Insadong & DMZ

Dave & I went to Insadong the other night with his friend "Sandy". Sandy is stationed here in Korea and has really embraced the language....or is making a good effort too. He wore a t-shirt he had gotten from some bar that he was pretty proud of... I was a bit disgusted at first but as the night wore on, I laughed at him with everyone else... nice huh? His shirt says "I am not a Megook" Megook - american. Peaple would ask... "where are you from?" Sandy "America"... then they'd look at me and dave and we'd just shrug and roll our eyes. We know.... stupid Americans... Thanks Sandy.

Yesterday, Dave & I were able to go on a DMZ tour. For those of you unfamilar, the DMZ is the Demiliterized Zone between North and South Korea. There are soldiers from both of the armies on each side keeping close watch of the other side. Our first stop was the 3rd Tunnel out of the 4 tunnels the South Koreans have found. The North Korean's have atleast on 4 occations built tunnels from their side to the South side heading into Seoul. Each tunnel was found before it reached Seoul, but pretty scary. The 3rd tunnel the found was much bigger than the others and they said that it would have allowed the North Koreans to reach Seoul within one hour with 30,000 troops. We were able to go down the tunnel to a certain point. It's was about 350 meters down. Mini story here.... uh, going down was hard, but coming back up was a bit murderous... When I was down in the tunnel, I thought "Wow.... this is pretty neat" Going up I was thinking "I COULD HAVE JUST READ ABOUT THIS!" I'm glad I went down... now. :)

Next stop was the Observetory. A look out point if you will, of North Korea. There are two villiages inside of the DMZ. One in the south that about 200 people live in, and one is the North that is actually just for show. Nobody lives there.

Next stop was Dora Station. Pretty neat. It's a railway that South Korea has built in good faith. It's tracks stop right on the border of North/South Korea. I saw the plans for the future though and it's pretty awe inspiring. They are building this station in the hopes that one day they will be able to travel through North Korea and the rail with continue thru Europe. I was able to get an unoffical stamp on my passport from here... very cool.

Today is my last day here... .Kinda sad to leave, but excited for the next adventure... living with Dave. Haha. I'll be post many more pictures when I get home. I'll post the website on here when I have them loaded.