Glimpse of the North

A few weekends ago I had the opportunity to travel to the DMZ. Its hard to believe that a country can be so isolated, secretive and oppressed in this day and age. Living just below the border in a tech crazy, fast paced, modern city its even harder to believe.

According to the BBC, "Aid agencies have estimated that up to two million people have died since the mid-1990s because of acute food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement. The country relies on foreign aid to feed millions of its people.The totalitarian state also stands accused of systematic human rights abuses. Reports of torture, public executions, slave labour, and forced abortions and infanticides in prison camps have emerged. A US-based rights group has estimated that there are up to 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea."

Living in Seoul its easy to forget about what is happening up North. Sure there are political flare ups and threats from the North that sometimes set us all on edge, but then daily life takes over and its pushed to the back of our minds. My recent trip brought everything right up to the front of my mind, and it hasn't left.

Here are some highlights/ interesting things I learned from the DMZ tour:

The beginning of our tour. Lucy and I with our official USO tour badges.

The Joint Security Area is the location where all negotiations since 1953 have been held. The MDL (Military Demarcation Line) cuts through the center of the blue buildings. The large grey building is North Korea.

Where meetings between the Koreas and other countries are held.

ROK Guards stratigically stand so that half of thier body is conceled behind the buildings.

Inside the confrence building, this table is divided down the center by the MDL and the microphones running down the table indicate where the line is, they also record 24/7.

ROK Soliders stand in a Tae Kwan Do stance and wear dark sunglasses to avoid displaying any sort of emotion.

The door behind me leads to the North, I would not recomend opening it.

The white posts run along the middle of the DMZ and mark the MDL, military demarcation line. One of the things I found most interesting is that there are phones placed along the MDL. If someone successfully crosses the border they can call for help. The ROK or US military will be there in a matter of minutes to pick them up.

North Korea

At this exact point I am surrounded by the North on three sides, Brionna Pennisula, sorry bad joke!

South Korea donated a flag to a small village within the DMZ. The village is not technically North or South Korea. The North responded by building another, taller flag pole with a bigger flag. The South's flag pole was 323 feet tall and the flag weighs 287 pounds. The North's flag pole is 525 ft tall and and weighs in at 595 pounds. Lowering the flag requires at least 30 men and must be done every night and on windy days because it would tear under it's own weight.

These little red signs were pretty unsettling. They lined the edges of the roads and warned of land mines.

There were also a few interesting things that I didn't get any pictures of, or was not allowed to photograph. The first were the jamming towers used by the North, which block any incoming radio, TV, cellphone signals.

Next, the propaganda village is literally insane. The North refers to it as Peace Village, but it really isn't a village at all. The village has large brightly colored buildings, working electricity and a seemingly average standard of living. However closer inspection using modern telescopic lenses revealed that the buildings are just concrete shells with the building lights turning on and off at set times. Another illusion constructed by the North.

One of the last things we were able to see was the 3rd tunnel built by the North.

Since November, 1974, the South has discovered four tunnels crossing the DMZ. The tunnels are believed to have been created as a military invasion plan by the North. Each tunnel is large enough for of an entire infantry division to pass through in one hour. Four tunnels have been found, but it is believed that there are more. The third tunnel was discovered on October 17, 1978.

We started the tunnel tour at the top of a tunnel built adjacent to the third tunnel. Our tour guide gave us hard hats, which I thought were a complete joke. However after we walked down a very steep incline for about 15 mins, I could clearly see why we needed the helmets. The tunnel was wet, dark and cramped. We were able to walk deep into the tunnel, it was intense. To think that this was built in secret, so far below the earth's surface and as a plan to invade Seoul, its just crazy.

To end this on a positive note, one thing that is fascinating and beautiful about the DMZ is that it has become an unintentional nature preserve. Because it is so dangerous and uninhabitable for humans, many rare plant and animal species can be found within the heavily fortified border. Animals such as cranes, the extremely endangered Korean tiger, black bears and vampire deers can be found within the DMZ. I find it absolutely amazing that within such a dangerous and heavily militarized place, a place with such a tragic history, something so beautiful has been created.

dear friends and family who do not have facebook,

I have created a Korean photo blog of some of my favorite pictures/events.

check it out: http://brikorea.tumblr.com/

and to add to the blog line up I also have my art site too: http://brionnahughes.com/

xoxox

Brionna

Spring

Oh my, it has been so so long! Who knew sitting down to write a new post could become so difficult? I have officially been in Korea for 6 months and I am about to start my 3rd term. Its definitely time for an update.

Spring has officially arrived and along with it cherry blossoms, sunshine, thunderstorms, and more festivals than you could count or ever imagine a country this small to have.

Festivals.

• Jindo Sea Parting Festival.

Ok, this was actually more than a few months ago, but I never got around to telling you about it. The Sea Parting, or Miracle Road Festival to religious Koreans, happens once a year in Jindo in Jeollanam-do Province. The sea "mysteriously" parts and you can walk from the mainland to a nearby island. This phenomenon is caused by the difference in high tides and low tides, which creates a 2.8-kilometer-long road measuring 40 to 60 meters in width.

Lucy and I took an early am bus from Seouland arrived at the Jindo bus station about 4 hrs later. Side note, Korean bus drivers are crazy, not afraid of the brake pedal or of taking corners at excessively high speeds. Upon arriving at the bus station we needed to find our way to the festival location along the coast. We decided to take a bus which caused a whole lot of confusion. While waiting alone outside for our bus to, hopefully, come I was ambushed by a group of high school aged Koreans, who were very excited to practice their english on me. Through muddled Konglish, I was told that they liked my shoes, thought I had a nice face, and then of course they talked for a very long time about my nose ring.

We soon gave up on the bus, returned our tickets, and took a taxi. When we arrived at the festival location we bumped into some other expats that we had met at the bus station. We joined forces and found a hostel together. In the end our little expat group grew to about 10.

Our hostel was pretty typical Korean, just anempty room, with blankets and a heated floor. But this one had one bathroom, located outside of all of the rooms. Another problem we encountered was the Jindo apparently had no ATMs. A weekend of no showers and no food.

We soon met up with some friends that I went to college with, bought some soju (Korean rice liqour) and made our way to the Miracle Road. It was very cool! It was also very muddy and the water was freezing! My feet hurt so bad, but it was too pretty to stop walking. We saw gorgeous blue and orange starfish, lots of abalone shells, and many other little sea creatures. Many tourists were there to walk across, but many Koreans were there to harvest the sea creatures and sea plants. One Korean crossing the land bridge asked my to face time with his wife over his iphone, oh Korea.

- our hostel

About halfway through the land bridge crossing, disaster struck! Suddenly all of the soju we had drank hit my bladder at once and I had to pee so bad. I really wanted to turn back, but my friends convinced me to try and make it to the other end, we were so close. So I kept going. Then about 5 mins later, the Korean sea police started blowing their whistles and telling us to turn back, the tide was coming in. OH NO! I literally thought I was going to pee my pants in the middle of the Miracle Road. So I ran ALL the way back across the land bridge.

After wandering around the few tents they had and listening to a few men dressed in a sort of Korean drag sing and dance, we made our way back to our hostel. Havingonly a few wons in our pockets we found a tiny little, connivence store. It wasn't much of a store, more of a one room apartment, with half a store attached to the front, selling random snacks, juices, alcohol and cigarettes. In the front half of the shop the owner and about 4 other local men were sitting around a bubbling pot of Kimchi Jiggae (kimchi stew) having dinner. We practically walked right into their dinner, and before we knew it we were being invited to sit down and were being passed shots of soju and Jindo's very own liqour. I have no idea what it was made out of, but I had sampled it at the festival earlier that day. Its a dark red color and taste like rubbing alcohol mixed with hairspray. We gladly accepted spoonfuls of jiggae and shots of liquor, we were broke abd starving. They men were very friendly and more than excited to be talking with us. After dinner we joined the rest of our expat group for a bonfire on the beach.

It was a good weekend.

Dinner in the snack shop.

• Cherry Blossom Festival.

Wasn't much of a festival, just a street lined with cherry trees. I had been to the area a week earlier when Lucy and I rented bicycles and rode around. Only difference now was the amount of people. Cherry blossoms are beautiful, but I grew up on a cherry and apple farm. Although I do love the blossoms, the excitement of it all was lost on me.

• The Hampyeong Butterfly Festival

......or as I now refer to it The Great Butterfly Bust

How fun does a butterfly festival sound? Tons of fun!? Thats what I thought! So a few weekends ago Lucy and I boarded a bus for a 5 hour ride to what we thought would be a wonderful weekend of butterflies, flowers, and general loveliness. Upon arriving in Hampyeong we quickly realized how wrong we were. Due to some unknown error we got the dates wrong. There was no festival and there barley was a town. While we were sitting in the bus station trying to come up with a back up plan we were approached by one the five expats that lives in the area. He was friendly, from Seattle, and reaffirmed how wrong we were.

We walked around Hampyeong, it took about 5 mins, but some lunch, tuna kimbap, and decided to go to Mokpo, about an hr away.

Mokpo was a little coastal city. Day one in Mokpo we walked along the harbor and went on a wonderful hike.

The best part of the whole weekend was the laser light show, or as the locals proudly called it The Dancing Water Fountain. It hilarious, the music, the drunk Koreans singing along, it was great! I had to video it to capture at least a portion of the greatness:

Mokpo day two we decided to take a ferry around the islands. While buying ferry tickets we were greeted by Mr. Lee, the very friendly tour guide. We seemed to be the only tourist he had seen in a while and he was more than eager to help. He even gave us a personalized tour of the museum while we waited. His enthusiasm was very entertaining, the language barrier and the overall awkwardness added to the hilarity. Take for example this piece of our conversation: "this island is famous for Bumping Bisssshees?" (pause) "Ohhhh Jumping Fish!" "Yes, yes, you understand, yes?"

The ferry ride was fun. Very small walk on ferry that connects people on the island to the mainland, Mokpo. I don't think most people ride it for fun, but we enjoyed it!

• Lotus Lantern Festival.

This may be my favorite festival yet.

The Lotus Lantern Festival is the celebration of Buddha's birthday in Seoul. It included a lantern parade, a Buddhist culture street fair and a traditional lantern exhibition in and around Jogyesa and Bongeunsa Temples. It was beautiful!!

Saturday we went to Bongeunsa Temple. The entire temple was covered in colorful lanterns.

The white tags are wishes.

White lanterns are wishes for the dead.

Colorful lanterns a general life wishes.

Saturday night we went to the lantern parade. It was so, so beautiful. So many amazing lantern floats.

Sunday was the Buddhist culture street fair. A street in the area on Insadong was shut off from traffic for about a mile and lined with hundreds of booths. There were booths about korean and international Buddhist culture, local community groups, food samples, games, and many interactive booths (lantern making, candle making, incense making......) It was so much fun!!!!!!

Lotus candle making.

making wishes

making a little paper lotus.

The street fair was also located in and around Jogyesa Temple. Like the temple before, it was covered in colorful lanterns. I don't know if I could ever get tired of all the beautiful lanterns, wish I could cover my apartment with them. I'm in love with them.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully I will return again soon to fill you in on all of my upcoming adventures:

Bungee Jumping (hopefully) for my 25th Birthday

Tour of the DMZ

Gangneung Beach Trip

Vacation to the Philippines

Stay tuned.

The Wednesday Special

Whoa! Looks like I am way overdue for a new update!

So much has happened in the last month, the idea of a new post has been a little overwhelming. I know I will forget something, but here goes....

I have been here for a little over 4 months! Its crazy how fast time is flying by. We recently started a new term at school. I was definitely looking forward to a fresh start with new students. I had this grand plan of starting this term out as a strict, scary teacher. Hah! What a joke that was, I lasted a day, maybe. But so far, so good! I love my new classes!!

Being the only female teacher at my school I get all of the young classes. Fine by me, that just means I have the cutest little monsters! One of my youngest students (and eventually the rest of the class) started calling me "Ramen Head Teacher" because my hair reminded him of ramen noodles. Then after my spur of the moment hair chopping decision (see Korean Fringe, aka 4th grade bangs haha), my students now call me "Kimchi in the Front, Ramen in the Back." They make my hairstyle sound like some kind of Korean mullet!

Also my new schedule is pretty sweet. Usually we teach 5 days a week, three full days and two half days. But this term instead of two half days I get a full day off. So I work Monday, Tuesday, Day Off, Thursday, Friday, Weeeekend! Its perfect! And to make things better my friend Lucy, who works for the same company but a different branch, has the exact same schedule! We have been taking full advantage of our free Wednesdays!

So far on our Wednesday adventures we have managed to pack in quite a bit of exploring:

Our first wednesday we roamed around an area called Apujeong. We spent a hour or so wandering around and trying to find "Rodeo Drive," or "the street with all the shopping." Nothing too exciting there, just a bunch of cute little shops, fun to walk around and window shop though. And as usual the temperature dropped quickly and we spent the rest of the afternoon in a coffee shop, chatting and reading.

Second wednesday of freedom went to Insadong and some neighboring areas. We started our day at Jogyesa Temple. This is the largest active buddhist temple in central Seoul. It's the headquarters of the Jogye sect, a uniquely Korean buddhist sect. It was beautiful. It was really an amazing feeling to be sitting in a gorgeous temple in the middle of a huge metropolitan city, monks chanting, playing drums, and people taking a break from their day to stop in and pray. I really could have sat there all day.

Next, we walked through the streets of Insadong (I have mentioned this area in a previous post). We had the most amazing pancakes yet! Pancakes are very common street food, but these were a little different. They typically are little doughy balls just filled with cinnamon and smashed flat as they fry, but these had little pieces of nut in them, sooo yummy! Pancakes are my favorite street food!!

After our wonderful pancake snack we meandered into a neighborhood bordering Insadong. Koreans are some of themost generous and helpful people I have ever met, and If I could choose one moment to show this it would be what happened next.

I had recently read an article about a Mandu shop that was suppose to be a-mazing. The article said it was near-ish to Insadong, but a little out of the way and hard to find. Also on the same block was a highly recommended coffee shop and roastery. Because directions that seem simple in Korea are actually crazy complicated, we decided to ask the two women, who worked in the shop where Lucy had just bought a dress, for directions.

As I have found out in many occasions Koreans don't just send you off wondering in some general direction, they will make sure you get to your destination! I showed the lady the article and asked her if we could walk (using my best attempt at Konglish.) She wasn't sure, so she called the restaurant, where I overheard a few Korean words, including foreigners, haha. She then informed me that it was too far to walk and we would need to taxi.

Heres the surprising part, she didn't just send us out to catch our own taxi! She grabbed us by the hand and ran, yes ran, us to the corner where she flagged down taxis for us. But for some reason no taxi would take us, but she was determined to get us a taxi. Then it began it snow, no I am not exaggerating, and she didn't bring her coat. Lucy and I were caught between feeling bad and wanting to burst out laughing. We didn't know how to tell her it was ok, she didn't have to do this.

Finally we were able to express that it was ok, and we appreciated her help. She grabbed us and ran us back to the shop, again, running and dragging us and dodging people on the crowded sidewalk. Back in the shop she wrote down directions in Korean to help us when we did get a taxi.

Lucy and I walked down the street and finally caught a taxi, and good thing we didn't try to walk! It was a 15 min taxi drive up a hill. It was more than worth the trouble/experience getting there.

The mandu restaurant was opened by two sisters in thier fathers house and even though it has gained a lot of popularity they still operate out of the original house. It was located on the top of a hill that looked away from the city and out to the hills. We really felt removed from the normal craziness of city life. And the mandu was great! We got mandu that is a North Korean staple, dumplings filled with cucumber and shittake mushrooms, and a colorful mandu soup, followed by delicous cinnamon dessert tea.

And after our wonderful lunch we walked down the street to Club Espresso where we saw how

they roast their coffee and got free coffee samples. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon reading and chatting and drink yummy coffee, very typical.

Wednesday #3:

A Korean lady that is friends with Lucy invited us on a tour of KBS, Korea's largest broadcasting company. Think touring CBS or NBC back in the states. The tour was inKorean, but Sue, Lucy's friend, was able to translating most of what was happening. I was expecting a large tour group, but it was just Luc, me and Sue's family. It was super cool.

We we able to see a few different sets where game shows, talk shows and the news are shot. We toured the costume and prop room, the two young girls with us were so excited because they recognized many things from their favorite Korean dramas. We got to sit in on a rehearsal of a popular comedy show, Gag Concert. After that our tour guide led us down a hallway and told us if we were lucky we would run into some celebrities. Honestly she could have told me that anyone in that hallway was a celebrity, I'm not too sharp on my Korean pop culture. But apparently we did meet a few very famous comedians. I definitely gained some serious cool points with my students when I showed them the pictures! YAY ramen head teacher!

And today was another wonderful Wednesday!

Today we went to Noryangjin Fish Market. It is a giant fish market selling primarily live fish, sea creatures, and some very unusual little creatures.

Luckily we had two Korean friends to help us find our lunch. We went there with one goal: EAT LIVE OCTOPUS! And we had one rule, it had to be wiggling fresh!

We wandered around a bit, talked to a few fish sellers, let Jin bargain. Before we knew it we had one wiggling bag of octopus and a woman was flopping the rest of our lunch on to the scale and whacking it in the head. It all was a little overwhelming for a moment.

Each fish seller gives you instructions about which restaurant to take your fish to to be prepared. We went up the the second floor of the market, found our restaurant and mentally prepared for what lay ahead of us, well Lucy and I did at least.

Within a few minutes two plates were brought out, one with a full live octopus that was literally crawling off the plate and another plate of tentacle pieces with a lot of wiggle left in them. Our Korean friend wasted no time at all, and shoved the whole octopus into his mouth! It wiggled and stuck out and grabbed onto the side of his face. We weren't quiet as brave, but hey baby steps right? I picked out my piece of squirming tentacle, dipped it into so sauce, and ate it. It was so strange, it wiggled, and suctioned to my teeth. The strangest part was when I went to swallow and it was stuck to my teeth! They definetly weren't joking when they said to "chew vigorously" haha! Besides our lovely little octo friend, we also ate some sashimi fish, a shellfish that looked like an overgrown mussel and some spicy fish stew. It was all a very fun experience.

Ohhhh man I have so much more to write about, but I will leave this blog post to my wednesday adventures. Stay tuned for more Korean Life updates!

xoxoxo!