New Dog! and the DMZ

Hello everyone, sorry for the massive delay of information, but we have been busy. This will be along post, so I'll get right to it.

A couple weekends back we went on a tour to the demilitarized zone with our friends Laura and Ryan. The trip was organized through a tour company called Adventure Korea, and unfortunately we weren’t afforded much freedom, but I guess that is to be expected when you are touring the worlds most guarded border. North and South Korea are still technically at war, and the demilitarized zone is a designated area where, well, there is no military, to assure that there can be no conflicts. Just recently the leaders of both Koreas have come to a peace agreement. Many things have to be organized, but the wheels have been set in motion to make the DMZ a thing of the past.

The first section of our trip was to visit a town on the South Korean side of the DMZ to eat lunch. There wasn’t much to see apart from a group of school children grinding soy beans into a paste in a traditional manner. After lunch we headed to the tourist area of the DMZ, Here you can see various monuments built to commemorate the struggle against the north and the current hope for unification. The monuments were quite impressive. There is a peace bell that you can pay to ring on the hour if you wanted, but no one did. After browsing for a while the group made there way to the DMZ theatre to watch an informational video. Upon walking into the theatre I was excited: the theatre has six screens on three walls. Unfortunately, the hardware was total overkill for a movie that was one part documentary and one part nationalist propaganda. There was either one image duplicated on all six screens, or a panoramic image that spans all the screens, which failed to do anything very special. Exiting the theatre lead everyone right into the DMZ museum, which contains relics of the war and various information on the DMZ. A section of the museum had a glass floor with a replica of the DMZ underneath it, complete with out of scale plastic animals.
After the museum we made our way to ‘tunnel 3’ which is a tunnel that the North allegedly dug under the DMZ as a means of infiltration. While watching the informative video and reading the various exhibits at the museum, it is reinforced many times with evidence that this tunnel had to have been dug by the North, but your guess about the truth is as good as mine. The walls of the tunnel are painted black, supposedly to give the impression that the tunnel was dug for coal mining purposes. The ceiling was low, and when you got to the end, you got to turn around and go back. The ramp that leads into the tunnel is about 350m long, whic
h means that the tunnel is pretty deep underground.

After leaving the tunnel we headed to the DMZ observatory where you can get a glimpse of north Korea. There isn’t too much there, just a observation deck full of cheap pay binoculars so you can get a glimpse of some north Korean towns. One very strict rule is that you cannot take pictures pas the designated photo line, which is guarded pseudo closely by military officials. This gave me the excuse of just taking pictures of the army officials, which seemed to annoy them. Through the binoculars you can see an town North Korea made to appear more developed than they actually are. After our observing (and many attacks from lady bugs) we headed to Dorason train station. You can take a train to Seoul to Dorason, but you can’t take a train from Dorason to anywhere except back to Seoul. Eventually this train station will lead into North Korea, being ‘not the last station from the south, but the first station towards the north’ as they designate it. For half a dollar you can get into the station and wander the tracks and get a close glimpse of peace poles placed by Korean families who have family members separated from them in the north. After wondering and taking more photos of army personnel, we took the bus back to Seoul. The trip was informative and fun overall, but somewhat disappointing because of the massive restrictions placed upon us.

































The weekend after the DMZ we took a trip to Deajeon, which is the capital city of the province directly south of ours. There is a Korean woman who operates an independant animal shelter that the government was shutting down. Since the closure notice, a large amount of expats have been avidly trying to find the dogs homes to avoid as much mass euthenasia as possible. While I wasn't 100% on the idea of getting a dog, Kristi was, and since this would be somewhat cheap and for a good cause, I gave in. It was a 1.5 hour train ride to deajon, then a quick 15 minute cab ride through winding country roads to get to the shelter. Unfortunatly, on the car ride over I started developing a cold, which will come into play later in the story. I had to wait for a second cab so Kristi and a few other people went ahead to look for their special dog. By the time I arrived, Kristi had already picked out our dog, a cute little mut named Changme (rose in Korean). We looked at the other dogs for a long time just to make sure that our choice was a good one, but we were convinced. Surprisingly, when we got to the shelter there was a couple there that we had met at orientation. They had found a very cute little puppy that they ended up adopting.

The shelter itself is total chaos. As soon as you enter, over 100 eager dogs burst into frantic barking and jumping. The facilities are quite shabby, consisting of wooden frames upon which rest basic metal cages, all of which is inside a large greenhouse frame on the dirt ground. All the dogs are wonderful and eager for love, but obviously we could only take one. Mrs. Jung, who runs the shelter with no pay, loves the dogs very much, and it was easy to tell that it was hard to see them go. But, since work is being done to get the dogs out of the shelter, the group recently got an extension on the closure of the shelter, which means they will have an additional 4 months to find the dogs homes.
Many of the people who had come for dogs had already bought return tickets, so when only one cab showed up instead of the two that they called, Kristi and I decided to stay behind until we could get transportation. What was supposed to be a 3 or 4 hour day in Deajon end up lasting 11 hours. We stayed at the shelter until a man from Seoul showed up looking for a dog, and generously gave us a ride home. By the time I got home, I was feeling horribly foul. I ended up calling in sick the next day, and getting some much needed rest.