Anyone who has ever taken an organized DMZ tour from Seoul has passed through Imjingak. Open-air museum, creepy amusement park, last stop before the real warzone, place of rememberance, tourist trap, total rip-off… they all apply to this place, which sums up all the contrasts and all the weirdness of the Korean border area.

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. You’ll probably come across one or two western social media streamers here, barely off their tour buses with selfie sticks in hand, describing their journey live as if they were war correspondents in 1951.

The border is 7 kilometres away and it is impossible to see North Korea from Imjingak. But the immediate proximity of the North Korea-originated Imjin River, with its barbed-wire-lined banks and border-like appearance, and the railway bridge, known as the ‘Bridge of Freedom’, which crosses it, reinforce the false impression of having arrived at the edge of the free World.

At dawn, the huge car park fills up with coaches carrying foreign tourists eager for access to the DMZ. In the afternoon, Korean cars take over the area. Most of the locals come here to enjoy the Imjingak theme park attractions or relax at the nearby and spacious Pyeonghwa Nuri Park. 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.

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 is not uncommon for groups to arrive here before six in the morning and only be able to continue their 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.

Fortunately, Imjingak is a bit more than just a gaudy dark tourist trap and there are a few things to see here. The history of the site is also interesting.

Imjingak was built by the South Korean government shortly after the historic July 4th 1972 North–South Joint Statement, which briefly raised hopes for reunification.

The joint statement was the first time the two sides acknowledged each other officially, and the first formal agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang since the Korean War. Also, for the first time, the two Koreas acknowledged that reunification must be pursued through peaceful dialogue, not by force or armed conflict. Despite the initial optimism, the agreement did not lead to substantive change. But Imjingak was there.

The foundation of Imjingak in 1972 was a symbolic act by the South Korean government to provide a space where refugees and defectors could symbolically reconnect with their lost homes. The resort was established just outside the Civilian Control Line, making it accessible to ordinary citizens. It became a public-facing counterpart to the heavily fortified front lines.

As in many places close to the border, here we find a Mangbaedan, an altar where separated families perform rituals facing the North, especially during traditional holidays like Chuseok (the autumn solstice harvest festival) or Seollal (the Lunar New Year), times traditionally devoted to family visits.

The pain of separation is also expressed in the thousands of multicoloured “peace 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).

Since spring 2025, Imjingak has been home to a new attraction run by a private tour operator: the North Korea Experience Center. For a few thousand won, visitors can watch a film about life on the other side of the DMZ. At the end of the screening, a North Korean defector spends around 15 minutes answering questions from visitors.

I was a little reluctant at first, finding that the initiative had a slight “human zoo” feel to it. But in the end, the exchange proved to be very interesting (it must be said that, having arrived at a quiet time, I was the only visitor there). The person I was talking to —a lady who fled the North Korean city of Hyesan in 2014 and reached South Korea via China, Laos, and Thailand— taught me a great deal in just a few minutes about her escape, her interrogations by South Korean secret services seeking to confirm that she was indeed North Korean, and her adaptation to life in the South.

Imjingak is also the home of the bullet-riddled ruins of the old railway bridge over the Imjin River. Another famous 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 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.

Other attractions designed to keep tourists waiting before their hurried incursion to the Dora Observatory and the ‘Third Tunnel of Agression”‘ include the ‘Peace Gondola’, sometimes wrongly nicknamed the ‘DMZ Gondola’.

This gondola 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 foolish 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.

On the north bank of the Imjin River, 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. This is also the entry gate for Camp Greaves, a former U.S. military camp transformed into a cultural space.

Before taking the gondola back to the other side, visitors can enjoy a coffee 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.

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.

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 times 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.

Bypassed 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 when the weather allows.

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

Among many others, you will find here the Monument to US Forces in the Korean War (with a bronze statue of president Harry S. Truman), the Chamorros of Guam Memorial (a thousand of them served with the US military during the war), certainly not the most beautiful but nonetheless moving and keeping alive the memory of a tragic episode from the past, 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.