Cory And Katy

We took advantage of a four day weekend we had for Buddha’s birthday and a holiday called Children’s Day to take a trip to Seoul. On the first day, we mostly wandered around, but everywhere we went, we noticed policemen gathering around the entrances of subways wearing riot gear. At one point, we talked to a few of them and discovered they had been transported up to Seoul from Busan, and nobody was really sure why. The cops in Korea are much nicer than American cops though, and they let us take a picture with them.

As we made our way over to a “Hot Pink Parade” that was supposed to kick-off Seoul’s annual “Hi Seoul” festival, we noticed policemen that weren’t quite as friendly and LOTS of them.

It turns out, the parade was canceled due to a demonstration being held that night. The protest was due to it being the 1 year anniversary of South Korea allowing the import of US beef. Apparently, there was an embassy advisory for American’s to avoid the area, but we didn’t know that, so we were Canadian for the night. We enjoyed the folk music though, and got the hell out of the way whenever the cops started rushing at whatever crowd we were in.

On our second day, we woke up early to make our way to the start of our DMZ tour. The first stop of the tour was at Dorasan station, the last train station in South Korea, before a train would hypothetically get to North Korea and then hook up with the Trans-Siberian railway. The train no longer runs though, because North Korea doesn’t want South Koreans to go through their country. George Bush actually visited the station in 2002 (?) and signed a railroad tie that is on display inside the station, along with a giant poster of him signing it. At the station, they had passport stamps that one would hypothetically get if they traveled to North Korea, so we got a little crazy with stamping things. Including our passports. Don’t tell anyone.

This billboard was outside the station, next to the tracks.

After the station we went to the Dora observatory where we could actually see a town in North Korea, and when we looked through the binoculars available to us, we would even see people walking down the street and plowing fields.

This is the closest we'll probably ever get to North Korea.

When we finished at the Dora observatory, we took a monorail down into a tunnel that the North Koreans dug and the South Koreans discovered in 1978. It was only 50 miles north of Seoul and big enough for 30,000 North Korean soldiers to get through in just one hour. However, on the other side of the DMZ, the North Koreans are proclaiming the South Koreans dug the tunnel. He says, she says.

Finally, we ended our DMZ day with a big bulgogi meal. Because of the holiday weekend, we were unable to go to the city on the border where the UN talks are held, but maybe we’ll go again someday and check it out.

Upon our arrival back in Seoul, we walked through the area where the protest was the night before and discovered that the festival was going on like nothing ever happened. We arrived just in time for mask making! We got to spend an hour just sitting in the nice green grass, listening to bands play, and decoration white cardboard masks with floam. We were both quite proud of our finished products:

After our masks, we explored the grounds around the nearby Gwanghwamun Palace, where King Sejong revealed the Hangul alphabet to his kingdom. It was pretty, but it was just more old Korean architecture. Here are some pictures:

The next day we met up with our friend Lorna and did some traditional touristy things like checked out the markets and went up Seoul Tower. Never heard of it? Don’t worry, a picture comes forthwith:

When we came down from the tower, we ran into one of the coolest performances I’ve seen in Korea. Tibetan monks were in town for a China Festival and they performed incredible martial arts. They also had a mini-monk who was amazing:

maybe if we take just a few more months of hapkido...

What else happened that night? Oh yeah, we tried to go clubbing with some friends, but ended up in a part of town where most of bars were transgender clubs where they didn’t want us to come in. On the plus side, these are some of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen:

Other fun stuff happened too, but I just don’t feel like writing about it anymore. And I’m sure you don’t feel like reading about it, so I guess we’re even.