Trip to Seoul
- May 7-9 (2005), South-Korea
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| Yuka and I decided to go on a ridiculously cheap trip to Seoul. We left Tokyo just before midnight on a Friday, and arrived at Inchon International Airport about 3 hours later. A tour bus waited for us, and our Korean guide kept us awake for another hour by letting us know about all kinds of overpriced tours we could join. Our flight back to Tokyo was 3 in the morning night to Monday, thus the trip can hardly be called a vacation. | The main goal of our trip was to visit Panmunjom, which is the only place in the Demilitarized Zone where visitors are permitted. On my last trip in 2002, I went to the Odusan Unification Observatory, but Panmunjom is supposed to be more exciting. North-Korea is probably the world's nuttiest society, its only real competitors are countries like Lesotho, Iran, and some dictatorships in the former Soviet Union. |
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| I did not bother visiting a lot of cultural sights on this trip, in fact I do not think we visited any. Seoul is somewhat similar to Tokyo in the sense that it is ugly and big, but people watching is fun and the food is excellent. I noticed that South Korean men never wash their hands after going to the bathroom, at last the ratio in Japan is about 50%. That probably is not the biggest cultural difference between Japan and South-Korea, but I am sure there is some idiot out there who will get a university grant to study it. | Here I am standing in front of one of the many barriers blocking anyone wishing to defect to North-Korea. Sometimes I wonder if the North Korean propaganda is in fact true, and that the "free world" has been fooled into believing that our quality of living is higher than that in North-Korea. Their national anthem is anyway one of the happiest songs I have ever heard. You can listen to it on North-Korea's official homepage. |
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| A picture from inside the negotiation room right on the border between North and South Korea. South Korean guards stand guard when tourists from the southern side are visiting, and the opposite happens when tourists come from the Northern side. The tourists visiting North-Korea appear mainly to be Chinese, though I am not sure if they go there on honeymoons. | While my guidebook solemnly notes that one can come face to face with North Korean soldiers when visiting Panmunjom, this is the closest that I got. While I was not hoping to pick their noses or anything, I was at least hoping to stare into their eyes to see if they really are crazy or not. At a minimum, it would have been fun to give a North Korean soldier a good tickle. |
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| A picture of the negotiation room, which is the grey building to the small right in this picture. The bigger grey building in the back is the North Korean boarder headquarter. I have heard the kimchi there is just awesome. | Here we have the South-Korean soldiers standing guard. If the North Koreans finally decide to attack, this probably is not a place you want to be spending your afternoon chilling out. |