The morning after President Trump threatened North Korea with ‘fire and fury’, we took a drive to its borders.
That might sound reckless, but no more so than travelling to South Korea in the first place, where Seoul’s 10 million inhabitants live with the implied threat of Kim Jong-un’s pugnacious outpourings and crowings over his nation’s latest missile tests.
Ask an inhabitant how they feel and most seem sanguine – the heightened verbal spat between the US and North Korea “is between them, and not about South Korea”, says Ssangyong’s Kyung Taek Yoon. If the glorious leader does go nuclear at Seoul, there’ll be little time even to know about it, still less think, the capital being just 45 seconds away by missile.
So it’s difficult not to feel a frisson of excitement as we climb aboard a Ssangyong Rexton for the journey north. The Rexton is just the kind of car an Armageddon survivor might need. It’s quite tall, providing an earlier opportunity to see an enemy, it has plenty of room for supplies and its robust body
 sits on a substantial chassis that accommodates a decently powerful diesel engine and no-nonsense part-time four-wheel drive, complete with low range. You will also be travelling in relative luxury should you survive to greet a post-apocalyptic world.
The cabin’s allure holds good as we break free of traffic-infested Seoul. We pass fields, villages and, for long coastal stretches, spirals of barbed wire punctuated with camouflaged observation posts. See this and you see the reality of a country living under threat, so it’s a surprise to find a funfair next to the car park for visitors to the Demilitarised Zone.
The DMZ is the strip of no man’s land that separates North and South Korea. A mildly propagandist video later tells us that the DMZ is the home of wildlife that flourishes unthreatened by man. Tourism is a major activity along this part of
 the DMZ. You can joke about being nuked on the Big Dipper, but the possibility is real. We get to within 170 metres of North Korea, in a dank tunnel dynamited from granite. This is Tunnel 3, one of four discovered by South Korea in 1974, 1977, 1978 and 1990, each running beneath the border and capable of allowing 30,000 soldiers to pass through per hour. North Korea reluctantly admitted to digging the tunnels, but smeared them with lies about coal mining, which is a geological impossibility in the area.
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Ssongyang Rexton
Maybe £37k is rather ambitious for the top of the range Rexton but it's just about Landcruiser entry point and mid range Shogun. The cheaper versions however look to be pretty good value for what the vehicle is. a proper 4x4 with a separate chassis,it'll be interesting to see how Mitsubishi UK price the Shogun Sport when it goes on sale which is likely to be the Rexton's main competition. Will the petrol version be sold as well in the UK?
Ssangyong
Great review
Of the DMZ.
...and you were expecting...
It did actually say under the headline that this was no place to test a car so to expect a car test seems a little strange.
beechie wrote:
Not as strange as expecting a DMZ review in a car publication. Especially when they say under the headline 'Richard Brenner takes a SR there anyway'.
Not that I'm complaining, it WAS a good review of the DMZ.