DMZ

Brady and I went to the DMZ on Saturday. The DMZ is the De-Militarized Zone, an area between North Korea and South Korea.  "De-militarized" is an ironic name for it, because it's the most heavily fortified border in the world.  I'm going to give a little Korean history now, because it makes the DMZ easier to understand:

Even the DMZ is a little cartoony. 

Military checkpoint on the bus.

• Up until 1910, Korea (the entire Korean peninsula) was run by the series of dynasties, the most recent of which was the Joseon Dynasty. 
• In 1910 Japan invaded and occupied Korea for the next 35 years.  During this time, no one was allowed to speak Korean, all Koreans were issued Japanese birth certificates with Japanese names, and the history books were re-written to get rid of any trace of Korean history. 
• When Japan lost WWII in 1945, they left Korea.  The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to split Korea, with the Soviets having control of the north and the U.S. controlling the south. 
• In 1950, the North invaded the South, in an effort to unify the countries.  It was a proxy war, with the Soviet Union propping up the North and the U.S. propping up the South.
• In 1953 a ceasefire was signed, although the war has never officially ended.  The ceasefire established the 38th parallel as the line between the two countries, and the DMZ was created.  
• After the end of the Korean War the Soviet Union continued to support North Korea, and things were okay for them until the Soviet Union fell in the 80s.  Since then things have become much worse for North Koreans.  Starvation is a huge problem, and they have no contact with the outside world at all.

So, for the tour that we went on we went to a few different locations along the border. We saw two tunnels that the South Koreans have discovered, out of four that they found in the 70s.  The North Koreans dug all these tunnels headed towards Seoul, with the goal of sneaking into South Korea and invading from here.  The North Koreans seem to have a desire to reunify the countries, but they would want the entire peninsula to be communist, and under the rule of Kim Jong-un.  But it's hard to tell what they really want. South Koreans, too, want to reunify, but that would put an enormous financial strain on their economy.  

This is the Bridge to Freedom, where POWs were released.  The ribbons are messages to family that is stuck on the other side of the border.  

Between the 1980s and 2000 there were some movements toward negotiation, reunification, and peace.  There were family meetings, where families that were divided between North and South Korea after the war could meet each other.  We saw some pictures of brothers who were seeing each other for the first time in fifty years.  It was pretty powerful.  Madeline Albright went to North Korea to have discussions, and there was a train built from South Korea to very close to North Korea.  They wanted to build a train line that would go through North Korea and hook up with the Trans Siberian railroad, so it would be possible to get from South Korea to Europe by train.  However, after George Bush came into office in 2000 and gave his Axis of Evil speech, we stopped speaking with North Korea, and there was no more progress made.  One of the stops on the tour was this abandoned train station.  You can get to there from other points in South Korea, but it doesn't go any further north, so now it serves as a tourist destination and a really nice bathroom. 

One of the more interesting parts of the day was meeting a North Korean defector.  He spent about 30 minutes answering our questions.  He was a military doctor in North Korea, and they sent him to Germany in 2010 (I'm not sure why.)  He was supposed to come back, but on his way home his train stopped in Moscow and he got out, found the United Nations office, and asked for amnesty.  He had planned it in advance, but didn't tell his family, so he left his wife and kids there.  We asked him what the hardest part about leaving was, and he said that now, in South Korea, he doesn't know anyone, doesn't have any family or feel like part of a community.  Plus he can't practice medicine, because they don't recognize the training and experience he got in North Korea.  In North Korea they are extremely isolated from the rest of the world.  There's no internet, so media from other countries at all.  They are told that their country is the best, most technologically-advanced country in the world.  He said that in school they learn normal things, but also spend a long time learning about Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sun, and the other leaders of the country.  

We asked what the average North Koreans thinks/feels about the regime, and he said that about two-thirds used to support the regime, but now things are changing, and about two-thirds is against the regime.  Since things were relatively good for them up until the Soviet Union fell, and that was less than 25 years ago, people know that things have changed.  Even if they don't know exactly what's going on, they can be unsatisfied with the government that their standard of living has gone down so dramatically.

We asked how his reception in South Korea, by normal South Koreans, has been.  He said that they tend to think that he's lazy, because he lived in a communist country and so he didn't have to work as hard.  I've heard a lot of examples of South Koreans having negative attitudes about all foreigners.  I wish he had been more accepted in South Korea.  

Mudfest

Last weekend we went to the Boryeong Mud Festival.  Brady and I went with his friends Stefan and Nathan, both of whom he knows from West Virginia, and a couple of their friends.  The Mud Festival takes place at a beach that has mud that, supposedly, has healing properties.  Even when there's not a mudfest, there's a bath house there that uses the mud.  What it seems to turn into, however, is Daytona Spring Break '97.  A bunch of foreigners getting really drunk and making bad decisions (not us, we were pretty low-key.)  I tried to look up the official history of the Mud Festival, and this is what the website says: "Established the Foundation Act is an attempt to achieve viable and that some programs, such as payable holroseogi Boryeong Mud Festival was successful evaluation accepted."  So, there you go.  

There were a lot of events, like mud wrestling and mud sliding, but it was really crowded where those events were happening, so we just slathered ourselves in mud and hung out on the beach.  It started getting rainy and a little cold in the afternoon, so we went back to the hotel and cleaned up, and mostly hung out there for the evening.


One of the disappointing parts of the weekend was the behavior of some of our fellow Americans.  Brady and I live near the Osan Air Force base, so sometimes we see people from the base out.  The first ones we saw were on the train there, drinking heavily at 11am.  I don't care if people are drinking, but they became increasingly loud and obnoxious.  When we got off the train, they immediately took their shirts off and lit up cigarettes.  A Korean man told them, in perfect English "this is a no smoking area," and they responded "smoking area?  This is a smoking area?  You want a cigarette?"  Then started actually chanting "Team America."  And on the way back, we were standing on a crowded train platform and someone started setting off fireworks.  I couldn't tell who it was, but I would guess it was the Americans.  Most of the people I've met from the military base are very nice and respectful, but some of them must have missed whatever cultural sensitivity training the military provides, and it gives us all a bad name, and is really, really disappointing.  They could do so much good here, and put forth such a good impression of our country, but it just takes a couple of douchebags to ruin things.  Arrgh.  

Hakampo

Two weekends ago Brady and I went to Hakampo, which is a beach on the western side of Korea.  It was Brady's first weekend off after working three Saturdays in a row, so we wanted to do something fun outside.  We had heard that Anmyeondo is a nice island, so we called the tourist hotline to ask which beaches near there allowed camping.  They mentioned a few beaches, and Hakampo was the easiest to get to.  We took a bus there (we take buses everywhere, unless one of our friends with a car is going.)  It only took about 3 1/2 hours to get there.  You never know, with Korean beaches, how many people are going to be there.  In a country of 50 million people, things get crowded.  But there were hardly any people there.  When we first arrived it was low tide, and the water was really really far out.  And there are several small islands.  One of which you can walk to at low tide, but the bridge disappeared when the tide came in.  

We found a camp spot in the shade and put our stuff down, then went exploring around the beach.  There were a lot of people there digging for clams and mussels.  There were no other foreigners there, which makes me think that it's more of a locals beach, which is nice.  I don't know why, exactly, there were so few people there.  I guess others beaches, like Daejeon and Muuido are considered "the" beach to go to, and people don't branch out much.  Anyway, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves, so we lay down and promptly fell asleep and got sunburned.  We had sunscreen on, but the sun was much stronger than we were expecting.  When we woke up the tide was coming in, and another couple's stuff was about to be washed out to sea, so we pulled it up the beach.  They were off walking, I think.  The tide was coming in aggressively, and they were nowhere to be found, so we had to save their stuff again.  When they got back another Korean guy told them what had happened, and we were rewarded with two beers and a package of imitation crab meat.  Because that's the kind of thing they bring to snack on at the beach.

Later that evening we played cribbage, then cooked dinner on the beach.  We bought a small stove and pot here so we can cook when we camp.  We just made Ramen, and watched the sun set.  That evening we walked around the town.  It's a small town.  There were mostly hotels and vacation rentals, and a lot of families.  I liked it because Korea/Koreans can be very ostentatious, and this place was pretty mellow.  There were families setting off fireworks and flying lanterns by the beach.

The next day we hung out at the beach for a while.  It was misty in the morning, and some of the islands were obscured, which looked really pretty.  Then we packed up and headed to the bus stop.  There's no bus schedule, and buses aren't very frequent, but we found a picnic table in the shade near the bus stop and played cards there till the bus came.  It was a very relaxing, nice weekend, and we'll probably go back to Hakampo again.