China

The long overdue last leg of my Korea trip of 2013!

As we passed the bridge from North Korea to China, I couldn't help but feel a bit of the pressure relax, and immediately revel in the irony of it: "Ah, China, land of freedom and democracy".
We all laughed.

The tour officially ended after picking up the sensitive items we had each left at the Dandong Hotel before heading into North Korea, however many of our group opted to stay in China for a few more days before heading back home.

Me and a couple of others had made reservations at the Sanlitun youth hostel semi independently, but once we got there, we decided to merge our reservations, to get the cheaper dorm-style rooms for the first nights. So I ended up staying with a few of the gang on the first two night, then taking a double-room the others. Some of the others staying in Beijing had taken accommodations elsewhere.

We all agreed to meet up at Tiananmen Square on the seocnd day at around noon, so my roommates and I decided to leave... Until I discovered that the hotel rented out bikes! Knowing that Tiananmen was a scant 6 kilometers (Thank you, iPad and Offline maps!), I vainly tried to persuade the group to bike there, but I ended up being the only one to bike there.

Its at times like these that I feel the most alive. the freedom of biking, combined with being lost, alone in a foreign country. Truly, this is the joy in my life; exploration into parts unknown, in a foreign country, the huge roads with equally huge cycling lanes combined with the small pre-industrial winding alleys lined with family-owned shops, taking in the sights of the blend of old architectural styles, with the new, and the sheer freedom of biking in Beijing, where the roads are governed by the law of the jungle, and where the red and green of the lights are almost optional; it keeps you on your toes, and was exciting.

Then my bike pedal broke halfway to Tiananmen.

This is where its interesting to take things into context. If I had been back home, on my way to work or university and my bike broke, it would have been a hassle, and a big stress, and would have been an overall unpleasant experience... but here, I knew the guys waiting for me at Tiananmen square would just go without me after waiting for a bit, and I had all day before me, but mostly... it gave me an excuse to talk with the locals, which was a blast.

Of course, I use the term "talk" loosely, because my grasp of the Chinese language is limited to 'Hi" and "Thank you". here too, failure to communicate would usually be seen as a source of stress or annoyance in daily routine, but here, it just made it more fun to get directions from people using a broken pedal, and some miming. it was also a learning experience, because I learned that Beijing citizens, when asked for directions to a place they do not know, will prefer to point you in a random direction rather than admit they do now know.

After a while, I got the idea and set out to explore the alleys on foot, and eventually found an old man repairing a motor bike chain, with a couple of old dudes sitting around talking. After showing him my broken pedal, he told me to sit down and relax, and called someone on his phone, then continued to repair the bike.

Eventually his wife comes by with a new pedal, he finishes his work on the motor bike and repairs my bike, I ask him, how much it's gonna be, he tell me a number i judge fair after a show of fingers (because I still don't speak Chinese), and I pay him. He then turns around says something and his friends laugh. I laugh also. Sometimes you don't need to speak the language to understand what is being said "I should have charged that foreigner more!"


Eventually I bike by way to Tiananmen Square, but the guys have left already, so i decided to bike a bit around the Forbidden city, and to take a walk in the gardens. unfortunately my photos of China are limited, my camera having broken in South Korea, and this being a more solo part of my trip, i couldn't just leech photos off the other travelers. I still took a few pictures with my ipad, some of which didnt turn out too bad..


..A chinese cat!

...This is my only picture of my bike trip in the small alleys of Beijing...

The park near the Forbidden city was nice, though.

...Spike, posing for a photo!

..Nice rocks

...But apparently dangerous!

I stopped and relaxed, enjoying some of my favorite tea ever, Baihao Yinzhen, a type of white tea.

...it was kind of expensive, but then again, this is the king of white teas, and I *was* in a traditional tea-house near the Forbidden city...

The outskirts of the Forbidden city.

...The square. The body of Mao is apparently preserved someplace near here, but after seeing Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, I had had my share of preserved dead guys under glass for the time being, so i did not visit.

I eventually biked my way back, complained loudly at the hostel, and got a reimbursement for the repair cost of the bike *and* the original price I had paid for rental.
Yes, I am cheap.

The next day, me and a couple of the others visited the Summer Palace. it unfortunately was not Summer, so it wasn't as green as it could have been, but it was nonetheless very pretty, and we walked a long time in the beautiful gardens and climbed up to the palace proper. There were toll gates, but, after a bit of convincing, I got everyone to go up the *alternate path*, being used by most Chinese, that skirted around the areas where there was a toll. it was a bit of a hike, but was fun nonetheless, and cheap.

Summer Palace...

There was even a lake where we could rent paddle-boats!

..all in all, I really liked the summer palace.

The food in Beijing was really cheap. This really popular place had 18 meat buns for around 4$.
That night, we found a place serving Peking Duck, and ate our fill of that famous delicacy. I really liked it.


Anyways, those of us left decided to tour the Great Wall. The others wanted to go to the more touristic and accessible Badaling part of the wall, but it being  really near Beijing, I knew it would be full of tourists, so i opted to head alone to Mutianyu, a part of the wall, a bit farther from Beijing, and in more mountainous regions.

After seeing the pictures of the others, which show a wall, black with people and riddled with stalls.. I am glad i made that call.

Mutianyu was really beautiful, and I got into a budget tour that offered a round-trip bus ticket and a meal for about 60$. By that time, I had already busted my budget, and had made a point of not withdrawing more money from my bank account and not using my credit card, so i had only about 20$ to go with on this last day of my trip.

After arriving at Mutianyu, I found out that this "all-included" tour did not include tickets for the gondola commonly used to get to the wall... so i hiked my way up!
I mean, I am not in tip-top shape, but i can still hike if I want to, and I had 3 hours in front of me before the meal and bus ride back, plus I was poor, so I hiked.

I counted about 1000 steps to the path to the wall before I lost count, but the forested slopes were nice, and i could take it at my own pace, so it was all good.

Once up on the wall, the view was great. I walked about 3km of wall, up a steep hill before heading back. The wall follows the crest of the mountains, so in some areas, people had to go on all fours in order to continue up the wall because it was so steep. I saw a few foreigners and Chinese people, but it was nowhere as crowded as Badaling would have been, and the vistas made it worth it.

I walked all the way to the top of that hill before it was time to head back

This must be so beautiful in spring!

Thiple-A, eat your hearts out! This place is quintuple-A!

Going back down, I made my way through souvenir kiosks, and haggled some souvenirs. Its another thing I like in China; the haggling. If someone at a touristy spot asks you for 20 yuan for something, you know that if you are good enough, you can usually haggle it down to 5... So using a bit of applied psychology, i got some postcards for 3 yuan (asking price: 10) before heading to the restaurant.

The last night was uneventful, and I eventually made my way back to Canada.

For the record this is a picture of that the OTHER part of the wall (Badaling) looked like:

Also, oreo cookies (DO NOT EAT, they taste bad):

... Spike on the tramway in the airport, on his way back to Canada...

North Korea - Last days

Here is, finally, the final installment of my North Korean trip.

We visited a museum!
A museum on war crimes committed by the US and others during the Korean War...
Fun.

While I have no doubt many atrocities happened, some of this stuff was over-the-top.
Dropping grenades in th air vents of bunkers to pull the people inside... Its dirty, but that's why war sucks, and something tells me that were the positions reversed, they might have done the same.

However, the eviscerating of a pregnant woman, "just because", or forcing a whole village to drink gasoline then pour it on the survivors and burn them seems rather implausible, if only because of the unnecessarily roundabout way of going about killing people in cruel and unusual ways, but also because of the purported wasting of precious resources (fuel) that far into enemy territory.

That being said, many of the less extravagant atrocities seem plausible,and even the more far-fetched ones are probably rooted in factual events, but the depictions too often take on a patriotic-martyr-like twist or are just too incongruous to be able to be taken seriously as-is. Added to this are the painted renderings of some of the stories, replete with sadistic american soldiers torturing poor Korean women.

By killing them in various ways by tying them to running bulls via hooks in their breats, or by driging tails through their heads.

After the tour of museum proper, with explanations given by a very "passionate" museum tour guide (I guess she is "paid" for being, or at least sounding,  fanatical), we went to offer flowers to a mass grave, and sign a guestbook.

Whether or not we believe that some stories were embellished or not, there is no denying atrocities were committed during wartime, but the most depressing fact to me was that atrocities like those described are done by people who have lost part of their humanity because of hate...And the whole museum show is tailored to shock and incite North Koreans to hate at the evil invaders, basically reinforcing the cycle of hate and abuse.

They make a big case of some of the war leaders like Harisson, whose hate of communists led him to order killings bordering on genocide, and vilify him, inciting feelings of fear and ate all the time conveniently forgetting that hate and fear is what made him that way. Its like the museum,s goal is to take Harisson's example as a reason to create more monsters like Harisson.

Can't really write that in the guestbook though, so I had to be a bit more creative.

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After all that we headed to a nice little countryside cabin/hotel that had its very own hot springs!

..I love hot springs!
While i was not expecting the kind of gargantuan jimjilbang that i experiences in Seoul (like 5 floors of spa goodness!) or of the charm of Japanese onsen (rotenburo in winter > all), I was still slightly unfazed by the small tub in the bathroom that we could fill with hot spring water from 8 to 10pm.

It was still real spring water, and, to be fair, probably one of the only places in North Korea with hot springs, electricity and food, all in one place.
I think I soaked for the better part of 2 hours.

The rooms were comfortable, and in cottage-style fashion (every cottage having 4 rooms). The forest around there was pretty and I wish I had had more time to walk about it.
There was also a concession stand near the cafeteria and I bought a bunch of belgian/german chocolate, very cheap and brand name!

Chocolate and hot springs in North Korea... Its easy to forget about all the people starving or in work camps...

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After the nice Nampo hotel, we went to visit a "farm".
It was like this model farm proposed by Kim Il Sung.
Well.. It was in this nice little house, with perfect furniture, and and perfect kitchen set.
The grandmother was at home with her grandson, the parents probably outside, working "the fields".
It was kind of surreal, since we didn't see any fields around the house...
But it was a very nice house.
I asked the kid to pose with Spike, and there was a misunderstanding and he thought I was giving Spike to him... Luckily I am good with kids and managed to bewilder him, get Spike back, and have him wave happily bye-bye to Spike as we were leaving.
Like a boss.

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Afterwards, we went to visit a water bottling factory.

At this point, I was starting to wonder if we had run out of fun and educational sites to visit...
I mean, a water bottling factory, we have those back home, right?

The factory was clean and used some Italy-imported bottling machines.
We even got to see the spring and were explained how the water was gathered and carbonized.
It shows that, when political approval and support is forthcoming, industry can "thrive".

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Well, just as I thought the interesting part of the trip was over.. We headed to Kumsusan Memorial Palace of the Sun, the most sacred place in all North Korea, where the bodies of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung are displayed and preserved.

This is one of the most difficult places to visit (excluding the work camps, anything army-related, most of the countryside and basically anywhere in North Korea not meant for foreigners to see).

No photos were allowed inside.

After a thorough check, we were allowed in the building, through a very long  conveyor belt/escalator ride with pictures depicting the two leaders' lives and accomplishments. Once inside the building, we were treated to a series of rooms where we could see all the medals and prized won or offered to the Great Leaders in their lifetime.

The architecture of place was also breathtaking. Huge marble columns and floors, and gold crystal chandeliers. The kind of extravagance you see in the Louvres.

The center of the show is, of course, the preserved bodies of the two leaders in their glass boxes, under constant guard. We had to come in in groups of five, bow one three times, from different sides, then move to the next room and repeat the process. This is where North Koreans would supposedly cry and wail, but the group before us was rather tame.

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That day, we went to.. An Italian restaurant.
Apparently one of the higher-up friend of the Kims, after a successful career as diplomat, decided to start an Italian restaurant back home.

We actually met with a pair of Egyptians who were working on an IT project in north Korea. one of them was even browsing Facebook from his iPad. I guess working for the government has its perks.

The food was really good, too!

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The next even was the Grand People's Study House, the Pyongyang public library.
Again, as with the Palace, a huge building, with an amazing marble entrance and grandiose rooms.
When the Kims order something done, they order it in Style!

There are public rooms for free-viewing books, reading rooms, media rooms, music rooms, etc.
The place was reasonably crowded, but seeing as we had to wait 40 minutes outside the doors before they let us in, I suspect they had to turn on many of the computers and find people to man the seats of the library in order for it to be "presentable" before they let us in.

They had a nifty computer search engine, and many foreign books.
I could not find 1984 though.

On the top floor is a gift shop, where one can find nice picture books and a slew of Kim-derived products, like "Anecdotes from the live of Kim Jong Il" and "The Kim Il Sung Saga in 12 tomes".
The anecdotes were surprisingly similar to stuff you find in every other religion; stories about him helping his fellow man in strange, yet deep ways, or semi-supernatural stuff happening around him in his life signaling someone as being more than simply human, etc...

The view form the roof was also quite good.

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The last part of the activity for me was the school visit.
I was really looking forward to being able to visit a school and see students, and all that jazz, but ended being disappointed.

Just before we arrived, they hid all the students, so we got to see a couple of empty classes and science labs.

We were then ushered into the school theater where a score of kids did a concert for us, with instruments and dancing and whatnot.

Needless to say they had obviously been trained hard for this show and had given it countless times. The girls had these heavily painted faces frozen in a picture of joy that was slightly disturbing in their uniformity. When they sung, their posture were all identical, down to the knee-bending movement in tune to the music.

At the very end, they invited everyone in and made a dancing circle and seemed almost natural, but something was still off...

At the very end, when everyone was posing for photos,on a whim and in a last desperate attempt to elicit some kind of spontaneous response, I tried throwing Spike to them, to maybe see surprise, curiosity; something...
But spike was thrown, and they just kept smiling for the cameras and ignored him.

Needless to say this was not what I had in mind when I was told "school visit".
Seeing a score of highly trained kids put up a show, does not a school make.
This is my purely Western-centric view, of course.

After the school visit I started feeling unwell, and bailed out for the rest of the day.
At first i thought it might be the letdown I felt from the school trip bumming me out, but it turns out I had a fever and by the time we made it to the hotel i was genuinely feeling queasy.

Since everyone needs tour guides, a pair of ladies were called in to watch over me, as I rested in my hotel room. they were very thorough, calling me every 30 minutes to see if I was still OK.
Needless to say, i couldn't get much sleep.

At least I had brought some anti-fever medicine from home, so i took them.

By the time the group came back for dinner, I was feeling a bit better and grabbed a bite with them.

The next morning, we packed our bags, and left for China by train.
This time, the locomotive didn't catch on fire.

As we were crossing the bridge into China, I couldn't help myself from being ironic, and thought out-loud "Ah, back to a free and democratic country: China".

Well, free and democratic compared to North Korea, anyways.

Next up: My days in China

おまけ: North Korean Traffic Ladies!

The trip continues...!

Still many photos to sort, so little time to sort them.
Also, sorting pictures is boring, especially when you have 15 parallel albums you need to cut down to size and need to double-and-triple check to be sure you have as little redundant photos as possible..

Anyhoo, we visited a fruit farm (where I got some plum liqueur) then headed to Kaesong, to see the DMZ and Panjumon hall (where the armistice was signed (The benificient Kim il-Sung decided to take pity on the South Koreans and spare them annihilation for the time being)). We also went to a restaurant, and lodged at the Kaesong Folk Hotel.

The restaurant was OK (pretty lavish, being in north Korea, but then the regime has its price to uphold in front of strangers). The *taste* was OK, but the food they served, in the traditionnal fashion, with the dozens of little bowls, was pretty interesting.

Spike liked it.

The DMZ was a lot less touristy than South Korea. The trip was mostly somber, and we were told not to smile, but there still was a nice little gift shop with North Korea's famous ginseng! I got some ginseng tea and dried roots (for my Chinese friend, back in Montreal who used to tout me their virtues).
One of the guards got real friendly with me and the other Canadian guy and started to as us a lot of questions. We answered as truthfully as being politically correct allowed us to be, and it was quite interesting.
It turns out that soldier always tries to find out the Americans in a group and ask them questions. Personal Interest? Taking the pulse on what the climate is on the other side of the pond as a soldier? Who knows.

We also visited a fruit farm, and the experience was different than what I was expecting. Every explanation started with "The Great Leader"
...Told us; Taught us; Showed us; Invented; Created; Decided...
In the middle of the guided tour guides' speech, I started wondering how much of it was for appearances, and a necessity to live in their world, and how much of it they actually believed.
The lady seemed to believe in it hard enough. Then again it's her job.

Nice clean store. i really wonder how many visitors they have a year?
Then again ideas like profit, market and business are alien here, in this government sponsored farm.

Next came Kaesong city and the Folk Hotel.
The city was nice, and had this 'new city build over/alongside the old one" that Quebec city has. At least, the places we visited, that is. people were going about their daily lives at a time where western news were going on about "mounting tensions" and the North Korea border being closed..

The Folk Hotel itself was very nice, build in traditionnal fashion, and incorporating parts of a building supposedly dating back to the Joseon dynasty!

We also got lucky and had the chance to visit (another) Big Statue!

Spike! Dont imitate that man!
You'll end up.. The very rich leader of a small country. The top, as it is, of your own nation, richer and more powerful than anyone else...
Hmm... Let me think about this for a bit...

All in all that was a nice day.
I really liked the Kaesong Folk Hotel and its more subtle, passive, propaganda (Hey, our culture is 5000 years old!).
Compared to the constant barrage of monuments and zealous tour-guides, it was a welcome respire.
The shower only had cold water, and only for one hour in the mnorning.

North Korea Day 2 - Part 2

Sorry for the long delay between posts.
Sorting through what is not 3000+ photos from 6 different sources (so many, many duplicates that I need to choose from) is tedious, so I keep postponing.

On the second half of the first day, we went and visited the Arch of Triumph,

the Pyongyang metro,

 and Moran Hill.

(That last one is one of my favorites, as it shows Kim Il Sung giving a speech advocating the right of free speech and the independence of Korea)

The Arch of Triumph was pretty grandiose in and by itself, in fact, it is slightly large than the one in Paris. Unfortunately, the difference (60mx50m compared to 50mx45m) is mitigated by the fact that you can not go on top, and that it is not surrounded by the breathtaking view of the place Charles deGaulle and traffic circle.

It was interesting for me, as I had been to Paris only 3 years earlier and had visited the Arche de Triomphe de l'Étoile there. Also interesting is the need North Korea felt to try and emulate and surpass the West/Allies, as displayed by the Arch.

We then took a walk around the surrounding area, passing near Kim il Sung stadium, the Pyongyang cinema, and finished by going up the hill itself, which was a nice little park. Despite the growing tensions between North Korea and the rest of the world... People were going about their daily lives as normal, children laughing while on their way back from school, etc. In this context the mounting tensions appeared forced. The terms "Pyongyang wants..." and "North Korea decides to..." are everywhere in the media, and its easy to forget that this is not a democracy (though many North Koreans purportedly believe otherwise) and that normal people therefore have no say in what is being decided. on top of that, most of them do not even know what is happening in other regions of North Korea, let alone the world, their only source of information being government-sanctioned news and broadcasts.

People seemed relaxed around Moran Hill, and some old ladies even bantered with some of the younger German guys.

Afterwards we were to go to the DMZ (This time, the North Korean side), The Fruit Farm(tm) and Kaesong Hotel.

North Korea Day 2 - Part 1

After resting up in our hotel, and going around inside it and eating breakfast, we hopped on the bus and headed to Kim il Sun's Old House (Manyongdae Native House).

This is the house in which supposedly, Kim Il Sung was born. Whether this is the real house, a replica, or if it was moved, is unclear. The lady guide attached to the house was quite passionnate as she expounded the details of how the Great Leader had been born into a poor but patriotic family, his brother died fighting against the Japanese invasion, and he supposedly left home at a young age to participate in the anti-japanese movement.

The story spun by the tour guide attached to the house was a bit over-the-top, depicting poot, but perfectly patriotic people and parents sacrificing their well-being in order to give their son a chance and the son vowing to purge Korea of Japanese and return to help his family. He also apparently learned to read and write at a ridiculously young age, and the house is rife with anecdotes demonstrating the wisdom and foresight of the future great Leader.

After visiting the house and hearing the talk, we headed out and walked through the beautiful park surrounding it. The trees and ponds were well-tended and it was without a doubt the most meticulously groomed park in North Korea. it is, after all, the park surrounding the house where their godlike Eternal President was born.

After the house visit, we hopped back on our tour bus and headed to the Pyongyang National Gift Museum, where gifts to the regime from North Korean nationals are displayed. The gifts are from Korean expatriates all over the world and are usually something linked to the country where they are living, but sent with a prayer for reunification. Some gifts are really preposterous, like a big tiger carved out of marble-like stone, weighting a few tons or an intricately ornate wooden vase made from tens of thousands of pieces of wood glued together. Some other gifts are an autographed basketball, tea sets, paintings, etc.

Some of the gifts came from Canada, from Korean expats or Korean communities abroad, many came from the founder of Hyundai, who is himself originally from North Korea. I saw some gifts from various ITF headmasters as well. unfortunately we were not allowed to bring our cameras inside, so no photos there :(

Korea Trip - North Korea

So we took the train to North Korea, crossing the Friendship Bridge... And stopped

...We stopped so that North Korean immigration agents could go through our stuff.
It was a bit anticlimactic, but the chief customs guy was pretty funny, he even gave a bottle of rice wine to one of the guys in the group. After about half an hour, it was done, and the train lurched to a start again.

...Then, after an hour or so, the locomotive caught on fire.

Being not allowed to leave the train, and the windows not opening more than a crack, we were unable to know what was happening when the train suddenly stopped in its tracks, in the middle of nowhere, near a small rural village without electricity.

We then noticed village people coming to and from the village under the orders of the government officials on the train, carrying buckets of water to the front of the train. I was in another train, talking to a group of Chinese laborers on their way to Pyongyand to work on a new building, and eventually understood that the locomotive had caught fire and that we would be there a while.


...And you know what? That there five hours was one of the most fulfilling of the whole trip, because we got to see a small rural North Korean village from up close, and some of the village kids even went up to the train and I got to communicate and play rock paper scissors with these kids that probably have never seen a Caucasian before...

Anyways, a few hours later, a new locomotive came in from Pyongyang, and we finally made it, five hours late.


Pyongyang itself is a lot more industrial than what we saw from the train on our way there, but most buildings are old and look.... Washed out... Then you have those huge government projects and monuments that are, let's face it, impressive, like the Ryugyong Hotel (Still being finished).

After arriving at the hotel, we had time for a shower and supper in a huge and very empty dining hall. The elevators of the hotel were pretty cool, a pair of them had half the shaft sticking out of the buinding, and you could see yourself being propelled up or down. The elevators were very efficient, only staying open for 3 seconds. I sort of liked that, as I hate having to just stand there, waiting for a door to close, but one of the girls was not quick enough to get out and got to make an extra trip up and down the elevator back to her floor :P

The next day we were going to head to Kim Il Sung's "Birthplace House", and the Museum of Gifts.

Korea Trip - Dandong

On April 5th, we took the ferry from Incheon port in South Korea, to Dandong, a city in China that borders with North Korea.

...For some reason, the ferry struck me a typically Chinese.

It was really crowded. in fact this is a picture of one of the less crowded areas.
After rubbing shoulders with a couple of hundred Chinese people, we were let on board of the ferry, into our own private room.

Well, private common room, anyways. I positioned myself nearest the door, to get some fresh air from outside, but in the end, so many Chinese were smoking on the deck with the door open, about two meters from our cabin, that i ended up closing the door.

The cafeteria was no less crowded for supper, and all in all, it was a relatively event-less trip and we arrived the next morning in Dandong.

The feeling I had in Dandong, was of a mix of Urban and countryside. On one hand you had factories and coal-processing plants near the center of the town, but on the other, you had some very tall buildings, and downtown was definitely urban. in contrast to South Korea, though, it was definitely less modern and clean. Then again, I would be comparing Seoul, the capital of SK, with a random city in China.

Anyways, when we arrived, we met our energetic Chinese guide, and went to our hotel for a long-awaited shower, and proceeded to make the most of our last day in the free and democratic country that is China. We visited the War Museum in China, commemorating the Korean war (with slightly different versions of how things happened than the museum in SK)...

...Went on a boar ride on the river bordering china and North Korea (Thats the Friendship bridge)..

And had some fun at a great Chinese restaurant in town, complete with revolving tables (I need to get me one of those).

On the boat, I got a set of old North-Korean money (that is technically illegal for foreigners to possess in NK), and me and the guide managed to haggle down the price from 30$ to about 6$, and I got to use my special skills honed in years of role-playing games!

All in all it was a hectic day. After leaving some "compromising items" at the hotel (Basically, pictures we took in SK and pamphlets from some of the NGOs we had visited), we headed to the train station and into North Korea!

Korea Trip - South Korea Part 2

The South Korean part of the trip was pretty interesting.

We met with may professors, members of think-tanks and members of foundations working in international relations and peace. Of course the seminars were geared towards the two Koreas, and more specifically towards the situation with North Korea.

How North Korea is using fear, uncertainty and doubt while threatening the world to get what it wants. The fact is that the leaders know that they would lose a war, but also that they could cause pretty heavy damage before going out. They therefore have no interest in starting a war, but have interest (wanting more coverage, to be taken seriously, to get economic concessions) in keeping up the rhetoric.

The regime also keeps up the talk of the threat from the USA, with its bases in Japan and South Korea, but how much of it is genuinely felt and how much of it is based on the need to justify the regime is unclear.

Lets remember that the Koreas having been divided by external powers without the consent of its people,and the Kim regime being a direct consequence of Russia and China's involvement. however, the fact is that even if there were to be reunification, it would most likely spell a fiasco. North Koreans are proud and see themselves as the true Koreans, the South having sold themselves out to America. many would prefer to defect to China than to have to integrate South Korea and adopt its modern culture. A reunification would need to feed and give work to 24 million penniless North Koreans, most of which have no skills usable in South Korea's modern society. The economic gap between East and West Germany was not as large as the one between north and South Korea, and there are still inequalities to this day, a reunification between the two Koreas would therefore be extremely hard, which makes it, unfortunately, unenviable by most parties.

South Koreans have also become used to the threat of the north. most do not realize that they are still at war, as only an armistice was ever signed. The fact that Seoul could be razed in 30 minutes also eludes most of them in their everyday lives. by contrast, north Koreans are very much aware that they are still at war. They are also aware of the sanctions they are suffering from. Most of the sanctions are understandable, such as the sanctions on military goods and even luxury goods, as punishment for misdeeds. However, it becomes harder to justify refusing to sell tractors to North Korea, that has been having food problems since 1994, on the basis of which they could potentially be used as missile-carriers.

In order to understand North Korea's stubbornness, one must understand the prism by which they see the world:

1. They are very much aware that they are in a constant state of war and of the US threat and they feel they constantly have to ramp up their army and defenses as well as never show a sign of weakness, lest they be attacked. They see a strong army as the only thing preventing a US attack on them.This justifies squashing any dissension and funneling resources away from other sectors towards the army. it is also used to justify the regime.

2. They feel that they are in constant competition with south Korea. Their leaders being infallible, they blame the South Koreans selling themselves out to the US, as well as a concerted effort by the US and the UN to put up embargoes and sanctions for their economic troubles.

The feelings of being unjustly victimized and standing alone against the world are therefore strong and they want good and efficient farming, but they feel that a strong army and weapons are a prerequisite to being able to do so, as the second they show weakness, they will get invaded. Like Iraq or Libya.

...I could talk about it at length, but suffice to say the conferences in Seoul were interesting.



We stayed at a modern Youth Hostel in the heart of Seoul.

Having arrived two days early, I visited Gangnam district, and biked around Seoul a bit.

In between seminars, we had a bit of time and we ended up visiting the DMZ (Demilitarized zone). It was a mix of touristy (with coin binoculars and souvenir shops), sad (Wall with messages from separated families, a train station awaiting reunification in order to go anywhere) and scary (an abandoned tunnel dug by North Korea in order to invade South Korea.. only a few have been discovered.. How many more are there?)

We also visited the Korean War museum. (Lets just say the story is slightly different from the North version I was going to hear few days from then).

After the last seminar, we headed to Incheon port to take the ferry to Dandong, China, and from there, to north Korea.

..But more on that tomorrow....