crossing the line 1

What a glourious day for a road trip! Today Conor, Mark, Greg, and I took the oppurtunity of a day off during the week to rent a car and head out on what turned out to be six hundred kilometers of twisting and turning fun.
We got in our vehicle, a Hyundai Sonata, about 7:30 and immediatly headed for the far west of Gangwon do to check out a section of the D.M.Z. that is almost immpossible to reach by public transport.
After cruising up and down mountians, through valleys completley untouched by any sort of tourism, checking out little battle memorials and lakes, and travelling on the kind of twisty up and down roads more like Switzerland or NewEngland, we finally reached the D.M.Z. area.
The securtiy here up at the line was the tightest that I have ever seen in Korea. Just to go through a sector of the line we had to have our car checked over before we were issued a pass that must have said we were okay and were waved throught the barricades, but not before we got to check out the dispaly of landmines next to the checkpoint!
The real reason that we had come up to this neck of the woods was to check out one of the infiltration tunnels that the good people of the D.P.R.K. Peoples Army had dug under the border, but after being rebuffed at several more checkpoints we realized that we were not going to be able to get in and had to settle for a trip to the North Korean Labour Party building and some visits to the Iron Triangle and the Punch Bowl.
This was a great trip with some great friends. We got to see a large part of Korea that we would never have been able to get too, cool towns, great people, and some fascinating sites.
Picutres
1. This pass that got us through the security checkpoints just two miles from the D.P.R.K.
2. Commander Lester ready to lead his brave men into battle.
3. An old tank on a ridge above a place where about twenty thousand brave Chinese troops died trying to storm a hill just south of the D.M.Z.
4. A view from the same ridge that the tank is on. The mountain in the center of the picture, the big one off in the near distance, is in North Korea
5. A pretty bad shot of the Punch Bowl battle area

crossing the line 2

A few more pictures from the road trip.
1. Mist on the mountains
2. A rather startling sign of what would happen if I was not paying attention to my driving, rather fitting considering the twists and turns of the road we were on
3. Tank barricades. These cement blocks litter Korea, especially up here where every road has the potential to have tanks roaring down it. If you put dynamite in the little holes under the supports the main blocks of cement will come tumbling down, blocking the road.
4. And of course, who could guess that we would find time to visit a temple on this little trip?
5. The North Korean Labour Headquarters. Surprisingly enough this remnant of communism sits just inside the southern half of the D.M.Z. This building was the local headquarters of the communist party until 25.6.1950 when war erupted across the peninsula and this section, called the Iron Triangle, saw some of the hardest fighting of the war, (Pork Chop Hill is in the area). Because of its significance to the D.P.R.K. this building was shelled constantly throughout the war, and now stands as a memorial to "Communist Aggression", bullshit in my opinion because of the vast numbers of cross border raids by R.O.K. before the northern invasion. There were mass graves discovered behind the building but they could easily be from South Korean atrocities rather than D.P.R.K. violence.

the fog

Coming back into Sokcho from our little 600 kilometer road trip last Tuesday, we were surprised to see our entire town, and the sea beyond, covered with fine, puffy white clouds.
When you get through Miseyrong tunnel, just to the west of Sokcho, you are about a thousand feet above sea level and can usually see the entire sea plain and ocean in front of Sokcho. Usually it is a great view of the city lights and squid boats bobbing on the ocean, you can usually see quite a long way.
Today, as we broke through the tunnel, imagine our surprise when the only thing we could see was this huge puff of cloud over our city. Cars were stopping all along the road to take pictures of what was an incredible sight.
Pictures.
1. Normally looking this way you would see the lights of Sokcho and the ocean beyond, now the road just disappears into the fog
2. The big rock pile to the left is Ulzanbowi, the holy mountain for Sokcho
3. Another view of Ulzanbowi as the fog creeps up its flanks

walking with conor

My buddy Conor and I decided to take the back way to Yangyang the other day in the rain to check out some of the Korean countryside before the heat really sets in. Pretty normal walk, nothing too special, but we did get to appreciate the lushness of the countryside after the monsoon rains that we have had lately.
Pictures
1. A beautiful Lilly on the side of the road
2. The green of the Korean country side is really coming through. It will stay this emerald colour until late in the fall.
3. Some kind of Lilly draped over a wall. I saw even more of these pretty flowers on my little stroll today.
4. Some more flowers.
5. I first met this golden retriever about two months ago when she barked at me as I walked this same path with Paul. We went over and petted her and she really liked it, her bark was just a ploy to get some much needed attention it seems. This time when I saw her she had a new addition to her family, the cute little tyke just underneath her.

the girls class

So I have this class first thing three days a week and it is by far, the most entertaining class that I have. I have taught these four girls, Yujin, Shihyun, Minyoung, and Harim, for about six months, and they have been a constant source of amusement for me. Every day one of them brings me a treat or a sticker, and every day they clamor for a game or some sort of entertainment, this may be why it has taken us almost four months to make it through our vary basic grammer book.
These are great kids and much to my almost constant amazement, they really seem to be leaning something from me. Even with their constant playing and climbing on me they seem to be grasping the rudiments of the english langauge.
They are even cuter than the pictures when we leave the class to go on one of our "field trips" and they all somehow have to find a way to hold my hands. They also each give me a hug, and sometimes a kiss on the cheek, when the bell rings.
Pictures
1. The girls in typical form, bottom Yujin, back row from left, Harim, Shihyun, and Minyoung
2. Minyoung just had to show everyone up and take a picture of her own.

Up North

I really love heading up north from Sokcho. You go up this long and winding road that parallels the sea and swings through little fishing villages and beach towns that litter the coast, and then, before you know it, you are there, at the last point in South Korea, the farthest north one can get with out heading into the D.P.R.K, or as it is more commonly known, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
This was my second visit up to the border, around fifty miles north of that mythical line in the sand, the 38th parallel.
Just like the last time I was up here you could not see anything going on on the northern side of the border. From where we were it looked completly peacful, covered in trees with an incredibly long, clean beach reaching from the border checkpoint to some rocky islets that were obviously part of the D.P.R.K.
Pictures-
1. This is what remains of Route 7. It sits here, at a lonely bend behind the observation platform. From looking at it now you would think that it was just a little overgrown road, but this road has seen a ton of traffic in its day as it was the main axis heading north on the east coast.
2. The north will do almost anything for a few dollars. Do you remember the stink they put up about the 25 million bucks in that bank in Macau? Well any way here at the border one can buy foodstuffs directly from our fraternal socialist comrades. Yes they may not have enough food for their own people but they can export soju and pretty good beer to their capitalist enemies in the south.
3. Proof that one only needs to wait a few years before the walls come tumbling down.
4. And to the right of the sign, the passport and control center for travel to the north, I sincerely doubt that the north has the same type of facility on their side of the border.

Monsoon Sorak

At the end of June, just like clockwork, the monsoon rains move up the Chinese coast, past Hong Kong and Tawian, and eventually make their way to Korea. They bring with them soaking rains and cool temperatures, perfect for growing rice and flowers, and as you can see, turning what are normally trickles of water into roaring cataracts as the water roars off the pourous limestone that, try as it might, cant hold any more water.
These pictures are from a pretty rainy day in Sorak-san national park. The rivers that you can see are usually no more than a thin ribbon of water, you can walk across them with just a little leap adn kick of the foot.