South Korea- day 5

Day 5 Fri 7/31
Part 1: The DMZ- demilitarized zone
Today Maggie and I went to the DMZ, demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. Because North Korea is a communist country, no travel is allowed and no one is allowed out of the country. There are four different bridges for the DMZ, but we only went to the third one because it was the closest to Seoul, where we got on our tour bus. Our tour guide was Clara, a cute girl from Seoul with braces who was about 20, accompanied by a man in front of us who acted as a second tour guide because he had just been to the war museum and clearly wanted to talk about it. In 1953, the demilitarized zone was established, but South Korea actually never signed off on it, so it's really an agreement between North Korea and the United Nations. We started at the JSA, joint security area, where we saw a PowerPoint about the history and random facts, shown by two US soldiers. There is a freedom village in the DMZ, that doesn't belong to North or South Korea and is constantly protected (home to a few lucky wealthy people who don't have to pay taxes to either country). We went to the line and saw the ROK (South Korean) soldiers standing guard against North Korea. There was one North Korean man on the opposite side of the line holding the fort down checking out the tour group with binoculars. We were able to go into a conference room and cross over into North Korea, where we got good pictures officially standing in North Korea. We also went to site seeing areas to get a view of North Korea from a distance and take pictures, but at a strictly enforced distance. On the tour, we also got to go down to one of the tunnels South Korea found that North Korea was trying to dig through the South for attack. We put on helmets and got to walk 2 kilometers at an 11 degree decline (ouch to the knees) to see through to the North's side of the cave. Luckily, we wore helmets, because I banged my head on the top of the tunnel at least twenty times. People over here are just shorter than the average American. The DMZ was something I will probably never get to do again.
On the ride back from the DMZ, we stopped at a train station that was worldly important. If South Korea and North Korea reunite, people would have access all around Europe and Asia through the connecting railroads. While we were sitting in chairs in the station talking to each other, a Korean visitor from another tour bus came up and stood as close as he could to Maggie without touching her. While I'm sitting there staring thinking what the h are you doing, Maggie and I turn to see people taking a picture of him (us). Yes, this forty something Koan man was trying to snap himself into a picture with us, people with blonde hair. Weird. We got up and posed for a picture with him. He was ecstatic. Afterwards, Maggie got another photo request, funny Koreans.

Part 2: The Day in Seoul
We got done with the DMZ tour around 3:30, then Maggie showed me some of the popular parts of Seoul. First, we went to Myeong-dong that was a lot like the heart of Madrid. The city had streets packed with people and popular stores, all three stories high. There was a ZARA and Forever 21, but we weren't able to buy much, because there is just no room to jam more stuff in a tiny backpack. After the light shopping, we went to see the palace, which happened to be closed, but I saw it and got a picture outside to document it. The last part of town Maggie showed me was Insa-Dong, that was an outdoor street filled with souvenirs and old restaurants. We walked around a lot of the little stores and checked out the cute Korean souvenirs for sale, like chop sticks and graphic socks. We finished the day with a trip to the PC bang, which was the computer room where you pay a little bit of money for a computer, with Internet access. The Koreans love their video games, so you can imagine it was a packed house, Friday night at the PC bang.