The tour was from the USO in Itaewon, run by an organization called Koridoor. They had two buses full of people for the day’s tour. Most were Americans, but there were also some Koreans, a couple of Brits, three Indians, and a gaggle of (I think) Swedes. The tour leader for our bus was a Korean guy who’d spent ten years in the US Army in psyops.

We left at 7:30, and it took about 45 minutes to get to our first stop at Camp Bonifas, the last post before the DMZ. Along the way we drove along the river, which is lined with concertina wire and guard posts. Part of the source for the river comes from the north, so they have to guard against a river invasion.

At Camp Bonifas we were turned over to the US Army for the JSA portion of the tour. It started with a slide-show briefing on the history of the split, which was a little selective but generally accurate. Then we got on buses and rode into the DMZ.

After the initial barricades, the DMZ just looks like ordinary countryside. Rather like southern California. You don’t actually see the land mines. PVT Tekampe, who was in charge of our bus, said that animals occasionally explode, but he also told us that Vampire Deer were indigenous to the area, so he may have been having us on.

PVT Tekampe was an 11B (infantry) who’d been at Camp Bonifas for two months, straight out of Basic and AIT. He led us through the JSA, briefed us, and answered questions with that combination of competence and good humor that US military personnel seem to excel at.

We got off the bus at Freedom House, which is a big empty building originally built for families split during the war to reunite. It was never used for that purpose, though, so it’s now just something you walk through. Behind Freedom House is the famous row of buildings that straddle the military demarcation line (MDL).

We went inside the UNCMAC conference building and had a short briefing on what not do, such as taking pictures out the windows or getting too close to the ROK guards. (PVT Tekampe: “They’re not like Buckingham Palace guards. If you get closer than six inches, he will step back, and you will have a bad day.”) Then we milled around taking pictures, moving freely between the north and south sides of the room.

After a few minutes, we went out to the steps at the back of Freedom House while the people from the other bus went into the conference room. We stood on the top step and took pictures of the North Korean side while PVT Tekampe briefed us on what we were looking at.

When the other group finished, we rode back to Bonifas and visited…the gift shop. Of course there’s a DMZ-themed gift shop. There was a DMZ-themed gift shop at each place we visited on the tour. This was just the first.

After everyone had dropped some cash in the gift shop, they turned us back over to Koridoor to continue the tour.