this. will. be. lengthy.
prepare yourselves accordingly.
(for instance - if Lindsey decides she wants to read this, Mom, inform her it may well be of "chapter book" length - the prospect of which I hope she is finding less daunting everyday. Tell her I say to keep up the good work.)
For you of ages above 7, here we go.
North Korea attacked a South Korean island (which on a map certainly looks like it should belong to North Korea). This came after the SK army performed military training drills on the island that NK claimed provoked them.
The attack was with an estimated 100 shells and, for a small island, caused quite of destruction. 4 people have been declared dead, 2 soldiers and 2 civilians, and the island was evacuated of civilian presence.
This, if you read any form of American news, you probably know. Now I'll give you the personal perspective you, more or less, asked for by coming to this blog.
First, I will, at length, describe my trip to the DMZ last weekend and then talk about the North Korean attack. If you are only interested in hearing my thoughts on the second of these, skip down to past the picture of me standing on a block and being pointed at by a South Korean soldier.........although merely that description should warrant enough curiosity to at least read a bit of this post.
For me, the attack came with curious timing. The attack was on Wednesday and just 4 days prior, I had made my visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) - the 4kilometer border that separates the two Koreas. It has been estimated to be the most militarized and guarded strip of land in the world and the tour certainly did little to disprove this point.
Everything at the DMZ is hyper-intense. Everything.
Down to when you can and cannot take pictures. Why can't you at certain points? Because they worry that North Korea may happen across your measly Facebook album and discover unknown military checkpoints/bases/locations, etc.
You cannot stray from your tour guide. Not even for one second. You are accounting for while you are in the DMZ. After going "in" you get to explore some things on the south Korean side where you have a bit more freedom and are, thus, more touristy - but I'll get to that.
I paid a little extra money for my DMZ trip. There are several options open for foreigners to take a tour up there. Since I only did one and many of my friends here have not gone yet - I cannot compare the options to know what the extra money bought.....
We left from the USO base in Seoul at 7:30 or so and arrived at the JSA base (Joint Security Area) at around 9pm. In a place called Panmunjong - we first visited the US/South Korean military camp (featuring the world's most dangerous golf course, a one-hole green surrounded by a potentially live mine field).
This is at the 38th parallel, the 2.5 mile WIDE border the divides the two Koreas.
The JSA was (and really still is) the only part of the DMZ that both North & South Korea patrol. It is the only part with buildings and in the middle has sort of a campus that represents the point where the countries come together. Even this, though, is heavily segregated. With buildings having different color roofs and walls to designate as SK/US democracy and NK/.... Communism.
We had a tour guide on the bus - a Korean woman - but when we got to the base we got a new guide JSA in the DMZ . Below is a picture of him (American soldier) and me.
While in the JSA area, we were given strict instructions to follow every order and not stray from the group. We also were forbidden from doing any actions that might either provoke or inspire a North Korean response. In fact, this is the attitude that the South Korean military takes - one of no emotion - because they do not want to elicit any sort of response from their enemy. And according to the stories we were told, the North Korean soldiers LOVE to provoke their neighbors. They have a building that has been called the "monkey house" because soldiers go in there and dance around trying to taunt and tease the ultra-stern South Koreans.
Each soldier wears thick sunglasses and stands with his fists closed.
While in the JSA - we were able to spot a North Korean military man spying on us through his binoculars. This picture isn't great but you can see him. He was maybe 75-100 yards from us at the North Korean main building on the campus.
So we got to go in one of the buildings (where I took the picture with the SK soldier) and I got to step on the North Korean "side" of the JSA - which is pretty much the closest you can get to the country without some crazy propaganda travel visa. It was pretty cool.
But again, the whole scene up there is wrought with the air of tension and seriousness.
This is a picture that has some of the campus in it. The blue buildings are the SK/democracy ones. White ones are communist. The large building in the background is the "headquarters" (I guess you could call it that) building for North Korea. In front of me is the SK equivalent, a nice glass building called "Peace Tower", but we were, for some reason, not permitted to take photographs of it.
After this main part of the JSA, we went to a tall hill and had a great view for miles. Unfortunately, it was a foggy day so the views weren't as good as usual, but still interested. At the certain point we were brought, we were surrounded by North Korea in 3 directions. Just an odd twist in the land but we could see into it. Besides a few guard towers, there was nothing there. Just pristine landscape, nice rolling hills and trees. It was, in short, quite beautiful.
The one thing you did see was a small village with an absolutely, ridiculously enormous flag pole. This has been deemed "Propaganda Village" - because as of a few years ago it had a loud microphone system that would, for all hours of the day, loudly broadcast propaganda touting Kim Jong-Il and North Korea. It also had quite disparaging remarks about South Korea.
Every report has informed South Korean intelligence that Propaganda Village is a faux village. No one lives there. There are houses, storefronts and the works, but it is just for show. They are nice houses too, but for naught. The only people ever seen in the village are people for the raising and lowering of the flag - which is estimated to weight 600 pounds. Yikes.
I'm going to link to a random site for my information on the village/flag and for its pictures because they are a lot better than mine.
and yes, it is considered the tallest flagpole in the world. they told us that it was once very tall but South Korea decided to build a taller one and did. Not to be outdone, North Korea made theirs even taller just to make the statement. Now there are two giant flagpoles facing each other from across the DMZ - sort of symbolically. Also, the NK flag is so large that they cannot put it up during inclimate weather for fear that it will crumble from its own weight in wind or rain.
Our last stop at the JSA was The Bridge of No Return. A crickety-old thing that separates the "sides" of the JSA, the bridge got its name from the end of the Korean War. After the armistice was signed, all the captured POWs and personnel were given the option to cross back to their respective sides, with the distinct resignation that they would NEVER be able to return back. Thus, the moniker. It certainly has a haunting feeling that hangs over it.
korean name: 돌아올 수 없는 다리
From there we left the JSA and said goodbye to our American leader.
We visited the 3rd tunnel next. Sitting safely (I say that, of course, relatively) in South Korea, the 3rd tunnel site has become sort of the touristy focal point of the DMZ.
The history would eponymously (word?) point out that this was the 3rd tunnel in a series of tunnels. And indeed, starting in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s, South Korea discovered a series of infiltrating underground tunnels coming in from the North. The discoveries were made mostly from information given by detractors. These tunnels all sort of head toward Seoul but from all different directions. North Korea claims, officially, that they were used for "mining" or "resources" but it was/is pretty clear that at one point they were meant for a planned attack.
Anyway, we took a very long descent down and then quickly toward a part of the tunnel itself. It's way down there! And the tour sort of explained how it was found, how it was effectively made useless by South Korea and details of that sort.
As I said, the area has been done up by the local city for tourists. Here's a picture of me with the more-than-half ironic large letters denoted the DMZ area.
At the tunnel is a large theater showing a film about the DMZ and then a museum that discussed various historical points and references. It included a few quarrels that have taken place along the border in the nearly 60 years of its existence.
After the 3rd tunnel we ate lunch and then our last stop was at Dorosan Station. This is a now defunct train station. At one time, though, train travel was allowed through North Korea and so South Korea could connect, by land, to the rest of the Eurasian continent. No longer.
But the station is still preserved how it was and it still features a platform to Pyongyang. That and they have stamps of the old ticket design from Dorosan to the North Korean capital. Pretty interesting.
And that concluded my tour of the DMZ. I took many more pictures - some of which you can find on facebook, some may show up on a google pictures account I make when I get around to it. I've really only detailed the most important parts of the tour and didn't do much with the intangibles of it - feelings, smells, aura, etc. I'll just reiterate how serious the whole affair has become - even if it is a guided tour. The South Korean military takes extra security measures to make sure there are no attacks on tour groups as that might cause a large international outcry and just isn't something they'd want to deal with.
I'll leave you on this picture - of a South Korean soldier telling me I could not take a picture. We were at a second observation place - one with a wide-spanning view into NK. There was a line about 30 feet behind the edge of the observation deck. The line was a photo line and no one was allowed to snap a picture from in front of it. They had binocular stands you could use (if you paid) to peer into the northern country but they couldn't risk you taking pictures. Not realizing the gravity - I grabbed one of the child platforms from the binocular stands and brought it behind the line for a better picture. A serious no-no of which I was alerted by this (actually extremely polite) soldier. His job is to inform tourists they cannot take pictures. All day.
Alright, now North Korea situation.
I will first say that the media has blown this out of proportion. All my friends here have acknowledged this just the same and many have already focused blog posts on it.
CNN, my god.
They ran a story today about how Seoul is in a state of crisis.
Certainly there were some riots. Some bad ones. But to suggest that a city as wide-waisted as Seoul is shut-down or chaotic is to be a fool. I was in Seoul last night - things ran on the usual.
CNN makes it seem as though war may be imminent, that Koreans are clutching rosaries praying for some divine intervention to stop what may be inevitable war.
Sure, war is a possibility. But not a likely one.
(for the record, the BBC has much better coverage)
(of everything)
I've talked to teachers and students. Certainly they are a bit scared about the situation. But they are living their life as they always do. The American media, even before this, seemed content to focus on a sort of haunted feeling that they assumed Koreans must carry with them every second with North Korea so close. They don't. They are happy and advanced people living happy and advanced lives.
They go about their occupations, their relationships and appointments not in a state of chaos/recklessness, they live a life worth living and will continue to.
If anything, from what I gathered, they are just very sad that 4 of their countrymen died in the attack. The 2 soldiers were aged 20 and 22.
(sidenote: within 2 days of the attack, 435 people died in a Cambodian human stampede and 29 miners died in a New Zealand cave. Still, the Korean peninsula got coverage as though these were common occurrences)
(I don't mean to suggest that news volume should be based on death toll but the Am. media seemed almost cold to these catastrophes because the Korea affair made more intriguing coverage)
Anyway, for now, people monitor the situation but keep moving as they'd like. Seoul thrives. The suburbs remain kept.
The Koreans are thankful that the US is standing strongly by them; and for that I am proud of my country. The situation certainly warrants more intervention than the other two wars we are fighting.
(sidenote: new report says that something like 86% of Afghani's do not know about 9/11)
Alright, I'm not going to say much more. I am hopeful that things will subside and return back to the normalcy which I have grown quite fond of these 3 months. If you have questions you can ask me.
Boston.com's Big Picture just did their showcase on the whole affair. It's potentially the best photojournalism site on the internet (professionally) anyway and I've been looking at it since freshman year of college. It gets updated every few days and is quick to cover major stories. Really interesting. Check it out.
alright.
a quotation.
"Investigate what IS and not what PLEASES"
-goethe
e.g.
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