Imjingak
World’s weirdest Instagram spot at Imjingak.
If you've ever taken a ‘DMZ tour’ from Seoul, you'll certainly have passed through the Imjingak Resort. Open-air museum, amusement park, last stop before the real warzone, tourist trap... they all apply to this place, which sums up all the contrasts and all the weirdness of the border.
Everything here is done to give visitors the thrills they have paid for, by making them believe that the evil North Korean enemy is lurking nearby. Even though, in reality, the border is 5 kilometres away and it is impossible to see North Korea from Imjingak.
The immediate proximity of the Imjin River, with its barbed-wire-lined banks and border-like appearance, and the railway bridge, known as the ‘Freedom Bridge’, which crosses it, reinforce the false impression of having arrived at the DMZ.
Away from over-tourism, a number of memorials here bear witness to the Korean tragedy, each in its own way.
Tour buses fill Imjingak’s parking lot early in the morning.
Imjingak car park, on a Saturday afternoon in September.
At dawn, the huge car park fills up with foireign tourist coaches eager for access “to the DMZ”.
In the afternoon, Korean cars take over the area, most of whom come here to enjoy the Imjingak theme park attractions.
More than 1.2 million people pass through Imjingak every year.
Organised trips must stop here while the guides queue up at the ticket office where permits are issued to enter the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ), on the other side of the Imjin River, and continue to the Dora Observatory and the ‘Third Tunnel of Aggression’ tourist sites at the edge of the DMZ (but never inside it).
Tour guides apply for permits to enter the Civilian Control Zone at Imjingak.
The wait at Imjingak can be long, as permits to enter the CCZ are issued on a first-come, first-served basis and for a specific time slot. At weekends during the high season, it's not uncommon to arrive here before six in the morning and only be able to continue your journey in the early afternoon. This is good business for the many fast-food outlets, cafés, souvenir shops, and even an amusement park with a pendulum ride in the shape of a pirate ship.
The Civilian Control Line fence at Imjingak.
Still, there are some interesting things to see in Imjingak. Starting with the Mangbaeddan, a memorial in front of which South Koreans with relatives living in the North can come to bow during the major family celebrations of Seollal, the Korean Lunar New Year, and Chuseok, the autumn solstice harvest festival.
The pain of separation is also expressed in the thousands of multicoloured ribbons hanging from the barbed wire fence marking the boundary of the Civilian Control Zone (though many tourist pictures will try to make you believe this is the fence of the DMZ, or even the border with North Korea). You can also see the bullet-riddled ruins of the old railway bridge over the Imjin River.
Another interestig relique is the Sensetsu steam locomotive, rusting and riddled with shell holes and bullets, which pulled the last South Korean train to cross the border during the Korean War.
The goods train, which regularly carried supplies for the United Nations forces on the offensive, was well known to the people of the North, who often clung to it on its way back, risking their lives, in the hope of travelling to the South. But on 31 December 1950, the convoy found itself blocked at Hanpo station, in what is now North Korea, because of the presence of Chinese troops just in front of it.
The Sensetsu steam locomotive, riddled with shell holes and bullets.
The driver, Han Joon-ki, desperately tried to reverse the train to Munsan station in South Korea. But he was stopped on the way by around twenty American soldiers who riddled the locomotive with more than 1,200 machine-gun bullet holes. The aim was to prevent the Japanese-made machine, which had already been taken from North Korea earlier in the war, from falling back into the hands of its former owners.
For more than half a century, the rusting locomotive lay abandoned in the middle of weeds in what was once Jangdan station, in the southern part of the DMZ. In June 2006, it was finally removed from the DMZ and installed in Imjingak, under a canopy that protects it from the elements.
The ‘Peace Gondola’, also wrongly called ‘DMZ Gondola’, at Imjingak.
Other attractions designed to keep tourists waiting before their hurried incursion to the Dora Observatory and the ‘Third Tunnel of Agression"‘ include the so-called ‘DMZ Gondola’.
Contrary to what its name promises, this cable car doesn’t take you into the DMZ, but only across the Imjin River, into the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ). That's why, before climbing into the gondola, you have to show your ID and sign a form promising not to do anything stupid once on the other side.
The section of the CCZ you will land in after the 850 meters ride is hermetically sealed, but it's enough to give you a few extra thrills. Even more so when, as you approach the north shore, you see from the gondola the huge ‘mine’ sign, specially designed for Instagram pictures, hanging on a threatening fence alongside warnings that it is forbidden to take photographs…
Water sprays along “Military Street”, Imjingak, during a hot summer day.
The north bank of the Imjin River is not uninteresting either.
One can walk along “Military Street”, lined with high fences displaying the coats of arms of units that fought in the Korean War, to a pleasant observatory overlooking the river and from which you can see Bukhansan, the mountain overlooking Seoul. In summer, water sprays protect you from the heat.
In the opposite direction, after climbing a steep hill, you come to Camp Greaves, a former American military barracks converted into an exhibition centre. Here you can have your photo taken signing a fake armistice agreement. The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC), based in Panmunjom, also maintains its museum at Camp Greaves.
There is also a youth hostel at Camp Greaves, a first for a restricted area, open to groups of at least twenty people by prior arrangement.
Her you can sign an armistice agreement as if you were the head of the UN Command or of the Korean People's Army in 1953.
The DMZ Youth Hostel at Camp Greaves (October, 2024).
Before taking the gondola back to the other side, you can enjoy an Ice Americano or a ‘DMZ Read Bean Shaved Ice’ at the ‘Forbidden Place’ cafe, or buy a bullet-shaped key ring or other souvenirs of your expedition “at the DMZ”.
DMZ rice, DMZ cookies, DMZ ice-cream, DMZ T-shirts, DMZ caps, DMZ magnets, DMZ booze: There's a DMZ-something for everyone in the souvenir shops near the border. I fell for a keyring in the shape of an offensive grenade (I'll try not to forget to leave it at home next time I go through airport security).
Tourists who come to Imjingak on organised trips generally continue on to the Third Tunnel of Aggression and the Dora Observatory. Their bus crosses the Unification Bridge and, after a stop at the South Korean army checkpoint, enters the Civilian Control Zone.
The Unification Bridge, over the Imjin River
This 900 meters-long bridge opened on June 15, 1998, during a period of détente that saw the reopening of a cross-border road linking South Korea to Kaesong in North Korea.
The founder of Hyundai Group Chung Ju-yung, born in a region that is now part of North Korea and who worked hard to normalize the relations between the two enemies, used the bridge to drive a herd of 1,001 “Unification cows” as a gift to the North during the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000.
Roadblocks on the Unification Bridge before a military checkpoint.
Most visitors arrive and depart from Imjingak by coach or by private car. But it is also possible to get there by the regular metro from Seoul.
Imjingang Station is the terminus of the Gyeongui line, which before the Korean War ran from Busan to the Chinese border. The station has a nice sign indicating the distance to Pyongyang. But only a handful of local trains serve this station each day.
Until 2022, a special train called the ‘DMZ Train’ ran a couple of a week across the ‘Freedom Bridge’ to Dorasan station in the CCZ, just a few dozen metres from the DMZ. But the service was discontinued due to the dilapidated state of the rolling stock. Dorasan Station has been closed since then.
A passenger train crosses the ‘Freedom Bridge’ into the Civilian Control Zone.
Shunned by organized tours for foreigners but popular among locals, the spacious Nuri Peace Park, right near the Imjingak resort, serves as a symbol of peace and reunification hopes between North and South Korea. Numerous funny works of art and forests of colourful windmills calling for reunification line the immense lawn. Open-air film screenings and music performances also take place here.
Nuri Peace Park.
Nuri Peace Park.
Imjingak is also home to the Abductees Memorial and of many massive, sometimes brutalist monuments. Very few people visit them, even though each revives memories of the many tragic episodes that have shaped Korea's recent history
You will find here the Monument to US Forces in the Korean War (with a bronze statue of president Harry S. Truman), the Second Infantry Division Memorial (honoring a unit partially made up of South Korean soldiers that is still stationed in South Korea), the Chamorros of Guam Memorial (a thousand of them served with the US military during the war), the Japanese American Korean War Veteran Memorial, and the 187th Airborne "Rakkasans" Memorial (the first US soldiers to arrive in Korea at the beginning of the Korean War).
Not the most beautiful, but nonetheless moving and keeping alive the memory of a tragic episode from the past, is the Burma Aung San Martyrdom Memorial Tower.
This monument is dedicated to the 21 people -among them 17 South Koreans including the Foreign minister, other members of the government, high-ranking officials, diplomats and journalists- who were killed by a North Korean bomb attack in Yangon, Myanmar, in October 1983.
President Chun Doo-hwan, who was paying an official visit to Myanmar, had insisted to visit the Martyrs' Mausoleum commemorating Aung San, one of the founders of independent Myanmar (and father of pro-democracy leader and Peace Nobel Prize Aung Sang Suu Kyi).
Chun was miraculously spared because he arrived a few minutes late, his motorcade being stuck in traffic jams.
The mausoleum was completely destroyed.
The Burma Aung San Martyrdom Memorial Tower, erected in memory of the 21 people killed by a North Korean bombing in Myanmar in 1983.
