are tunnels that the North Koreans actually dug underneath the Demilitarized Zone with intentions of infiltrating South Korea and doing a surprise attack not exactly sure what the rest of the history is I think that's what we were about to go find out we're gonna watch a short movie and then go check out the tunnels [Music] I do believe in 1950 the invasion cell Korea by the north began [Music] so in the movie line there's actually been four tunnels that have been discovered the first one was in 1974 and the most recent was in 1990 and they said that there's probably way more that they haven't discovered yet and they were dug all the way into South Korea and the third tunnel that we're about to go see now was big enough to bring 30,000 soldiers an hour through this is no little tunnel unfortunately there's no filming in the tunnel so we're gonna have to just tell you about it again that was totally nuts the tunnel is 73 meters below ground where the dynamite was you could also see this blackness on the rocks down there which i think is granted but when the North Koreans got caught when they found their tunnels their excuse was that they were mining coal and they had put this black on the wall to make it look like it was cold just crazy and I can't believe that we were down there so we just got back to our air B&B and we have a few final thoughts about our day and North Korea before today and for a while North Korea has been on my bucket list of places I wanted to go but care has always been very against it which is understandable and I'm not going to try to justify why I wanted to visit North Korea but as of September 2017 US citizens can no longer go to North Korea and so this was essentially as close as we could possibly get which I'm glad that we experienced it this way from South Korea and not as a tourist going into North Korea because if we'd had done a tour that way they would have fed us the same propaganda there was a guy who was honored to her who had been to the North Korean side and essentially done the same to her and we were kind of comparing what he learned on both which was very little on the North Korean side and a lot on the South Korean side and our tour guide said ask me anything like what do you want to know ask me anything and of course there are a few questions that he couldn't answer because he wasn't allowed to but the guy who had been in North Korea so they told them don't ask any questions we played tourist all day in a situation that's very serious and sad especially for those north of the border I don't know I just didn't want this vlog to come across as us just like gallivanting around and yeah being entertained by other people's sadness and and misery but we travel to like learn about the world to experience new things and today was a chance to do that and hopefully witness with our own eyes what will be history one day after the two Koreas yeah I am really glad we went hearing the news and hearing all the negative things about North Korea it's really easy to just think like oh that's crazy but like being on that lookout mountain today and looking at the people in their country through the binoculars like they're real people it was just a really eye-opening experience [Music]

Channel: Kara and Nate

Views: 1,323,249

Rating: 4.8728204 out of 5

Keywords: north korea, north korea vlog, DMZ, DMZ vlog, demilitarized zone, JSA, JSA tour, JSA vlog, south korea, seoul, south korea vlog, travel vlog

Id: qLxW9GHmPgk

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2017