DMZ

The De Militarized Zone.

 Part of the barbed wire and ribbons of hope and peace.

 The last train that tried to enter North Korea a the beginning of the war and what happened to it.

 Really interesting concept.

 The information about tunnel number 3.

 And the entrance to it.

 Symbolic statute. 

 The entrance to the Dora Hill Observatory.

 From Dora Hill, North Korea 4 kilometres across the DMZ.

Dorasan Station.

Inside the station, already to go, if only.

Chloe was my tour leader again and a big help to me.

Thursday, June 28^th.

This morning, they did not forget me, and picked me up at 7 for the DMZ tour. The driver picked up several other guests from other hotels and then drove us to the assembly place where we loaded up in a coach for the tour. Turned out I happily had Chloe again as my guide. I sat beside a young Russian woman and talked to her for the duration of the drive. Her name is Ksenis and she is married to an American oil engineer who is currently working on the Russian island of Sakhalin. We were talking about the problems of the world and she said that their conversations were always interesting because of the things that Trump and Putin do. She also told me that her father was a nuclear physicist and her mother a chemist. She said that her father can’t ever get a passport or travel abroad because of the sensitive nature of his work. 

(As an aside, yesterday I sat beside a woman and her female cousin. Their mothers were Vietnamese sisters. The first one was the child of an American soldier, who disappeared and the other was the child of a Vietnamese soldier who was killed in the war. Both families were lucky enough to be part of the refugee evacuees at the end of the war. The first one has been teaching in Japan on an American military base with her husband for the last two years.)

It is really amazing the people you meet and the things you find out they do. However, I digress.

On the way Chloe told us lots of information about the area we were going to see and the reason for the separation. She told us that the people in the North are undernourished and the average height of the people is actually in decline and in the South the reverse is true as they are getting healthier and eating better than ever before. She said the only fat person in the North is the leader.

The tour of the DMZ, Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea was really interesting. The actual view from the top of Dora hill towards the north over the 4-kilometre wide neutral zone was really nothing special, but Chloe told us that the two countries were for a while involved in a flag pole raising competition. The South stopped at 99-metres, but the north now has the largest flag pole in the world at 160 metres and flying a flag that is 270 kilograms. However, both poles were very small from where we were and the flags were not fluttering. Chloe had been here on the day that they forgot me, and it was raining and she said it was horrible and visibility here was zero, so in that regard it was good they forgot me.

The Korean war came about because after the Second War II Korea was divided into two countries by foreign powers. The leader of the North wanted to reunite the country under communism. When the government of the South was occupied by other interests the North invaded and took Seoul in three days and most of the country shortly after that. The world was afraid of communism and 20 Allied countries, including Canada, sent thousands of troops over. They managed to push the communists back north of Seoul, but not without the loss of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides. They eventually signed an armistice at Panmunjom that kept the two countries dividing and separated by the DMZ. The war never really ended and has been simmering ever since.

We saw several monuments about the separation of the two countries. There was a monument to peace that had rocks from battlefields all over the world. One of the things they took us to was a tunnel from the North to the South. I assumed that it was an escape tunnel built by people. Not so, it was one of at least four tunnels, probably more that the North Koreans built in the 70’s in preparation for an invasion of the South. Chloe told us a defector told the South about it, but they couldn’t find it, so he showed them where it was and then tripped a landmine blowing off both his legs. It was 1635 metres long and 73 metres below the surface and blasted through granite. It was sloped towards the North so that the water that trickled through the rock would not drain towards the South and alert them. The South has built a 358-metre sloping tunnel down to connect with the other one and turned it into a tourist attraction. We all walked down the very steep slope and through the North Korean tunnel as far as we could and then had to climb back up, that was our exercise for the day.

The last thing we were taken to was a very modern train station that the two countries built in 2002 in the hopes that one day the two countries would be reunified, but that hope dimmed when Kim Jun Un became leader. The station is ready and the rail lines have been reconnected so that if it ever happens they will be ready.

Then we drove back to Seoul, stopping at another ginseng shop and finally in a restaurant for another good local lunch. After that Chloe showed me were I could catch the shuttle bus to the Encheon International Airport for my flight to Mongolia. She was a lovely young lady with lots of great information and a lovely accent. She was a big help to me. She also deducted the price of the taxi the other day from the price of this tour, so I did get reimbursed.

The shuttle took over an hour to get to the airport and the weather deteriorated badly and was pouring by the time we got there. The airport is very modern, and they proudly proclaim it is the newest and most modern in the world. My only disappointment was that they don’t stamp your passport. I asked and the lady said not anymore.

I arrived at Chinngis Khaan International Airport (their spelling not mine) in Ulaanbaatar at 11:00 to a full moon. Customs was easy, although like Seoul they too had a thermal heat reader checking people’s temperatures as they came in. My pick up was there and he drove me for about a half hour to the J Tower Office Hotel. I am always slightly nervous coming into a new place and keen to see what is like. First impressions: we drove along a couple of roads past all sorts of businesses, car dealerships, office buildings, shopping complexes and numerous high rises. Many neon signs in the strange alphabet of Mongolia, but some in English too. Many unknown names but some familiar too, Volkswagen, Canon, KFC, Coca Cola, Starbucks, the Hardrock Cafe… Seems like a big, modern place. We’ll see what the light brings in the morning and the tour brings over the next two weeks.

I was not in Seoul long enough or to see enough of the country to do a summary, but I did make some observations. Seoul is the most modern and cleanest city I have seen in Asia. They say Singapore is better, but I have not been there. There were no feral dogs, no cows, no piles of garbage and litter, no people relieving themselves by the road or in vacant lots. It was modern, clean and very well organized. The infrastructure is well developed and modern. The city was destroyed by the Japanese, and bombed into oblivion in the wars, so I think they had a chance to rebuild the city new from the ground up. They have an incredibly modern and complex subway system that will take you anywhere in the city for very little. There are also hundreds of surface buses. The roads are well maintained, and they have several highways or freeways in and around the city and I drove through an enormous tunnel that took me from one area of the city to another, but not sure where.

The people are hard-working, polite and respectful, bow to each other and remove their shoes when entering houses and other buildings. The population is not nearly as religious as the rest of the Asia and there are several large universities here and thousands of young students. I think it is not coincidental that the lack of religion and more emphasis on education has resulted in a more modern and progressive country. After all the countries I have visited in Asia where the women are dressed so conservatively, it was obviously different here with all the young women wearing short skirts and shorts, or tight clothes and more revealing tops.

I alluded to the fact that Korea has been occupied by the Japanese, Australians, British, and Chinese. The people have suffered for years and only got there freedom fairly recently. It is interesting that a country that was destroyed so badly by wars has risen to being one of the major economies of the world. Maybe there is something good about being defeated and having a chance to rebuilt with the money the victors send you, look at Germany and Japan. But another thing I learned from the Russian woman, was that many Koreans were taken from their country to parts of Russia and China as forced labour and now there are large communities of Koreans there. They would like to immigrate back but the Russians have told them that they would have to go to North Korea as that is the part of the country they support. The Koreans don’t want to go there, so they stay in Russia as non-citizens with no rights.

It truly is a messed up world and sometimes I think the more you learn the more depressing it gets.