23/05/2016
What is DMZ tour?
Roughly speaking, there are two types of DMZ tours, first is the tours including Panmunjeom (or JSA; Joint Security Area), and the other is the tours are comprised of the infiltrated tunnel and observatory.
In other words, we have 4 DMZ tour places; Panmunjeom for type I, Paju, Cheorwon and Yanggu for Type II.
From our experiences, most exciting tour is Panmunjeom tour (or, called ‘JSA Tour’) because you ‘may’ see the North-Korean guards who are on sentry at Panmunjeom and you will visit official meeting place between UN and North Korea. But, it is not easy to join this tour because this tour doesn’t take place everyday and you need to book in advance. Also, you have to join a group and you need to get to the tour start place (Lotte Hotel Seoul) on your own by 8:00am.
Therefore, most common DMZ tour is Paju DMZ Tour, which covers 3rd Tunnel, Dora Observatory. Why common? Paju is the closest place among several DMZ tour places (1h by car) and there is no restriction on the booking. But, this place is very crowed because too many tourists are visiting. Furthermore, to look inside 3rd Tunnel, you need to walk down/up steep 350m tunnel (i.e., counter tunnel built by South Korea) to reach the original tunnel dug by North Korea. That’s why we don’t recommend Paju DMZ tour especially for seniors, or any person who has cardiopathy problem.
Then, which tour do we recommend? We recommend DMZ tour to Cheorwon, or Yanggu.
These DMZ places are not popular comparing to Panmunjeom, or Paju because it take longer time to reach there.
But, if you go to either of these places, you will feel the real atmosphere, which is coming from the military tension between South and North Korea has continued for more than sixty years.
