Annyeong-haseyo! This past week included a couple of interesting events. First and foremost, a typhoon. The Typhoon Kompasu hit Seoul early Thursday morning. It was pretty scary to have my door rattling and look outside and see the wind carrying things across the street. In the photos I posted above, you can see some of the damage that was right by my apartment. A brick wall fell on a car and the traffic light near us was turned almost all the way to the side by the wind. I also witnessed a motorbike accident. A lady was riding along and a gust of wind came and knocked her over. She appeared to be hurt pretty badly and all I could do was flag down a Korean and signal to them to call for help. It was a very scary thing to see.
Also, yesterday I went to the DMZ. For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, the DMZ is the Demilitarized Zone, also known as the close as a civilian can get to North Korea without going into North Korea. There was a period of time where foreigners were allowed to get day passes into North Korea, but that was changed when a woman was there and got accidentally shot by a North Korean soldier. The DMZ is 2 km on either side of the 38th parallel that divides North and South Korea, where no war is supposed to happen because of its beautiful scenery and wildlife. The 38th parallel is also known as the Military Demarcation Line.
On our tour, we went to Imaganjin Park, which has an altar that was designed for S. Koreans to come and honor those in their family who got stuck in N. Korea. There was also a barbed wire fence with ribbons that had unread messages from S. Koreans for their family in North Korea. Then we went to the 3rd tunnel, which is named so because it was the 3rd tunnel discovered that North Korea built with intentions of using it to send troops to attack Seoul. It is said with this tunnel, if it had been used, could have had 30,000 soldiers to Seoul in one hour. There are only four tunnels that have been discovered like this, and it is suspected there are several more that remain unfound. Going down into the tunnel, at the end of it, I was only 170m away from the border of N. Korea.
We then went to the Dora Observatory, from which we could see North Korea, and the line where the DMZ ended. I could only take a limited number of pictures, as there was a certain line I had to stand behind to take them. The reason for this is the S. Koreans do not want any pictures of their side of the DMZ in case N. Korean intelligence were to get a hold of it. I got to see a N. Korean village from the observatory, and looked through binoculars to see some cars driving around.
Our final stop was the Dorasan Station. This train station eventually has hopes of carrying trains of civilians all the way through N. Korea, to the Trans-Siberian Railway, to connect to European railways, which could then take someone all the way from S. Korea as far west as Portugal. The construction on this was halted after the event this spring where a S. Korean ship was suspected to have been sunk by N. Korea.
North and South Korea are trying to work towards a completely united Korea, but only time will tell if this can happen. Going to the DMZ was definitely an educational experience, and helped me understand Korea a lot more.
Just one week left here, and then I'm headed home. Hard to believe. Happy Sunday, Western World!
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