Celebrating April Fool's Day with urban exploration

A manipulated image shows a tour bus passing through a Seoul urban renewal zone. The image was intended to emphasize the exploitative nature of poverty tourism./ Courtesy of Ron Bandun

By Ron Bandun

It's the most wonderful time of the year. My favorite holiday, April Fool's Day. My editor warned me there will be no pranks printed in the newspaper. So instead, I'd like to share some of my most legendary urban exploration April Fool's Day jokes of years past.

I got my start in 2008 by claiming to have visited the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang. I combined pictures of the then-abandoned shell with miscellaneous concrete construction pictures, and fooled a lot of people. Months later, one of the most popular expat blogs about Korea linked it before noticing its publishing date.

For 2009, I made up another North Korea story. This time, I found a tunnel while hiking in the DMZ. I went through and came out in North Korea, where I was arrested immediately. But the North Koreans found my story amusing, so they showed me around Gaeseong before sending me home through Panmunjeom. My commentary included criticisms of North Korea's dull architecture while sharing pictures of actual South Korean apartment complexes. This joke was especially tasteless because journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee had just been caught sneaking into the country.

The next year my hoax exploration was limited to South Korea. The former Seoul City Hall was left in a half-demolished state, as the city had tried and failed to knock it down before it could be granted heritage status. I claimed to have explored it, which was something I really wanted to do but failed to. The pictures I shared were my own photos from other abandoned buildings across Korea. I shocked more people later in the day when I claimed the city government sent me a letter accusing me of violating the National Security Act by posting anti-government ideas and threatening me with capital punishment. In reality, it was based on a letter I got from Suwon City Hall after sharing photos of Woncheon Lake Land. I added mention of the death penalty because there was concern the government of the time was using the law to persecute political opponents. My mom panicked and contacted me, thinking City Hall had not taken kindly to my joke rather than recognizing it was the second wave of the prank.

In 2011, just a little over four months after the Yeonpyeong Island bombardment, the island was still in ruins, and reporters were visiting to share pictures for readers to gawk at the devastation. I posted a few pictures of an abandoned neighborhood in Seoul, claiming they were from Yeonpyeong Island, so people could express their shock before being reminded large-scale destruction happens in Seoul all the time.

My 2013 prank was ambitious. I made up a company named KorUE Tours, offering a tour parodying poverty tourism which was popular in the U.S. and catching on in Korea. It was a four-day bus tour intended to be as unfeasible as possible. Prefaced by a brief 10-minute talk on safety and ethics, it started in Seoul, and included a bus ride through the narrow Pimatgol alley. On the second day we were to take the secret Cheong Wa Dae tunnel to Gwacheon, and also find time to visit Cheorwon and Songdo. Day 3 was country-wide, visiting Yangyang International Airport in Gangwon Province, Yeosu's expo grounds, and Okpo Land on Geoje Island. The final day's plan was to take a ferry to Nagasaki to visit Hashima Island, one of the world's most famous abandoned sites, and then be back in Seoul in time for dinner. I then used an alias Facebook account to ridicule the tour, explaining why it was impossible and deriding all such tours in one big breath.

In 2016 I moved to a new apartment, but I claimed on April 1 that my landlord had evicted me for having pets. I claimed I had been moved into a room in N Seoul Tower, and shared pictures taken from the revolving top floor of a nearby city government building, under renovation at the time. I was surprised how many people believed you could live in the tower.

Then 2017 was a big year. Then-President Park Geun-hye awaited the Constitutional Court's ruling on her impeachment, and newly elected President Trump hadn't yet sent Korea a new ambassador. So I claimed to have explored both Cheong Wa Dae and the U.S. embassy. I even shared a lost dog poster, as Park had been criticized for abandoning her nine Jindo dogs when she moved out. And in the U.S. embassy I supposedly found golf-themed pornography.

What have I planned for this year? You'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out for sure!

Ron Bandun is a self-described "anarchaeologist."

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