The Demilitarized Zone and Joint Security Area

Anita and I will be spending a couple days in Korea on the tail end of our Vietnam trip next month, and we will be hitting up the DMZ and JSA where (if we are lucky), we may get a chance to physically step over the border into the DPRK (albeit inside a UN building that technically straddles both sides of the Military Demarcation Line).

While this series of photos was taken in Calgary, the setting of this scene is pretty much how I envision the Bridge of No Return would look. The bridge's name is a reference to its history in prisoner exchanges between the two Koreas - if you crossed over it, you would not be allowed to go back. Up until recently, I hadn't gotten excited about our upcoming adventures in SE Asia, but now I am getting super stoked. Some people love laying on the beach for a week. Us? We go to places like Chernobyl and Sarajevo to see the remains of devastation first hand. Hoping to add one more place to that list.