The Confusion of Imjingak

I visited Imjingak (임진각) 3 times during my year long stay in Paju.  The first time, I was invited there by one of the local teachers at my school.  She was going to spend the day in Imjingak with her husband and two daughters and invited me along.  I happily obliged as I had made it my goal to see as much of Korea as I could in this year. 

We visited Imjingak in the late afternoon and after parking the car, we made our way into this large open area and the first thing I noticed were these large structures that looked like replicas of human figures, surrounded by what looked like life-sized handheld windmills.  I was really curious to know what type of place this was exactly and found out that it is a large park close to the border, so there are quite a great deal of displays related to reunification.

It wasn’t until my second visit to Imjingak that I realized that on the other side of the park was an amusement park.  I had the pleasure of taking some of my students there after school one day, as part of a special class project and the students got to spend the afternoon riding rides and enjoying an outdoor amusement park.

My third and final time at Imjingak, I was able to explore a third section of the park and this was where all of the reunification displays were.  It was quite touching seeing all of the messages that people were leaving there for their loved ones, in hopes that one day reunification would happen and the messages would be read by their loved ones.

For more photos, please see my Photo Gallery of Imjingak.