The DMZ

So yesterday I went on a tour of the DMZ.

Now before anyone freaks out on me, I just want to assure you that most tours of the DMZ don't actually go inside. They stay just outside the DMZ in the area called the Civilian Control Zone, which is comprised of little towns and stations where the South Koreans have opened to tourists. The closest I got to North Korea was a whole whopping 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) away and there was still a river, several barbed wire fences, and approximately 10 hidden landmines in between us.

We started our tour in a place called Imjingak, a little national park that is dedicated to war shrines and memorials of the Korean war. This was the first thing I saw when I got there....
I kid you not. There is also an amusement park a little down the road. Yay for tourism. Anyway, Imjingak is as far north as you can go in the country without permission. Tourists have to hand over their passports or alien registration cards when they want to do a tour. There are many things to see at Imjingak though. The most famous of these is Mangbaedan, a giant memorial altar. People whose families and relatives are still in North Korea worship at this altar for New Years and Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving). For many of them, it is the closest they will ever get to their families. You can also see the Freedom Bridge from here--a train bridge that was used to exchange prisoners after the Korean war. It is no longer in use, but they are hopeful that when reunification occurs it will become one of the main lines into the North.

We left Imjingak and went inside the Civilian Control Zone (still outside the DMZ remember). In the South Korean "peace town" of Daeseong-dong, there are around 400 people who reside there full time. They are exempt from paying taxes, and the young men are also exempt from the mandatory military service. People are no longer allowed to move in on their own; you have to marry into a family that resides there in order to live there. They have one elementary school there, but since foreigners can't reside inside the CCZ, they have a foreign teacher shipped in once a week to provide English lessons. After a quick traditional Korean lunch here, we headed out again towards the Third Tunnel.

The Third Tunnel is one of four discovered tunnels dug by the North Koreans in an attempt to infiltrate South Korea. Discovered in 1978, 10,000 armed soldiers could cross through the tunnel and be in Seoul in an hour. South Korea has opened the Tunnel for tourists, but after the 3oo meter descent into the tunnel and then the 435 meter trek through the tunnel (followed by 435 meters back the other way and then another 300 meters back to the surface), they should really start charging a gym membership fee or something.

Our next stop was the Dora Observatory. From here, you could look out over the North Korean side of the DMZ, including their own "peace village" Kijong-dong, which is really nothing more than a propaganda village pretending to be a representative of life in the North. The houses in Kijong-dong are painted once a year to make them look new and prosperous. The only people allowed to live there are North Korean soldiers and their families, and the people are even instructed not to go outside during certain times of day so they won't be seen. While we were there, we learned that the factories that we could see on the other side of the Demarcation Line were actually owned by South Koreans who had special permission to open factories in the north. All of the 40,000 workers are from North Korea, but since the owners are from the South, they can ship the goods back down to Seoul where people can actually afford to buy them. While we were there, we actually saw a convoy of trucks crossing on the road between the North and South side of the DMZ. The helpful national service soldier who was policing our photography told us that in order to build the road (which is 250 m wide and 4km long), they had to remove over 1700 landmines from the area. Yikes....

Our final stop was the Dorasan Station, the last train station between North and South Korea. Currently there is only one train that runs through the station--a freight train that brings manufactured goods from the factories in the North to Seoul and then brings raw materials and equipment for the factories to the North. It definitely has more of a ghost station feel than anything, given the distinct lack of people utilizing it. The hope is that someday when North and South Korea are reunified, Dorasan will be ready to serve as a station on the Trans Eurasian Line, connecting the Korean Peninsula with Russia and the rest of Europe.

All in all, the trip was definitely a good one. I might even do another one some time...when it isn't so disgustingly hot out. You should all definitely check out the photo dump site for a full view of the tour.

A note to American tourist traps: you fail. As cheesy as the DMZ tours are, I could still manage to get some decent souvenirs and 4 water bottles for under $10. Stop charging $3 for a bottle of water when its 95 degrees outside!

Adventures in AC Repair

As you may or may not know, most schools in Korea will give their foreign teachers an apartment to stay in during the course of their tenure. For us, this is a very good thing, considering that it is very difficult for a foreigner to get an apartment by themselves and even harder to find an apartment building that feels comfortable enough with their English to let foreign teachers live there. So the school foots the bill for the monthly rent, leaving the teachers with the utilities--water, gas, electricity, building maintenance, TV and internet. For most places, this comes down to about $100 for the month (and yes, I am including all of the above mentioned utilities). Pretty sweet deal, ne?

Most school neglect to mention to the teachers that if anything breaks in the apartment while they are living there, the teachers will have to pay the costs of repairs out of pocket. The teachers, most of whom are so wide-eyed and enamored by the aforementioned "sweet deal" that they don't consider such things, are shocked to find that they are expected to pay to fix the decrepit old hunk of junk that serves as an air conditioner, or that window screens that have been full of holes since long before they arrived are another one of their responsibilities.

Imagine my chagrin, therefore, when I come to find that my decrepit piece of air conditioner was slowly building a lake on my little porch. While this did give me fond memories of the Lake Newton from my childhood, I was more than a little anxious about the idea of having someone come to the apartment and fix the problem. More accurately, I was more than a little anxious about paying for someone to come to the apartment and fix the problem. But since you can't really live in Korea without air conditioner for another two or so months, I eventually sucked it up and had the school arrange for a service guy to come out.

The AC guy came out on a Saturday morning the day after we called him to come. He took off his shoes at the door and came in to tinker with the unit. He found the leak, fixed it in less than two minutes, and then stayed half an hour to help me clean up the massive puddle on the porch. When he was done, he charge me $10, wished me a happy day, and left.

Now compare that to your last AC repair experience. Is your mind blown? Mine still is....

Summer intesives

Well, it is almost that time of year again when I go into hiding and no one sees or hears from me for a month. Summer intensive session starts tomorrow, and my day will begin around 8am and go until around 8pm in the evening. This does not include, of course, the number of hours I will spend preparing material for my classes, grading the increased number of assignments I have to assign, and generally beating my head against a wall when I run into complications and problems (which, naturally, are boundless during this time of year). So just in case I don't talk to any of you over the next month, I want to let you know that you will be missed and that you are more than welcome to try and call me whenever. I just can't guarantee that my brain will be connected to my spinal cord when you do.

As if this month wasn't already busy enough for me, I'm going to be taking the writing section of the GRE on August 2nd. In Korea they do a split administration, so I will take the writing section now and then in October will sit myself down and try to do the math/verbal section. I'm trying to study while handling my intensives workload, which is another reason why it might be difficult to get a hold of me. I'm not sure what, if anything, I will do with these GRE scores, but it's a step that I needed to take.

All right, enough for boring updates. I'll see you all in a month, though if something truly exciting does happen, I will be sure to let you know.

4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone!

For those interested, I celebrated today by staying inside away from the humidity, making hotdogs on the stove top, drinking American beer I normally wouldn't touch with a twelve foot pole, and watching a selection of my favorite America-themed movies. This year's festivities included:

1. Live Free or Die Hard--one of my favorite movies of all time. Afterwards I spent about an hour listening to CCR and feeling like a badass.

2. 1776--a guilty pleasure I suppose. Everytime I watch this movie I always remember the severity of what our founding fathers did and the price we all paid and continue to pay for our freedom. Plus the songs are just catchy. I couldn't stop singing about eaglets for an hour.

3. Independence Day--it just wouldn't be right not to watch it. Freedom not only from tyranny, but from creepy aliens as well.

4. National Treasure--I know that it doesn't have a lot to do with the 4th of July, but for some reason it just fit with the whole theme of what I was going for today. You know, running around with the Declaration of Independence and trying to find clues from American history to solve the puzzle concealed on the back? It feels patriotic to me!

I hope where ever you are, and whatever you're doing, you all remember what today means. Not just for our past, but our present and our future. I have several friends and a number of family members who either have served or are serving in the armed forces, and I want to make sure that I tell them today that I appreciate them for everything that they do.


"We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"
--President Thomas Whitmore, Independence Day

World Cup

I know, I know. I fail at managing to update everything on a regular basis. First I was waiting for something interesting to happen, then I was waiting for work to stop being so busy. Yet, here we are nearly four months later and I have yet to post anything. What the foo is up?

In a nutshell, I'm blaming friends visiting/North Korea bombing/cherry blossom festivaling/ coworkers wedding/inner ear infection and subsequent socialized medicine utlizing/GRE studying/week vacationing/extra working/more friends visiting/world cup watching for my lack of life signs over the past few months. There was also a lovely bout of flu in there somewhere, but that was mostly just a weekend of me sitting home and feeling sorry for myself. Excuses and all aside, I have returned for a moment from the land of the unresponsive.

World Cup.

I hope you aren't sitting at home and groaning. If you are, I'm very disappointed in you.

Yes, I realize that South Korea and America have both been eliminated from the cup. Yes, I realize that Brazil is probably going to kick the stuffings out of everyone who is left. Am I going to stop watching? Hell no. World Cup isn't just a weekend fling, something you turn on when all your normal TV shows are on commerical or when you don't want to watch that Days of Our Lives rerun. Soccer is a lifestyle choice, a commitment of the highest level that should come before most if not all other obligations. It brings together some of the best athletes in the world, and despite the fact that most people seem to be suffering under the delusion that its a boring game to watch, I have been thrilled to be living in a country that provides me with coverage of every single soccer game that has been played and will be played in this tournament.

Heck, I've even been given free vuvuzelas by nice old men in front of the convenience store. I've broken all three, but its the thought that counts after all.

I watched all four American games on TV, and I was courageous enough to make it to Seoul City Hall for one of the four Korea games. It was an amazing feeling, being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of my closest friends and cheering for the team when it was obvious that I didn't really belong there. I wore my "Korea Shouting" and FIFA shirts to work multiple days in a row and didn't recieve any questioning glances from my fellow teachers or the staff (most of them were dressed similarly). On one memorable occasion my boss even canceled class and herded all the kids into the parent's room, where they broadcast the game on the flat screen and we all yelled and screamed at the terrible reffing during the Nigeria game.

If this is how the rest of the world experiences the World Cup, then I'm ready to book my flight for Brazil 2014.

I'm currently engrossed in the Brazil-Netherlands game, which is at this moment tied 1-1 with 25 minutes left in regular time. I'll probably stay up and watch, and then be so excited that I stay up and watch Uruguay-Ghana (though I'm hard pressed to say which one I want to lose more). For all you soccer fans out there, I hope that you are loving this as much as I am. I hope you're cheering for whatever teams you have a vague connection to and not worrying so much about your homeland or the league favorite. For all you non-soccer fans out there... quickly become soccer fans and enjoy the game for what it is--a giant war without all the dying.



**Note: I'm trying out some new templates on the old blog. Lemme know what you think.

**Note #2: To all you people who thought that Brazil was going to win the whole thing-- hahahahahahahaha! just goes to show, you can't just pick the favorite!

Olympic fever

Now that the Olympics are finally at an end, I feel that I can safely record my observations of Korea during the past few weeks. It's been an interesting experience, living in a small country with a number of famous athletes who were expected to do well in the games. Of course, the name on everyone's lips was Kim Yu-Na (and yes, the 'Yu' is in fact pronounced 'Yo'), and her gold medal in women's figure skating has been the only thing on my students minds even before it was awarded to her. Literally every other commercial on TV has Yu-Na in it, from chicken restaurants to make-up brands to KB bank. The only comparison I can make is that Yu-Na seems to be to Korea what Hello Kitty is to Japan, and though I have yet to see her in an advertisement for the Korean Army, I'm sure its only a matter of time.

Not to suggest in any way that she doesn't deserve this honor. Yu-Na has been in training practically all her life, thanks to an overbearing, former pro-skater mother and her own natural ability. She trained in Canada even while her parents were living in Korea, and managed to make it through the Olympics without them even flying in to see her skate. I don't know many 19 year olds who would be so capable as she has proven to be. What I find interesting about the figure skating competition is not Yu-Na, however, but the lesser known Canadian skater Joannie Rochette. Of course, almost everyone knows her story by now--how her mother died only a few hours after landing in Vancouver to see her daughter compete; how she went back to training the next day; and how she shocked the world by delivering an emotionally stunning and beautiful performance in both the short and long program dances to win a bronze medal. As much support as I have seen for Kim Yu-Na over the past few months, recently there has been a strong showing for the Canadian skater as well. I heard a number of my students talking about how they really hoped that she would take the silver medal in the event (after all, there can't be two golds...). There have even been a number of short commercials wishing Joannie and her family comfort during this terrible time. It was very uplifting to me to see such a show of compassion during such a nationalistic event as the Olympics.

Which, of course, completely conflicts with the other thing I noticed about these winter games. Now I don't know how different I am from the rest of you dear readers, but I can name maybe a dozen current American Olympic athletes, and only one of those is from the winter games. So I had no idea who Apolo Ohno was until I came to a country that really, truly despises him. For those of you who have no idea who I'm talking about, Apolo Ohno is a speed skater who has competed in various events for the past three winter Olympic games. I've also heard something about him being on "Dancing with the Stars," but as I myself am an infrequent watcher of TV, I have no idea if that's true or not. The point is, in the 2002 games in Salt Lake City, Ohno was competing in the Men's 1000m when he raised his arms in protest of an allege illegal block by the competitor from South Korea, Kim Dong-Sung. Kim was disqualified, allowing Ohno to take the gold. Whether or not Kim actually did illegally block the lane doesn't really matter. This has resulted in an endless amount of hostility directed towards Ohno, including a large number of death threats that forced him to withdraw from the 2003 World Cup competition that was to take place in South Korea. It didn't help that at the time Ohno was something of a smarmy jackass who just smiled and encouraged the hostility, but on a personal note, it also probably didn't help that he's half Japanese. I'm not going to get into anything there though....

So here we are in the 2010 games and Apolo Ohno has made it to the medal race along with two racers from Korea: Lee Jung-Su and Lee Ho-Suk (no relation, I think...). The Korean racers managed to hold on to their lead coming into the final lap and won the gold and silver medal, respectively, despite Ohno's comeback from a slip with less than three laps remaining. A proud moment for the South Korean people, to be sure. However, instead of being proud of the accomplishments of their athletes, more often than not I find people who are upset that Ohno won any medal at all. They would rather be upset that he was rewarded in any way than happy that two of their competitors acheived the highest (and second highest) honor in their sport. I don't know how to put in to words how that makes me feel, but it's not a happy feeling.

All in all, I will miss the games. We had some interesting conversations between the American and Canadian teachers when the US hockey team beat the Canadians during the preliminary matches. I'm going to hate to see what the attitudes are like when we go back to work tomorrow.

February blues

When I said that I would be less busy in the month of February, I did not count on the fact that another one of our teachers would unexpectedly quit at the end of the intensive session, leaving the rest of us once again overworked and underpaid. I am teaching two more classes than I was during the intensive period--the only thing that seems to have changed in my favor is the number of actual hours that I actually spend at work.

This weekend is Chinese lunar new year, marking the true beginning of the year of the tiger and the transition of students from one grade level to the next. Apparently it also marks the transition of normal, well-behaved students into little monsters that try to rebel against their teachers/overlords and decide to fail their tests because they have no other outlet for their energy. All the teachers I have talked to this week have experienced the same phenomena, and in combination with the rainy/snowy weather we've had lately, its been nothing short of a nightmare for us foreigners. By the time Friday finally came along, we were more than happy see the end of a difficult week and the beginning of a fabulous three day weekend, even if it was accompanied by a large amount of grading. I, for one, was on the first bus out of Bundang into Seoul, and rather than looking forward to a relaxing weekend like most of my coworkers, I am getting settled into the copy editing I was hired to do for some school textbooks. Nothing too difficult beyond the wide range of topics, but it's good experience for me and something that will look a little cool on my resume. Is it worth a little bit of my sanity? Probably....

Wish I had something a little more interesting to say, but I am between book chapters right now and just thought that I would post a little something boring to reassure everyone that I hadn't died or anything. If you haven't taken a look at the pictures from my apartment or the castle at Changdeokgung, take a look at the photo dump site. I have a little something special planned for next post, so bear with me!