'09 Updates from the Other Side of the World

"Life changes in the instant," writes Joan Didion in one of my favorite books, The Year of Magical Thinking. Oh, how she is right. I had every intention of keeping up with this blog and updating it regularly. But then life stepped in, and decided to drastically change - with that came a trip back to the United States, time away from work, and little thought for things like blogs.

But now I am back in Korea, approaching the six-month mark of my time here in Pusan. Somehow, in between the turmoil and tragedy, life has continued on. My adventures in the last few months have been less frequent, but I've been pushing myself to continue to explore, wander, wonder.

In December, a few of my buddies and I took a weekend trip to Seoul to visit friends and take a tour of the DMZ (De-militarized Zone) between North and South Korea. Although I haven't been good about keeping up the blog, I have continued to write in my journal, and I will include clips from there:

"We were speeding north toward Seoul on the KTX train, zipping past green rice fields and a dark sky at just under 300 km/hour. The boys - Nate, Alex, Scott and Eric - were drinking cans of Korean beer, while I slurped down a box of chocolate milk. They'd bought both Cass and Hite and were trying to decide which tasted better, while reading each other text messages from various Korean girls they were seeing, all of who clearly did not speak English fluently.

"I think you hate me. You go Seoul, but always a good face to me," Scott read. Nate and Alex discussed theories of what this could actually mean, while I rolled my eyes at the whole thing. Luckily for me, we planned to meet up with my American friends My Khanh and Shadiyah once we reached Seoul, as all seven of us were booked on a tour of the DMZ the following morning at 7am. I would be spared an entire weekend of beer taste tests and the merits of dating girls who don't speak the same language.

The KTX reached Seoul in 2 hours and 45 minutes, depositing us in the city just before 11pm. It was the first weekend in December, and this Palm Springs girl wasn't prepared for the rush of cold wind that hit us face-on as we stepped out of the train station.

Scott, a Michigan native, quickly started giving me instructions: "Zip up your jacket. You gotta keep the heat in. Good, good. Okay, now pull up your hood. You lose most of your heat from your head. Jenn, where's your hat?!"

We walked through the Friday night streets, looking for a warm place to eat. It looked as though the five of us were chain-smoking, white puffs rising up every time we took a breath. My legs were already starting to go numb.

We eventually found a place across the street from the train station, where we could wait for My Khanh, who was arriving from the city of Daejeon around midnight. The boys happily devoured fried chicken and more beer, while we tried to name the capital of every U.S. state (Scott won that game, even though I often suspect he's actually from Canada).

When My Khanh arrived, we parted ways - the boys decided to sleep at a jinjilbang (Korean bathhouse) and My Khanh and I decided to splurge on a nearby motel (total cost: 30,000 won or roughly $21). It was nearly 2am when we finally crawled under the electric blankets, our phone alarms set for the early hour of 5:45am.



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Alex had already called me twice and it wasn't even 6:30am - he wanted to make sure we were going to be on time, and I assured him we would. Even though My Khanh and I were closest to the meeting point for the tour, we managed to get hopelessly lost and ended up sprinting up subway stairs and through the streets, sure we were going to miss the tour and anger everyone (the only upside to all this frantic running was that it warmed me up ever so slightly).

We finally arrived at the USO office (United Service Organization, the group that leads the tour) after finding Eric waiting outside the Namyeong exit, jumping up and down to keep warm. The people queing inside were mostly white and bleary-eyed, and we paid our fee of $40 USD, showed our passports and were ushered to a bus waiting out back. It was just before 7:30am at this point, I still hadn't had my coffee, and the bus was so cold that there was ICE lining the windows (we later came to find that this particular Saturday was one of the coldest on record in Seoul).

We began the ride 50 km north to the DMZ and almost immediately, everyone on board dozed off. I was too riled up to sleep though, thinking only of what lay ahead, what we would see and experience. Borders have always fascinated me - some arbitrary point where, by just stepping a few feet in one direction, the laws, languages, currency can change. I've crossed my fair share of borders and it's always an interesting experience: a boat in hippo-infested waters into Mozambique, getting blackmailed by a man wielding a machete in Paraguay, being detained by Immigration trying to enter Canada.

And now here I was, at one of the most famous borders in the world. The DMZ is the most fortified border on Earth, a thin strip of land just 4km wide between North and South Korea, established in 1953 after the Korean War ended in an unhappy cease-fire. The DMZ had just grabbed news headlines before I reached Korea, when a South Korean woman was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers while out walking in a quiet patch of forest just a little too close to the border (this had been a great comfort to my mother, who adamantly protested when I started reading aloud from the "Getting Started in North Korea" section of my Lonely Planet).

We reached Camp Bonifas, the small U.S. military post at the border, about 30 minutes after leaving Seoul, and boarded another bus, this time led by an American soldier with a baby face and a Southern twang. I guess part of his military duty was showing busloads of Westerners around.

After we signed our lives away (a statement relieving the United States military of any responsibility if we were injured or killed on the tour), we were led to the area where North and South Korean soldiers square off. It was a bizarre and highly tense scene: the South Koreans, clad in blue coats, black helmets and reflective Aviators, standing in a modified tae-kwon-do stance, not moving a muscle. Most of their faces were hidden by the helmet and their eyes couldn't be seen behind the glasses. In many ways, they reminded me of the British soldiers outside Buckingham Palace, but there would be no funny faces or silly attempts at laughter here. The North Koreans, standing straight ahead in the distance, faced the South in olive green coats and hats, arms at their sides, guns on their hips. It was essentially the largest military face-off in the world, with each side engaged in what looked like a staring contest.

After snapping a few pictures and being told to make no sudden movements, we were led into the Joint Security Area, which is basically a large conference room where all negotiations between North and South have taken place since 1953. A long table divides the room in half, and the Military Demarcation Line literally cuts through the table, marking the boundary between North Korea and South Korea. A South Korean soldier, his eyes hidden by the Aviator sunglasses even indoors, stood blocking the door that leads to North Korea. We were told that if we tried to get past him, we would most likely be shot (no worries, I had little inclination to risk death in an attempt to reach the paradise that is North Korea).

From outside, we could look out across the North Korean landscape. On this cold day, the sky was gray and the mountains rose behind the village of Gijeong (supposedly a ghost town, where the buildings are empty and the only activity is the propaganda being broadcast from a huge loudspeaker in the center of town). We could also see the North Korean flag atop a giant metal structure; at 525 feet, the tallest flagpole in the world. It is hard to imagine what life is like across that border....

The tour ended underground, in a series of intricate tunnels North Korea built in the 1970s in an attempt to invade the South. We were given hard hats (which a kind American miner on the tour showed us how to put on our heads) and led down a steep hill into the darkness of the tunnels. The last tunnel wasn't discovered until 1990, and each tunnel is wide enough to permit the passage of an entire military division in just one hour. The whole thing was eerie, an entire underground world which the North Koreans outfitted with electricity, storage for weapons and even sleeping areas."

It's very easy to forget that North and South Korea are still at war, even living here in Pusan. I haven't talked to many older Koreans about the war; just my students, who have typical child answers when I ask them if they'd like to see the Koreas unite.

"No, teacher," they say. "North Koreans are so poor and stupid. We would have to help them too much."

But I think about the Koreans who remember family members left in the North, the hometowns many senior Koreans will never see again, the mothers, fathers, siblings who have probably died and been buried in the North, without goodbyes.

And yet it's so clear at the DMZ just how strongly these countries distrust each other. Thoughts of reconciliation are fast forgotten when you see just how quickly the two sides could swing into action, lest the cease-fire abruptly ended. I seriously wonder what will become of the Korean peninsula - if they will ever come together, or if this war will go on indefinitely, the massive staring contest a permanent symbol of struggle on the 38th parallel.