Julia had some meetings in Busan Korea and a few days prior to the start of them was Taiwan’s National Day (October 10), which meant that she had a few days off... so we decided to take advantage of the timing and spend some time in Seoul and Busan.
Seoul is a pretty amazing city. It’s huge and sprawling, with high hills and the Han River through town. We lined up a tour of the DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone separating South Korea from North. On the bus there, only a short distance out of downtown we got onto an expressway along the Han River, and there the barbed wire fence and guard towers began - the DPRK (North Korea)...(Isn’t it great how so many of the communist countries went out of their way to add ‘Democratic’ into the name of the country?)... has sent numerous infiltrators into Seoul via the river, hence the fences and guards. Seoul sits about 40 or 50 km from the DMZ.
The DMZ tour itself was pretty amazing and sobering. We toured one of the 4 infiltration tunnels that the ROK has discovered (there are many more suspected to exist), and Camp Bonifas, named after one of the two US soldiers killed by DPRK soldiers in an axe attack back in the 70s. The gate at the entrance to the camp says ‘In Front of Them All’ and that couldn’t be truer, given their proximity to the DMZ, and the numerous attacks and provocations the DPRK has made over the years since the end of the war... whoops, that’s wrong - technically the war has not ended, it’s just been suspended for nearly 60 years, but hostilities are obviously still just under the surface. The tour took us to Panmunjon, located right, smack in the middle of the DMZ.
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| Panmunjon - The US soldier in the foreground was our tour guide for this part of the tour. The building in the background is the DPRK... actually beyond the middle of the light blue building is the DPRK...all the other soldiers on this side of the blue building are ROK soldiers - the guys with white bands stand watch with fists clenched for 2 hour stints, note the number that are partially shielded by the buildings - not for dramatic effect, but due to the long chain of attacks and other provocations by the DPRK - I guess when you have nothing to lose, you've got nothing to lose. He's very hard to see in the this photo but there is a DPRK soldier at the top of the stairs who spent much of the time we were there checking us out with binocs. |
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| This is actually a photo of a photo on display in the visitor center, but I had to include it as it shows the DPRK guards in a rather telling orientation. Note that both here and in my photo above (taken from locations only a few meters apart) the ROK guards are positioned facing the enemy to the north. However, the DPRK guards are positioned either entirely towards their own people, literally and metaphorically, with the guy at left, or at least halfway facing their own country and halfway facing the South. Just like how many of the old Iron Curtain defenses were aimed pointing back at the citizenry they were alleged to be 'protecting'... same drill here I guess. |
There are buildings located such that they straddle the border, used for meetings between ROK and DPRK, generally overseen by Swiss and Swedish military officials, all under the terms of the agreement from 1953. We had a chance to enter one of the meeting rooms used - it has a meeting table oriented so that the middle of the table is across the border, so to stand or sit on one side puts you in the ROK, and the other in the DPRK, so of course we had to go to the DPRK side. The DPRK had only one soldier stationed outside, he spent a bunch of time watching us through binoculars.
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| Kinda blurry, but here's Julia in the DPRK... table at bottom left of photo is meeting table that is oriented with middle at border, so she's a few feet into North Korea right there. |
After bopping around Seoul for a bit, we headed to Busan via Korea’s high speed rail line. While they both list a top ‘cruising’ speed of 300Kmph (186mph), in Korea, they actually run at or near that speed for extended lengths of time - here in Taiwan, they seem only to get to about 285Kph or so and then for relatively short stretches.
Busan is also a huge city, but the spot we were staying, right along the beach in Haeundae is a really cool little enclave in its midst.
I’m looking forward to getting back to Korea to explore some more - I think a bicycle tour there may be in the cards for 2014? We’ll see.
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