North Korea (조선민주주의인민공화국)

People keep on telling us that North Korea is a scary place, which I guess made the quote of “I’m going to die! And I thought the plane was going to kill me.” This quote was however not heard in North Korea or anywhere near the border. It was heard in Seoul, after walking past the 50th shop of … I think Koreans call it food but that must be one of those misprints in the dictionary.

We took a trip to the border of the DMZ (though as far as I understand it, I was still slightly short of actually entering the DMZ, getting to the Freedom bridge and the 3rd infiltration tunnel. In terms of a tourist attraction, it was a km of walking, most of which was down a steep incline, and the rest required me to constantly bump my head against the ceiling, to then find myself in front of a wall with a window through which I could see the next wall that was blocking the tunnel on the south Korean side. No pictures please, and don’t just stand there as there are a lot of other people who want to see this tiny window at the end of this narrow tunnel.

The actual symbolic notion of standing at the border was a little more daunting than the dramatic video we got shown or this tunnel could actually express. The outlook where we could look over the DMZ and into the northern part of the DMZ was far better in this regard. A very obvious hint about where the northern part of it starts is also due to the fact that there are basically no trees on the northern side, having been taking down as building or energy supplies. Now if I wouldn’t have had 10 coaches worth of other tourists with which I had to share this sight, I might have had the time to let the gravity of such a sight sink in a bit better.

Since it rained a little bit yesterday (and by a little bit I mean like 3 drops) we were hoping that it clears up the air a little bit. That didn’t really happen which meant that while the N Seoul tower initially looked to be really far away, it rapidly seemed to be coming closer as we climbed he hill. The same applied for the very bleak view we saw looking down the hill, but what really got us was that when we got home, we looked to find the tower and could only see the very bottom of the base. Luckily doesn’t seem to be anything or have a high enough concentration to affect me yet but … still seems scary.

Today appeared to involve a lot of walking which was nice. Tomorrow will however probably be the last day in Seoul so we need to be a little bit more strategic in what we want to see. And then it’s off to Busan.