The tour pickup was through a driver named Mr. Eric, who got me to the shuttle, and from there we were in the hands of Sadie, our guide — a woman with what I can only describe as dynamite energy who made the whole thing come alive. The Joint Security Area at Panmunjeom was closed due to COVID protocols when I visited (worth checking current status before you book), but what remained on the itinerary was plenty.
The tunnel is the highlight. Full stop. The North Koreans dug it — the third one found, apparently — as a covert invasion route. You walk roughly 80 metres down a slope (the equivalent of a 25-story building, Sadie told us) and then cover 170 metres of tunnel so low that I was bent at the waist the entire way, hardhat scraping the ceiling, back screaming, water dripping on everything. No cameras allowed inside, which is a shame, because the three concrete barriers blocking North from South — with us standing 200 metres from the border — was one of the more quietly arresting moments I’ve had traveling. Then you walk back up the 25-story building. By the time I emerged, Sadie was already moving toward the information desk to grab paper towels for my head. I sweat looking at the sun. Add a hunched cardio session underground and it’s not pretty.
Standing 200 metres from North Korea, hunched in a dimly lit tunnel with a hardhat on my head and sweat pouring down my face, I had one clear thought: nobody back in Ann Arbor is going to believe this is how Sunday went. But that’s Seoul for you. You show up planning to see a palace, you end up underground, crouching through a covert invasion tunnel the North Koreans carved toward the South, listening to the rhythmic thunk of other tourists’ skulls hitting the ceiling every 30 seconds. The forecast said 90% chance of rain. It was 90 degrees and sunny. Everything about this trip defied expectations, and almost all of it in the best possible way.
The K-ETA Ambush and Why You Should Do Your Homework Before LAX
Getting here was its own adventure. When I went in July 2022, US citizens needed to apply for a K-ETA — basically an electronic travel authorization — before boarding. I did not know this. Delta told me I could sort it out in Seoul. Delta was wrong. At the gate in LAX, with 45 minutes to departure, the agent looked at my passport and said: she has visa, you no. My niece Katelyn, to her enormous credit, had the K-ETA app downloaded and approved on her phone. She was 19 and had done her homework better than a guy who’s been to 40-plus countries. I stood there frantically submitting the application on my phone, playing the “helpless niece traveling alone on her first trip” card with the supervisor (politely declined), and refreshing the approval screen every 30 seconds. The approval came through just as Katelyn hit the front of the boarding line. Check the current entry requirements before you go — whatever applied in 2022 may have changed, and you do not want to find that out at a gate in LAX.
Also: complete the Q-Code COVID health form before you land, or add 30 minutes to your passport control wait. Just trust me on that one.
The DMZ Is Not What You Think It Will Be
From there, the observatory on the hill showed you the famous flagpole standoff: South Korea built an 80-metre pole, North Korea responded with a 160-metre one. Two countries that both say they want reunification, each insisting it happen on their own terms, building ever-taller flagpoles at each other across a strip of no-man’s land. There’s a ghost city in the middle of the DMZ, abandoned, visible through binoculars. The whole thing is equal parts sobering and absurd. The mandatory souvenir shop stop at the end — they offered soybean ice cream made from DMZ-grown soybeans — I passed on. Used the toilet. Back on the bus.
Practical note: the Seoul subway system is immaculate. Dinner-off-the-floor clean. You need a transit card (T-money), which you buy first, then load with cash only — the young guy working the convenience shop next to the machines will sort you out if you stand in front of the ticket machine looking confused for 15 minutes like I did. The subway got me to my tour pickup and back without incident, which is more than I can say for the GPS situation later that evening (it kept placing me on the wrong side of an underpass for about 20 minutes, and I crossed back and forth like an idiot before I figured out my bus stop).
Five Hours, Six Stops, and the Meal That Won the Trip
Move your hotel to the city center for the food tour. The 40-minute bus ride back to the suburbs after a long day of eating and drinking is not something you want to negotiate, especially when you’re full of soju. I booked into the Moxy — small room, very clean, exactly what I needed — and spent the afternoon wandering through Bukchon Hanok Village before the tour started at 5pm. Changdeokgung Palace was closed on Mondays. My timing, as ever, is impeccable.
The food tour ran five hours and covered more ground than I can fully account for here. Our guide was Mike — grew up in Korea, moved to Chicago and Toledo, got a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Toledo, lost the job, came back for a friend’s wedding in Seoul, and never left. That’s a hell of a pivot. The group was small: AJ, a program development manager from the East Bay; Montana, an Army Apache helicopter pilot stationed at the base in Korea, with his mom and her boyfriend; and me, the elder statesman at 51 holding court with a bunch of very cool people.
We started at a big indoor market — the kind of place that looks like tourist-trap territory until you slow down and actually look. Linen shops, hardware, power tools, lighting, electronics, and food stalls running in every direction. The first stop was pajeon: traditional Korean pancake made with soybean paste, potatoes, leeks, and vegetables, deep-fried to a golden crisp. That was the right way to kick things off. Then sesame snacks. Then peanut snacks. Then beef jerky (Mike’s assessment: “it’s not good” — he was right).
The best stop of the entire trip was the beef tartare and live squid with soju. I’m not going to over-explain it. It was the best food I had in Korea, full stop. After that, we scrambled through a monsoon downpour to buy cheap umbrellas and duck into a makgeolli shop — makgeolli being a rice-based drink that looks like milk and tastes nothing like it. It comes dry, it comes sweet, it comes in dozens of varieties. I went for the driest option available, which apparently surprised everyone including Mike, since Koreans tend to prefer the sweeter middle ground.
The tour officially ended at the street vendors parked directly in front of my hotel — vendors who only operate 6pm to 6am, and whose permits the government is no longer renewing or allowing to be inherited. Eventually they’ll be gone. That night they were very much present, and we ate spicy pork cartilage (yes, cartilage), steamed squid, and things I can no longer identify, all of it chased with Terra beer and enough soju that Montana’s mom and her boyfriend eventually made a sensible exit. Montana, AJ, and I did not. Mike took the three of us to one more place — boiled oxtail and pork spine, more soju — and then there was a lot of soju-fueled philosophizing that I won’t attempt to reconstruct here. Needless to say, I felt it the next morning.
Verdict
Seoul delivered in ways I didn’t anticipate. The DMZ alone is worth the trip — specifically the tunnel, which no amount of reading about it prepares you for. But what stayed with me was the food tour: five hours eating and drinking through a city that clearly takes both seriously, with a small group of strangers who were genuinely good company, guided by a guy who returned to Seoul for a wedding and built a life there. That’s the kind of evening you can’t manufacture. Do the highlights — they’re highlights for a reason — but save some time and energy to just move through the city without an agenda. The best stuff in Seoul has a way of finding you once you stop trying to plan it.
Got questions about navigating Seoul, the K-ETA process, booking the DMZ tour, or what the hell to order at a makgeolli bar? Drop them to the Ask WildWilliam AI — I’ve fed it everything I know so you don’t have to make the same mistakes I did at LAX.