Korea turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. Most of that had to do with how nice the Korean people are. They went out of their way to make sure I enjoyed myself in their country. A couple people took me out to dinner one night where we cooked pork and vegetables on a skillet at our table. All during the meal, we drank Soju, which is the traditional Korean liquor. They taught me the custom of drinking Soju, which is usually consumed out of a shot glass. You hardly ever pour your own drink because it is custom for someone else to pour it for you. The younger of the pourer/drinker has two hands on either the bottle or the glass. The elder only holds the bottle or glass with one hand. And you don’t drink Soju without having some sort of food with it.

Thursday, May 24 was Buddha Day in Korea, a national holiday. Buddha Day celebrates the birth of Buddha. The shop was 90% closed for the day which meant I didn’t work. Two of the office people I worked with took me to two temples that are on the UNESCO World Heritage list to experience part of the tradition of the day. The first temple we went to was the Seokguram Grotto. It was packed with people, some for sightseeing and some for praying. It was about a quarter mile walk through a wooded, uphill trail to the temple. Along both sides of the trail, colorful lanterns had been strung up. The main Buddha is made of stone about 15 feet tall and is in a stone shelter. The 24th was the one day of the year you could walk up to and around the Buddha. Many people had placed food and other offerings all around the statue and people were praying in front of him. I was told the temperature in the room the Buddha sits is the same all year round, one of the Buddha’s mysteries. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take photos but this site shows a good model of what the Buddha looks like.

The second temple was the Bulguksa Temple. I didn’t spend as much time at this one but they allow you to take pictures of the Buddha’s at these temples. They were really beautiful and it was interesting to see all the different ways people were praying to Buddha. The best part about this temple was getting a picture with a monk. He didn’t look happy to take a picture with me but I was told that’s how they always look.

For lunch and dinner on Buddha Day, we ate sitting on the ground in the traditional style. I struggled with chopsticks all week but by the end of my trip I was getting pretty good. At restaurants, they usually give metal chopsticks with flat ends. They give metal because it doesn’t absorb the bacterial and is easy to clean. They use the one with flat ends because they like to laugh at foreigners trying to eat noodles, at least that’s my theory.

Friday I said good bye to Ulsan and headed to Seoul to catch my flight back to Kuwait. I didn’t fly out until midnight so I had some time to kill. Instead of flying back to Seoul, I took a bus to East Daegu and then caught a bullet train to Seoul. The train cost about $40 for a 200 mile trip. The trains were really nice and quiet. Similar to some planes, they had TV’s on the ceiling above the aisles. These TV’s showed Korean shows and the speed of the train. The fastest I saw was 298 km/hour or 185 mph.

When I got to Seoul, I hoped on a tour of the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between North and South Korea. It is a strip of land 4 kilometers wide dividing Korea at the 38th parallel created in 1953. It was a pretty sad and interesting place as it is the most heavily protected border in the world. It was created as a buffer zone between the two countries and has been largely uninhabited for more than 50 years, but there are a few small towns within the borders. It’s not a safe place to go walking around. On the drive in, there are fences up on either side of the road with signs posted for land mines. Our guide said only 30% of the land in the DMZ has been cleared of land mines. That’s enough deterrent for me to not go exploring.

The first stop on the tour was the Dorasan Train Station. You may have heard about this station in the news last week. A train crossed from the south into the north from the Dorasan station. This was the first time in 56 years trains had crossed the border between the two Koreas. We walked around the station for a while and all took pictures with the guards inside as this is the only place you can photograph them inside the DMZ.

My favorite stop on the tour was the 3rd infiltration tunnel. This was one of several tunnels dug by North Korea under the DMZ to mount an attack on the south. It is called the third tunnel because it was the third tunnel discovered. This was is the closest to Seoul and we were told that 10,000 soldiers an hour would have been capable of going through. The tunnel wasn’t very big so vehicles or machinery couldn’t have fit through. Plus, the ceiling was at about 5’6” so you have to walk hunched over the whole way.

Of course, North Korea denied building these when they were discovered. They first claimed the south built them. When that was proved false, the north claimed they were mining coal (the whole area is granite) and painted the walls black. All pretty funny now. We did get to see North Korea through binoculars. You could see a North Korean flag which sits on top of tallest flagpole in the world.

If any of you out there know Eric Raasch, a friend of mine from U of I, I got an email from him that he is with Marines that are in the Persian Gulf and will soon be in Kuwait. Hopefully I’ll get to meet up with him. Here is an article that shows the ship he is on. It’s the in the center of the picture.