I am writing this listening to the Nutcracker and hearing one of my neighbors continually break something that must resemble glass because I can hear it shatter! Couple of updates on me, a group of us went out for raw fish (I must digress here and talk about the ‘sushi’ here. All of the sushi places have large tanks in front of them filled with live fish, shrimp, octopus, crabs, and assorted shellfish. All of the fish is killed right then and there, so super fresh, and yummy! When they serve the raw fish, they serve it by itself, but you are also served many side dishes…Korean meals are known for their many side dishes, such as kimchi!, onion salad, seaweed soup, lettuce, peppers, soups, ect). Well, one of the side dishes they served was oysters, and three out of seven of us dove in and enjoyed us some free oysters. Needless to say, all three of us called into work on Friday because of food poisoning. I have never had food poisoning before, but man, this lasted for about 36 hours and was awful! In complete better health now though and know, oysters…maybe not again….in Ilsan that is!
On Saturday I withstood my sickness because I was committed to go to the DMZ (De-militarized Zone). The DMZ is literally the line that separates North Korea and South Korea and is the most heavily militarized border in the world. We made three different stops along the DMZ. The first stop we made was on a military base. A US solider took us around the camp. We stopped at the Freedom Building, where if a North Korean native lived in South Korea and wanted to return to North Korea they would meet in this building. On the other side of the DMZ North Korea has their equilivant to the freedom building, which they had to add onto in size after South Korea built theirs so that North Korea’s is larger in size. A similar act was done with a flag pole, which true to North Korean’s personality; they now have the largest flag pole at the DMZ. We had to act accordingly at the camp, which included walking in lines and making no hand movements since North Korea was watching us through video cameras. We saw North Korean soldiers on the other side of the DMZ, which is what the picture is of at the beginning of this blog. On the DMZ there was a few trailers, the blue ones where South Korea’s and the white ones where North Korea’s. One of the white ones was referred to as the “monkey house” because North Korea soldiers make death gestures to the South Korean and American soldiers.
North Korea tries to make their side of the border look very tempting, for example they have a propaganda village. They use to have large signs and speakers calling out to the rest of the world things like ‘the paradise of no tax’. Not too long ago, they agreed to turn the speakers off and take down the signs.
There is a large area of land called Peace Village where a group of people live that have been there for generations and endured the Korean War. They are classed as South Korean citizens, however are exempt from paying tax and military service, have a comfortable life with lots of land a large income (80,000 US dollars a year) however lead a strict life with curfews and other requirements.
One of the stops included walking through an underground tunnel. North Korea has made four tunnels that lead from North Korea and end in Seoul. They assume that there at least ten tunnels total that exist, but only four have been found. Inside the tunnels they wrote ‘coal mine’. North Korea has blamed South Korea for the tunnels and has claimed that they are coal mines, though the earth’s ground in that area is made of granite and all the dynamite has been made in the direction to Seoul. We were able to go through the third tunnel, which is surprisingly large, and can have 30,000 soldiers in Seoul within an hour.
The last stop we made was an area where you could look at North Korea through binoculars. Here we could see a cut down wire tower that use to give North Korea signals from South Korea, now North Korea has no access to the outside world. Can you imagine not knowing anything about what is going on in the world and relying on the information from your crazy communist leader? You were also able to see factories that belong to South Korea, but are in North Korea. The employees are North Koreans and make $5/hour, which is twice the amount earned by others in North Korea.
Since the DMZ has not been touched in years, a lot of wildlife has grown and it now is home to many endangered animals and plants. I was surprised to hear that leopards, tigers, and bears lived in the area.
The DMZ proved to be an interesting and intriguing place. I am now even more curious to go to North Korea, though it’s nearly impossible to get over there. It saddens me to think of all the people living in this repressed country and nobody is doing anything about it! My fifth graders were required to write a persuasive paper on anything they wanted and two of them choose to write about how they think we should invade and unite North Korea, a common mindset here. It is typical to see North Korean protests in Seoul as well, a common one is of a man in a uniform and a girl with a pillowcase over her head and hands tied behind her back. It is a demonstration to make people aware of the limited human rights in North Korea. Hopefully someday, North Korea can be freed.
On Saturday I withstood my sickness because I was committed to go to the DMZ (De-militarized Zone). The DMZ is literally the line that separates North Korea and South Korea and is the most heavily militarized border in the world. We made three different stops along the DMZ. The first stop we made was on a military base. A US solider took us around the camp. We stopped at the Freedom Building, where if a North Korean native lived in South Korea and wanted to return to North Korea they would meet in this building. On the other side of the DMZ North Korea has their equilivant to the freedom building, which they had to add onto in size after South Korea built theirs so that North Korea’s is larger in size. A similar act was done with a flag pole, which true to North Korean’s personality; they now have the largest flag pole at the DMZ. We had to act accordingly at the camp, which included walking in lines and making no hand movements since North Korea was watching us through video cameras. We saw North Korean soldiers on the other side of the DMZ, which is what the picture is of at the beginning of this blog. On the DMZ there was a few trailers, the blue ones where South Korea’s and the white ones where North Korea’s. One of the white ones was referred to as the “monkey house” because North Korea soldiers make death gestures to the South Korean and American soldiers.
North Korea tries to make their side of the border look very tempting, for example they have a propaganda village. They use to have large signs and speakers calling out to the rest of the world things like ‘the paradise of no tax’. Not too long ago, they agreed to turn the speakers off and take down the signs.
There is a large area of land called Peace Village where a group of people live that have been there for generations and endured the Korean War. They are classed as South Korean citizens, however are exempt from paying tax and military service, have a comfortable life with lots of land a large income (80,000 US dollars a year) however lead a strict life with curfews and other requirements.
One of the stops included walking through an underground tunnel. North Korea has made four tunnels that lead from North Korea and end in Seoul. They assume that there at least ten tunnels total that exist, but only four have been found. Inside the tunnels they wrote ‘coal mine’. North Korea has blamed South Korea for the tunnels and has claimed that they are coal mines, though the earth’s ground in that area is made of granite and all the dynamite has been made in the direction to Seoul. We were able to go through the third tunnel, which is surprisingly large, and can have 30,000 soldiers in Seoul within an hour.
The last stop we made was an area where you could look at North Korea through binoculars. Here we could see a cut down wire tower that use to give North Korea signals from South Korea, now North Korea has no access to the outside world. Can you imagine not knowing anything about what is going on in the world and relying on the information from your crazy communist leader? You were also able to see factories that belong to South Korea, but are in North Korea. The employees are North Koreans and make $5/hour, which is twice the amount earned by others in North Korea.
Since the DMZ has not been touched in years, a lot of wildlife has grown and it now is home to many endangered animals and plants. I was surprised to hear that leopards, tigers, and bears lived in the area.
The DMZ proved to be an interesting and intriguing place. I am now even more curious to go to North Korea, though it’s nearly impossible to get over there. It saddens me to think of all the people living in this repressed country and nobody is doing anything about it! My fifth graders were required to write a persuasive paper on anything they wanted and two of them choose to write about how they think we should invade and unite North Korea, a common mindset here. It is typical to see North Korean protests in Seoul as well, a common one is of a man in a uniform and a girl with a pillowcase over her head and hands tied behind her back. It is a demonstration to make people aware of the limited human rights in North Korea. Hopefully someday, North Korea can be freed.
