Before I get started on Day 3, there is one major discovery that we had made by this point that I had not eleborated on. We have been in the country a bit over 24 hours now, and we had gotten "thank you" down pat (which by the way is Gamsa Hamnida) and were well on our way to haveing mastered "How much is it?" (Eolmayeyo). One thing we were sure about (at least I was sure about) is that Korean girls are probably the amongst the most beautiful creatures I have ever encountered. Don't get me wrong. Japanese girls are cute and some are downright gorgeous, but the Korean girls are all beautiful. Lithe and long, with beautiful eyes, and the habits... oh man! Girls walk down the streets in pairs or threesomes holding each other hands or walking arm in arm constantly! It is so totally cute! The young ones (18-20) make a habit of wearing shoes that are about 2 sizes too big... giving them this super cute look. I don't expect you to understand. Go there and see for yourself.
Now that I've got your attention, lets talk about war. I wasn't aware of it, but the Korean war never actually ended? Did you know that? Nope, rather, the two sides of Korea (the south, and the communist North or DPRK) are actually still in the middle of an over 50 year armistace and cease fire. But it is just that... It has been so long no one really thinks about it, except the Koreans I suppose...
One of the most popular tourist attractions in Korea is the tour of the DMZ. It is a half day trip, costs 55,000 Won (50 bucks) and includes a free lunch. D and I figure that we made it all this way, and N. Korea probably wont go back to war for at least a few more days, so we book a trip. The trip leaves from a nearby hotel much nicer than ours at 8am, and includes a tour of the 3rd tunnel (i'll explain in a second), the Observatory, Doransan Station, freedom bridge, and the DMZ museaum. Plus lunch.. Wicked.
| The hotel where they made me faster, stronger... umm....where we met the tour. | |
| Hee hee... even I found this funny... | |
We waited a bit and the tour guide showed up to pick us up. We had to wait for a third fella to show up, who turned out to be 1)15 minutes late and 2)One of the most dim witted dullards I have ever run across... but I dont have the stregnth in my hands to eloborate on his stupidity here. Lets just say he was from Georgia. You'll have to ask me by voice for the rest... We join up on the tour with the goober, me and D, a Canadain (neufie) by the name of Richard who has been living in Japan for 3 years (Tokyo) and his friend Akiko (Japanese).
We head out of town, on the major highway to North Korea. It is borderd by military pill boxes all the way, with occasional towers, and even the odd tank dug in on a hillside if you can spot them through the Camo... The tour guide is really hot. I MEAN GOOD. Yeah. Good at her job and tells us the story of the DMZ and outlines some of the acts of assault, destruction, and evil that N. Korea has committed. It ends up being really funny in my opinion... She points out the N. Korea Propoganda village. It is a north korean village where no one actually lives.. I don't know why it is there really, it just is... I guess to give the border patrols something to look at. Either way, Richard inquires about South Korean Propoganda...
"There is no propoganda in South Korea," the guide responds amused...
She then points out these huge electic billbords facing into N. Korea. "These signs flash out the message "S. Korea welcomes all defectors" all night..."
Yeah, no propoganda.
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The non-propoganda signs... |
From there we arrive at a small station where we have to change from our local tour bus to an approved one for traveling into the DMZ...
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Of couse we find a small amusement park set up there, just a km or so from the N. Korean Border... |
| Complete with balloons and food. Truth be told I took this picture because it had Power Puff girl balloons. As you may know that cartoon is made by one of my favorite cartoonists (artistically, my favorite) Gennedy Tartakovski (I always get his name wrong....) I indend to send him a copy showing his creations for sale at the Border of the longest running war on earth right now... |  |
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Everyone is buying food, which include these strange little larvea like things... everyone is sure they are some sort of bug. I am sure they are some sort of food. I decide I hav to have one. I buy a cup and share around with everyone, Richard and the Goober included. They are kinda fibrous and really earthy. They aren't wholly unpleasant, but a bit too...coffee like for my tastes... I everyone eats one, (except for me who ate about 6-8 before I gave up) and we head off for the bus. I asked the tour guide later what they were. You sure you want to know? she asks... I nod. Silk worms. |
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From here we head into the more secure area.. The highway is 4 lanes wide, but there are roadblocks up everywhere, and the bus has to slolem in and out of the openings... When we get past inspection (carried out by UN, Machine gun toting guards,) we make our way to the third tunnel. What is the third tunnel? Well it turns out that S. Korea has discovered along the border several tunnels that run from N. Korea to S. Korea. They are several KM long and built by the N. Koreans to allow troops and light vehicles to move underground undetected into S. Korea fror invasion purposes. They have found 4 so far, the last one only 12 years ago, and they can't say autoritatively that there are no more... Our tour takes us down into the third tunnel, 73 M below the Surface, and we can march along for about a Half a KM, where they have blocked off the remaining 750M to the military demarkation line. Unfortanetly, no photography is allowed in the tunnel, (which didn't stop the goober from Georgia...) so you will have to settle for these...
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The unity statue at the entrance to the third tunnell... |
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I wanna go to Hawaii! YAAAYYYY! YAAAYYYY! (they make you wear helmets in the tunnell) |
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The tunnell is really cool, with rough hewn rocks, still bearing the pilot holes for the dynamite. At the end of it lies 3 feet of concertina wire, and a few feet beyond that a metal door, slightly ajar, which reads "Do not enter." Somehow the whole thing seems hilarious to me...
After the tunnel we see a small movie on the DMZ, it's history, and how the last 50 years of no one going in has made it a natural paradise... The museaum is really interesting listing all the transgressions and agressions of N. Korea against their innocent little brother to the south...no propoganda in South Korea. I swear eventually it starts to sound like a soap opera...
"In 1973 N. Korea killed 12 S. Korean citizens. In response, we sent them flowers."
"In 1974, N. Korea ran over 20 puppies on purpose. We sent a card of apology."
"in 1975 N. Korea stole Christmas. In response we made them a sweater..."
The whole things sounds like this one angry middle child beating it's ever patient, loving, forgiving, little brother Jesus...
From there we head up to the observatory from where you can look into the DMZ and finally take some pics from "behind the yellow line". D is itchin to make it past that line... being a shutter bug... What was really interesting is the little flags that line the raod. Outlining some areas as white and some as red. It looks just like driving along any road in Ontario, up a small foresty hill, except that the othe side of the guard rail where the flags are is an area occupied by active land mines... They are still working on weeding them all out. Soldiers from 50 years ago that don't know there is a cease fire, still vigilant, ready to give theirs to take any other life... Even I don't laugh at that.
We make our way to the observatory where D strides up to the yellow line with joy and readies to take a picture as the guard starts his speech. D is cut short by the guard. "HEY!" The guard stops his speech short to point at the yellow line...Instantly we are understood, likely by the aura of this guard who has stopped thousands of tourists who have made the same mistake... from BEHIND the line... not past it... of course.. now we get it. that way you cant move right up to the rail with your high power lense and take pics of the DMZ up close... D nods and puts his camera away. The guard starts his speech up again about this and that the properties of the DMZ and such. Then the goober pulls out his Digital Camera and points into the DMZ. The guard stops and storms over... I guess he missed the exchange with D... and the multiple warnings. The guard comes over and demands to see the memory of the camera. "show me the Memory" The goober fails to understand... The guard starts explaing all this to the goober as we break up and have a look at the DMZ for ourselves...
Of course the pics are taken from behind the yellow line, and as such you cant see much but trust me, we were there...
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The guard speaks with Richard (in perfect English I might add...) |
| Me and D and the DMZ. As you can see, you gotta stand pretty far back... |  |
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The only half decent Pic of the DMZ I could get... It's a shame, if it weren't so foggy you could just about make out the N. Korean flag flying over the DMZ military post inside the DMZ. |
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Another non Propoganda sign facing into the DMZ that reads, "North and South Korea... we are all one family." |
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Next up is Doransan station. the Last train station before the line goes into N. Korea and is blocked. There is a major effort on now to re-open the line and allow trans to move through to North Korea. They hope that by 2008 their goal would be realized. If that happend you could catch the Siberian rail from there and get the train from Seoul S. Korea to Scotland. That would be a hell of a ride...
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Doransan Station |
| The pristine interior, seeing almost no use whatsoever. |  |
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The proposed route. |
| Your lucky Jackie, he almost signed up on the spot for Korean Military service... I had to talk him out of it by pointing out even standing around all day was more work than he does now... |  |
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The monument to all the families who donated to the project to re-open the line between North and South. |
Last stop on the tour, freedom bridge... this small wooden bridge leading into North Korea is famous for 1000 of S. Koreans repatriating across it and occasional exchanges of POW's and other heartfelt moments...
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The freedom bridge. It leds up to a barred fence covered in Concertina wire where you are free to buy some gifts from the gift shop. |
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The swimming pool at freedom bridge. I dont know why they built this pool the shape of Korea at the freedom bridge. D and I assume that clustering the border with amusement parks and pools is a way of not having S. Korean propoganda... After all the whole country is full of em...right? |
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The bell at freedom bridge. Made from melted down shells and guns. |
| Me and D at freedom bridge. |  |
It's about 1pm now and we are starved... thank goodness it is time for lunch...
D opts for the Garubi (grilled meat) again... While I enjoy bibimbap. (yes.. you pronounce it Bee-Beem-Bop) a stone crock of cooked rice, seeweed, egg, meat and veggies... Ummm... good...
Finally the tour is over. We make a small stop at the really boring Amethyst authority (it comes with the tour since Ginsing and Amethysts are some of the major exports of S.Korea) and are dropped back off at the hotel. We have a bit of time and are at a loss for what to do... looking at our list of things to see we are down to a few but one of them is one of my favs... river cruise! nothing is quite so relaxing as a river cruise and Seoul has a river flowing right through it. We hop on a train and head for the Pier... When we get there we find a beach in full swing. We miss the boat and have to wait an hour, but have no problem occupying ourselves on that busy beach, watching the people and the beautiful girls lying in the sun holding hands...
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The wonderful bike and skate paths of the beach... |
| The riverside and open air concert theatre |  |
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Once on the river we were able to get some pics of the city... |
| Skyscrapers at sunset... |  |
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One of the many bridges across the Han |
| Me on the Han |  |
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The National Assembly. |
The river cruise took about and hour and we had a pleasnt time taking in the sites, enjoying the breeze and watching the cute kids play on the boat (including one who liked D so much he tried to shove his hand in D's mouth!) and then with our last rays of sunlight headed for the Buddhist district. Seoul is home to some really old Buddhist temples, Buddhism having come to Japan from Korea and to Korea from China... on and on... and there is a part of town filled with old temples (under construction) and shops dedicated to Buddhism. You can buy everything there from robes to beads to statues... everything for the monk on the go...
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Jogyesa Temple. The central temple of the largest order of Buddhism. |
| One of the outer bulidings |  |
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While it is not impolite to enter a buddhist service, I elected not to. The branch of Buddhism that I throw my hat on has not prepared me at all for knowing the ettiquette and rituals... |
| The outher bell house. I am not sure where, but somewhere on the temple grounds is supposed to be the buddhas Sarira. The Sarira is a relic left behind by a Buddha when he dies... |  |
Night having fallen we walked back through the very busy tourist and antique district where all manor of beautiful pottery and such were on display and for sale. We picked up some souvenirs, stopped for a bite to eat at some very touristy places (pizza) but hey, were on vacatoin and pizza is just WAY too expensive in Japan... and called it a night...