We move our series highlighting each day from South Korea into its first full day on another continent. Let me just say: if you’re going to beat jet lag, going all-out on that first full one is not the worst method. We visited the DMZ in the morning and went to a KBO baseball game in the evening.
The DMZ was Pam’s only request of things to do for the full trip, and she chose well. Fortunately, nobody got malaria from the mosquitos (though I still have a massive welt on my right calf from something that bit me), saw some North Koreans, and ducked through an infiltration tunnel. The KBO game was one of my only requests and it was an absolute trip highlight. For me at least. Everyone else probably would have been ok if the game lasted closer to 2 and a half hours instead of 4 and a half, but sometimes a great game comes with its costs.
Let’s read on to remember 10 fun things from May 9th.
- The Four Seasons breakfast buffet was almost unimageinable
It turns out the breakfast at the Four Seasons is like, world-famous. So famous that travel influencers come and do nothing but film themselves walking in front of all of the various food stations.
And you know what, I get it. People should be seeing this shit. There was a whole buffet bar of ham and bacon and potatoes and eggs and all sorts of delicious breakfast food.
There was an egg station. There was a corner with nothing but Korean street food (fried peppers!). There was another buffet bar of stir fry and fried rice and steamed rice and like 25 different types of chili oil. There was an entire bread and bagel station. There was a fruit station. There was a yogurt bar. There was a chef making french toast, pancakes, and waffles to order. There were pastries like you wouldn’t believe: croissants, danishes, big cream puff things, pain au chocolate, you name it.
But the real treat was the 10-foot-tall, 24-carat gold chocolate fountain that piped two types of melted chocolate directly to your plate.
Who needs this level of ostentatious? Nobody, and also everybody.
- Joseph, the… opinionated tour operator
The pick-up point for our early-day tour of the DMZ was right at the Four Seasons. The driver and guide took us on the one-hour trek northward from Seoul to the famous DMZ location at Pyeonghwa (sidenote: this was like a 10-mile journey as the crow flies. Seoul is really close to the international border). Our driver’s name was Joseph, and we learned very quickly that he had… opinions.
Upon learning that we were Americans, Joseph’s comment was “Why have you not killed Trump yet?” Pretty risky business on his behalf, but he was rewarded with at least a tepid laugh in the car, and I guess you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Moira is a comms staffer for a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, and I do not think she will be taking Joseph’s quote for use from the official account anytime soon. Joseph also had strong opinions on the throngs of individuals who crowded downtown Seoul later in the day. They gathered around grandstands, sang, and listened to absurdly voluminous loudspeakers blasting… something… in Korean. Joseph informed us that it was a group protesting on behalf of the “very stupid” former president of Korea. Given recent events (the former president was sentenced to a lifetime in prison for an attempted military coup in late 2024), it’s hard to argue that our guide was doing anything but speaking the facts.
- The DMZ… fairground?
One would think that the DMZ and the subject of the Korean War is a somber one for the people of the Korean peninsula. And it is. Which is what makes it even funnier that the staging area for the most famous of the public-accessible DMZ locations is also home to what looks like a county fair, complete with a mini roller coaster and carousel. Joseph explained it as an opportunity to balance the struggles and pain of the past with optimism of the present, but I think that’s reading more into it than was actually there. To me, it looks like a great way to reward children after you take them somewhere they’ll find really boring on a class field trip.
- Nolan sees a North Korean
Getting to the peace pavilion (or whatever the official name for it is) is actually a bit of a mission. First you have to get on a bus with other tour groups. Then you have to cross the Civilian Control Line and get your credentials checked by the South Korean military (they do 18 months of compulsory conscription). Then you cross into the military zone and are warned that any stepping in the woods might lead to you getting blown up by a mine. Then you reach this interesting-looking building and are told that this is the last place you can take pictures.
But there’s actually another nicer-looking building a couple hundred yards away up a hill where you can look out upon the true demilitarized zone. It’s a very neat spot with a huge glass observatory and an outdoor platform kitted out with high-power telescopes. The DMZ is 4 km wide, so you could look out across 4 km of river valley, ponds, and empty fields and then see North Korean fortifications. Hell, if you looked behind them you could see North Koreans in a field working on some construction project with big heavy equipment. There was a North Korean in one of the observation towers!
Now here’s the catch: you aren’t allowed to take pictures while you’re up there. Because reasons. But you used to be allowed to take pictures from the platform, and Joseph casually offered to send them to us via WhatsApp. Because, again, reasons.
It was hard to ignore the feeling that our DMZ trip was being carefully managed by the South Korean government.
- Infiltrating the tunnels
At some point in the 1970s, the North Koreans dug tunnels under the DMZ in case they ever wanted to do something funny or silly like violate the Korean War armistice with a massive sneak attack. South Korea found the tunnels, including one in this spot, and accused those wacky North Koreans of being naughty.
I use minimizing language despite how serious of a topic this is because South Korea turned the infiltration tunnel into a tourist trap. It can only be accessed through a literal gift shop! The sight of dozens of foreign tourists in their Riley Greene jerseys (okay, that’s just me) traipsing down a steep paved incline wearing their silly orange hard hats didn’t fail to strike me as absurd given the context of the tunnel. Of course, the orange hard hats felt much less silly over the final flat stretch (where the South Korean interception tunnel met the original infiltration tunnel), because the ceiling was at times no more than 5 feet tall. Those of us who are more vertically gifted (myself, Winston, and Pam) really had to crouch-walk all the way to the final barricade, where you are less than 200 meters from North Korean territory. That’s not something I ever thought I’d do – even if I almost bashed my brains out in the process.
- Joseph’s… odd photo choices
I am all for a tour guide who brings the fun and wacky energy. Joseph definitely did that. Two thumbs up, zero questions asked. Well, maybe one question: where on Earth did he come up with some of the ideas for pictures he took of us?
Here we are at the “reunification statue” (South Korea really pushes the reunification narrative on you), pushing the broken halves of the peninsula back together.
This is a picture I like to call “yes, we are tourists”:
But here is the creme de la creme. At the infiltration tunnel gift shop, perhaps a place more designed than any other for deep reflection on the threat posed by a divided Korea, you and your friends can put on army helmets and take a picture with life-sized wax soldiers.
I assume if anyone in this picture ever runs for office, this blog post will have to be deleted.
- The suspicious defector
It’s a measure of how “go-with-the-flow” I was on this trip that I had no clue where Joseph was driving us after we left the DMZ area (and fairgrounds). Apparently we were NOT heading right back to the city at this point, my brilliant self noted as he pulled down a little side road with small garden plots alongside it (there are backyard gardens all over Korea. I wonder if it’s because so much of the land is either industrialized or mountainous, so all of the land gets utilized to keep food importation costs down?). Then we arrived at the location and Joseph explained: we would be meeting a real-life defector who escaped North Korea. After walking through the gift shop, of course.
We sat down in a few rows of pews with a couple of other people. A middle-aged lady came out and started speaking to us in Korean while a translator nearby read her speech out of a binder. It lasted about five minutes; in essence, she and her son lived in fear during the repressive regime until she decided to risk it all and swim across the border into China and reach safety. Now, she was here with her identity hidden to share her experiences.
I do not want to trivialize her story or those of anyone else who has suffered hardship and privation under the North Korean dictatorship. I also don’t want to diminish the accomplishment of escaping. But there was something a little too slick about being led to this building and hearing this story. Do they really think North Korea doesn’t know about who and what is going on there? I doubt it. And maybe it was lost in translation, but my question (what do you notice the surplus of most in South Korea comparatively?) was not answered at all.
I thought maybe I was just being paranoid until Winston and Pam both said they thought it was suspicious too. So, a week later, did Michael’s friend Gabe when I asked him. Bottom line: the South Koreans are very, very adept at propaganda, and the DMZ is no exception.
- Cheering culture at the KBO
After the hourlong drive back and some time to watch K-dramas in the hotel room, we had another stop to make in the evening. KBO baseball is action-packed and played at a pretty high level. Our overall guide Katie was the one who took us to the Gocheok Skydome to watch the away KT Wiz take on the Kiwoom Heroes. Because in Korea, you see, teams are named for the corporation who owns them, not the city they’re in.
It kind of even makes sense when viewed through the lens of Korea’s geography. There are only so many cities in an entire country the size of Indiana, so to avoid naming every team the “Seoul ___” you might as well pivot. And as for the bullet point above? We were treated to an absolute display at the hands of the KT/Kiwoom fans.
Both teams had PA systems that loudly played music before every pitch. Both teams had a full contingent of cheerleaders and a bass drum. The 3rd-base line was full of KT fans with red glowsticks singing chants that sounded like a cheer for the “KT Wiz in Arkansas” (note: that’s probably an inexact translation).
The 1st-base line was full of Kiwoom fans dressed in pastel teal and pink, banging thundersticks. Our group (which included Michael, who bummed a ticket a row in front of the five of us) became obsessed with the chants for Kiwoom’s power-hitting slugger Choi Joo-Hwon. He had a couple of home runs and a couple of really long at-bats which let us get quite familiar with his between-pitches song. Take a listen:
I’ve been singing “CHOI JOO-WHON” at random intervals for two weeks since. It’s so good.
And the best part of all of this was that the fans never quit. The game lasted 4+ hours, and to the very end the energy in the crowd was loud and exciting. American sports fans could never.
- Food culture at KBO games
What do Korean people do at KBO games besides incessant chanting? Eat! They’ve made up a whole combo word “chimaek” for what happens when you pair fried chicken and delicious ice-cold beer. You’re supposed to enjoy the hell out of some chimaek at a baseball game. There’s other street foods like tteokbokki and tornado potatoes you can get. Hell, the girl next to me was eating cocktail shrimp all game.
And by the way, they don’t skimp on portion sizes. I ordered a beer and instead of being delivered a cup of it, received that huge water bottle filled with Terra and 3 cups. All that beer for 10,000 Korean won (less than $7)!
- One of the wilder baseball games I’ve seen in a while
Yeah, let’s talk about the actual baseball game! The Wiz entered the game with the top record in the league and the Heroes entered with the bottom record in the league, but Kiwoom did have home-field advantage in their favor. What followed was an extremely entertaining, back-and-forth, down-to-the-wire game.
First of all: Korean baseball is noticeably a step down in execution than high-level American ball like MLB or AAA. The pitchers generally threw in the high 80s (with a few notable exceptions) and struggled to spin breaking stuff. Outfielders LOVED to leave their feet; we saw like 4 diving or sliding catches. And the game was strategically behind the MLB, with some bunts that I would describe as “mystifying”. But it was still baseball, and well-played baseball at that.
KT scored a couple of runs in the 2nd inning when the only American in either lineup (a guy from Wichita State whose name I eventually translated to be former MLB journeyman Sam Hilliard) crushed one off of the scoreboard. Kiwoom got 3 right back in the bottom of the inning with a ground ball off the pitcher and into left field for a double, a HBP, and Choi Joo-hwan hitting a tank of his own to right field. His next at-bat was even better, an epic 12-pitch battle that featured a bunch of absolutely ripped foul balls off of the breaking stuff until he finally got a fastball – which ended up hitting the scoreboard as well. The Heroes led 5-2, and Michael and I were singing the Choi Joo-hwan song in earnest.
KT spent the middle innings grinding back one run at a time – another Hilliard homer and some small ball in the 6th and 7th – to make it 5-5. Both teams emptied out the bullpen and benches in epic fashion, absolutely ruining my scorekeeping in the process. But it was to little avail – we went to extra innings (Elizabeth wailed in fatigue). KT, who somehow had 5 runs on 17 hits in regulation, displayed sudden patience in walking the bases loaded. That brought up Hilliard with one out. He crushed one to right field… but right at the outfielder, who caught it. The sacrifice fly did give KT the 6-5 lead (red glowsticks waved in excitement down the 3rd base line) but kept Kiwoom in it.
In one of those insane parallels you can’t script, the Heroes then loaded the bases with one out as well. That brought up… Choi Joo-hwon. The loudspeakers and thousands of Kiwoom fans (and Michael, and Nolan) belted out the song as KT executed the rare mid-at-bat pitching change on a 1-0 count. He hit a line drive… I can be heard on a video out there somewhere yelling “DROP. DROP. DROP”, which it indeed did just past the second baseman to tie the game. How electric! Now the Heroes just needed to score the winning run from 3rd and we could all go back and sleep (Pam was nodding off a few seats over). The next hitter hit one sharply back to the mound… and off the pitcher’s leg! Somehow, the pitcher stumbled to the ball, threw home for the force out, and collapsed in pain on the infield. What an incredible play. But that was nothing compared to what happened next. After laying on the infield for close to 5 minutes (Elizabeth and Moira were near-mutiny now), he got up, threw a few warmup pitches, and then proceeded to strike out the shortstop to force the 11th inning (everyone but me groaned).
After all of that, the 11th inning was a scoreless anticlimax. It turns out in the KBO, tie games after 11 innings are considered final. So there was some novelty in seeing a baseball game end in a tie (to date, the only tie that either team has had this season), but also a sense of unfinished business.
But if you were Elizabeth, there also the sense of sweet relief that you would soon be going to sleep.
