I have looked on the Internet and there seem to be a number of agencies offering the tour. Has anyone done this tour recently? Can you reccommend an agency to book with?

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Hi there,

This company is supposed to be quite good. I will be booking with them for a trip to the DMZ in October.

http://www.uso.org/Korea/default.cfm?contentid=103

Have a great day!

Hi Lawchik. The tour you have mentioned looks like it is basically for US military personnel. I'm afraid that doesn't really appeal to me as I'd prefer a more varied group of fellow travellers. Does anyone know of any other tours?

The USO tour is considered by most people to be the best of the DMZ tours. Most other tours do not take you to the Joint Security Area/Panmunjom, which the USO tour does.

The tour is not only for military, it's open to civilians too ($42 for civilians).

I believe this company has recently started offering tours to the JSA/Panmunjom but it is a bit more expensive than the USO tour. Not sure of the quality of the tour though.

http://www.koreadmztour.com/index.html

I took the USO tour last October '06 - it was really excellent. Highly recommend it! It's also less expensive than all other tours. Not all the tours go to the tunnel - this one does and it was really fun. Frankly by the time I took the tour I was ecstatic to have people to speak English with, not to mention military personnel who serve as your tour guides. We had a Korean guide just for the bus trip to the US base, and honestly, none of us could understand a word he said!

I booked the USO tour scheduled for a few weeks from now....most books I looked at recommend this one for the reasons outlined above...they seem to go 2-3 times a week, maybe more frequently in warmer months.

I took the USO tour a few weeks ago. I must have had the same Korean guide as Rabbitlady! Once you get to the DMZ the US military guides take over and the tour is really fascinating. Be sure to book in advance; on the day I went there were 4 buses and all were full.