3 large eggs + 1 egg yolk (with the white reserved)
2 teaspoons salt
4 ½ cups flour
Directions
Prepare the yeast: Heat ½ cup of water to 110℉ (Our kettle can’t be set that low, so I microwaved for 30 seconds and measured with a food thermometer. The water was too hot, so I added room-temperature water until it came down to the right temperature.) Add 2 teaspoons sugar to the water and both packets of yeast. Stir with a chopstick or similar and leave for about 10 minutes for the yeast to activate.
Prepare the wet ingredients: Beat 3 eggs and the egg yolk. Add honey, salt, and oil. Beat well.
Dough: Put the flour into a large bowl. Make a well in the center and add yeast and wet ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until everything is absorbed.
Knead: Knead the dough by hand, adding flour if it is too sticky. I kneaded for about 10 minutes, adding flour several times.
Rise: Place the dough in a clean bowl that has been lightly oiled and cover with a clean kitchen towel. The dough should rise in a warm, humid place. An oven heated to 150℉ and turned off is a good start. You can also put a pot of water on to boil, then place the pot underneath the bowl inside the oven to create some humidity. Our oven doesn’t go quite that low, so I put it on for 170℉ (its lowest temperature) and turned it off after I had prepared the boiling water. I let it rise like this for 60 minutes.
Punch down, rise again: After the dough has risen for an hour, take it out, punch the air out, and optionally let it rise again, with the same procedure, for 30 minutes.
Braid: Take the dough out onto a well-floured surface, divide in half, then divide each half into six roughly equal ropes. To braid six strands, repeatedly go over 2, under 1, over 2.
Egg wash: Mix reserved egg white with some sugar and salt. Brush across the top of the loaf. Sprinkle sesame or poppy seeds on according to preference.
Final rise: Let braided loafs rise uncovered for 35-45 min.
Bake: Preheat oven to 375℉ and bake for 25-30 min or until golden-brown.
That’s it!
Notes
I took today off and decided to try baking challah again. I’ve baked challah a couple of times before, but the last time came out pretty badly, so I’m trying something new.
I looked at a number of different recipes (including one Grace found for me from a colleague) and decided I would try to come up with my own experiment to try. The recipe above is the ingredients and steps that I tried today, based on a combination of the ones I found.
The first rise after 60 minutes is the most successful I’ve been at having dough rise properly.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the 9/11 Memorial Museum at the site of the World Trade Center. The museum was built to honor and remember the victims of the 9/11 attack as well as teach about what happened. The museum website and various review sites recommended budgeting at least 2 hours for a visit, but we ended up spending about 4 hours there and still didn’t see everything.
When we first arrived at the former site of the twin towers, the first thing that we saw was the memorial itself. The memorial is in two parts: one for each of the towers. The memorial consists of a very deep fountain built so that it looks endless (the center part goes even deeper so you can’t see the bottom) surrounded by walls with the names of the victims. The fountains are as large as the foundation of the buildings and are built on the same site where the buildings once stood.
The memorial fountain at the base of one of the towers.
On our last trip to New York, we had tried to visit the museum but hadn’t done our homework: we didn’t know what would be in the museum and we didn’t have timed-entry tickets. This time we purchased timed-entry tickets in advance, so we were able to get in line and go into the museum. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the museum had TSA-style security at the entrance with metal detectors and xray machines for bags.
The museum is underground, so after going through security we descended down into the main part of the museum. There were desks offering guided tours and audio tours; we ended up waiting in line for audio tours which were $8 each. If you’re reading this post in advance of going yourself, you can save some money by downloading the audio guide onto your smartphone and using your own headphones.
A photograph taken the morning of September 11, before the planes reached New York.
The main audio tour is built to guide you slowly around the exhibits in the museum, but doesn’t have a story of its own. It introduces some of the large artifacts that are in the museum and tells short vignettes of people who escaped and people who were not able to get out.
The “Survivors’ Stairs,” used by a significant number of victims to escape.
The tour also features a number of art exhibits; some that was produced immediately in the aftermath of the attack, some that is a memorial, and some from before the attacks happened.
Squares representing the different colors of the sky that people remembered from September 11The view from one of the towers
The interior of the museum is underground and centered around the site where the twin towers stood and where the memorial fountains are today. Below one of the fountains is a room dedicated to the victims. It displays photographs of each victim, artifacts from their lives, and (in a smaller room in the center) reads aloud names and descriptions of them. This memorial helps remember these people not as victims, but as individuals leading regular lives. A set of interactive stations is available to let visitors find victims and learn about their stories. (A sign requested that visitors refrain from taking photographs of this room, so I do not have any.)
Below the other fountain (for the other tower) is a separated part of the museum titled “September 11, 2001” and indicated as “the main historical exhibit” of the museum. This portion has its own audio tour (on the same audio guide) and requires visitors to enter through doors to isolate the sound. This exhibit focuses on the timeline of events and is divided into three parts: the first part shows the events on the day of September 11, the second shows events leading up to September 11, and the final part is about the aftermath. A sign requested that visitors refrain from taking photographs in this exhibit, so I do not have any. Unfortunately, this rule was not well-respected, and we did see other visitors taking selfies with some of the displays.
The section showing the events of September 11 was the most detailed. A minute-by-minute timeline covered the walls and led you through the exhibit. Media displays including recorded TV broadcasts, recordings of some of the radio traffic of first-responders, and recordings of Air Traffic Control provided a lot of context. The section was subdivided by major events: each of the hijackings, impacts to the towers, impact to the Pentagon, the towers collapsing, and the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who fought back. Large artifacts are also on display, including police cars and ambulances that responded to the attack and were damaged. It’s easy to spend a lot of time here reading everything.
The second section depicted the events leading up to the September 11 attack. It made some mention of the 1993 bombing, but it wasn’t really a focus of the exhibit. The ideological motivations for the attackers was touched on, though the broad strokes were along the lines of the World Trade Center being seen as a physical representation of capitalism and that the attackers were “anti-American” (though very little was shown about why they might have had such a world-view and the effects of American foreign policy). The exhibit talked about indicators of the forthcoming attack and how they weren’t put together, making an argument for greater cooperation between investigative agencies but avoiding discussion of how that could happen while maintaining important American values like civil liberties. The exhibit also detailed things that went wrong during the attack: one of the attackers being denied entry into the US for “failing to answer routine questions,” luggage from another attacker failing to be loaded onto his plane, unintentional transmissions to air traffic control instead of the public address system in the plane, failing at flight school, and so on.
The final section focused on what happened after. Displays showed some of the effect on the city like ash falling everywhere, air quality problems in the weeks that followed and health effects on people and pets. There was a section on the loss of life of first-responders and subsequent health issues for first-responders who were not lost. There was a part showing pleas for respectful treatment of victims’ remains and that remains not be mixed with trash. There was even a section on “truthers” who think that the attack was coordinated by the US government.
Overall the museum is well-worth visiting and was well-worth the time we spent there. The memorial is very respectful and does a good job of reminding visitors that the victims were normal people. The historical exhibit was very informative and did a good job of teaching about the attack. But it was disappointing to see little in the museum about America’s relationship with the rest of the world, the geopolitical changes that occurred afterward, or even the changes to normal life in America that were a direct response to what happened.
Last month I reached a 365-day “streak” on the language-learning app Duolingo. This means I’ve spent a bit over a year since I started learning Korean.
Those of you who know me well know that Grace and I have been together for a long time now, and know that Grace’s parents both speak Korean as their first language. I had been thinking about learning to speak Korean for a long time, but didn’t make any moves to really start until last year. There are a few reasons why I finally started and am continuing to learn; primarily that Grace has a number of family members who speak little or no English and that we’d like the language to be the part of any future family.
My journey learning Korean started with this comic, but that didn’t get me very far. I then bought a few books, but found them difficult to get through; I had no mechanism to test whether I was learning. I then remembered Duolingo (I had tried it a few years ago for a different language) and decided to try it out again.
Duolingo was a good start, and helped me get my start reading Hangul (the Korean alphabet). But I didn’t find Duolingo to do a good job introducing concepts and helping them stick for me; the app does have general themes for each set of exercises but doesn’t do a good job of explaining the concept that ties the exercise together. Korean has very different grammar from English, and Duolingo wants to make me “intuit” the rules rather than explaining them. Duolingo’s exercises typically present you with a sentence and ask you to translate it, though it definitely has some odd choices for sample sentences.
An odd sentence from Duolingo
I found another app called Drops that was interesting to try for a while too. The beginning of the Korean course teaches Hangul and I found it to be a good contrast as it teaches stroke order in addition to just recognizing the letters. But after moving on from the Hangul lessons, it turned into entirely vocabulary flashcards. That’s useful, but not quite what I was looking for.
The next app I found through reading the /r/Korean subreddit, which is a community of folks interested in learning or teaching Korean. This app is called LingoDeer and so far is my favorite of the three. LingoDeer seems to be specialized for Asian languages and focuses pretty hard on the grammar of Korean rather than introducing a lot of vocabulary quickly. Each of the lessons has introductory text explaining the concept that the lesson teaches, and during the lessons you can tap on individual words (and parts of words, like suffixes) to read more explanation. The lessons also have some audio portion where you can record yourself saying a sentence and listen back to it, but it doesn’t rate your pronunciation automatically. I’ve also found the review exercises to be more engaging; things like picking the right word or particle to make the sentence grammatical, writing a sentence out of the syllables (or typing them with a Korean keyboard), rating your own ability to translate spoken sentences, and finding what doesn’t belong in a given sentence.
A much more useful sentence from LingoDeer
I’m currently using both Duolingo and LingoDeer pretty much every day. My routine is to complete Duolingo’s review exercise (with the barbell icon), followed by one or two lessons (both of which are usually increasing the “difficulty” on topics I’ve already started), and then switch to LingoDeer for a listening review exercise, drills on grammar and vocabulary, and maybe a new lesson depending on how I’m feeling and how much time I have. I think these are good steps for me to learn Korean, but I don’t really think that the apps are sufficient on their own. I haven’t signed up yet, but I’ve been eyeing language courses offered by some schools near me and will probably sign up for one in the future.
Update: Just as I was about to update this post, I went through my Duolingo exercises and for the first time it has speaking exercises! I’m excited to use these to force me to actually speak more and (hopefully) work on my pronounciation.
We woke up in the morning and immediately started packing. We wanted to get all of our packing done straight away as we wanted to be done by the time of our 2pm check out of the AirBnB. We both brought an extra duffel packed inside our suitcase, and we both had to use them’ we bought enough extra things to take back. Our flight left at 6 and we wanted to be at the airport about 3 hours before the flight left, so accounting for an hour to take the A’REX train that would mean that a check-out of 2pm was just about right.
It took us (mostly me) a while to pack, so by the time we were done we didn’t really have time to do much that was far from the AirBnB. Instead, we decided that we’d walk around Hongdae more and explore the areas we hadn’t seen. We also figured we’d just get street food to eat.
We walked and shopped a bit, and then went for street food. There was a vendor selling the egg bread that we had before, but also with cheese; it was pretty good. The vendor next to that one was selling hoddeok, but it was by far the worst hoddeok we had on the whole trip; the outside was crispy like a cracker and there was almost no filling on the inside. It was at this point that I realized my sunglasses had fallen out of my pocket; this is pretty much the only bad thing that happened on the whole vacation.
Knockoff LEGO sets
Egg bread with cheese
We went back to our AirBnB, took out the trash, and headed to the airport on the A’REX train. The train was in the same station as the subway we’ve been taking everywhere, so it was right next to the AirBnB. It was a pretty easy (and cheap!) way to get to the airport.
Once we got there, we checked in and went through security. This was the most sensitive metal detector I’ve ever seen; it went off for both coins in one pocket and a metallic wrapper (trash) in my other pocket.
We then went to the duty-free shops; Grace had wanted to get some things for her mother there and ended up saving a few hundred dollars over the cost of the same things in Seattle; she got extra discounts for having an eligible credit card and signing up for the loyalty program there. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Lotteria (burger chain as part of the Lotte department store) and got on the plane.
Burger from Lotteria
Like the flight to Seoul, this flight was also not full. However, we weren’t as lucky as we were on the last flight; no empty seat next to us this time. They again served two meals; a dinner about an hour after takeoff and a breakfast about two hours before landing. The dinner I had was some strange dish with couscous, peppers, and a tomato sauce; about the only good thing was the beer and I was pretty happy that we had grabbed burgers at Lotteria. Grace had a bibimbap with dried roots that she liked better than I liked my dinner. For breakfast, I had a quiche that was much more acceptable than the dinner; Grace had a porridge.
Korean beer
Weird dinner thing
Breakfast quiche
Like the flight to Seoul, this flight also avoided North Korean airspace. However, it did it differently and we flew over Japan instead of China. I’m curious to know why the different flight paths were chosen but I’m not sure how to find out.
Flight path returning to Seattle
When we arrived in Seattle, we went through Immigration and Customs. At Immigration, the border patrol agent was a bit curt and didn’t seem to like my answer as to where we were going. However, we eventually got through and headed home.
This vacation in South Korea was so great and I only wish it had been longer.
Our first stop of the day was the National Museum of Korea. In order to get there, we had to take a different subway line than we had taken before; instead of the numbered lines that are entirely within the city, we took a named line that enables commuters from outside the city of Seoul to get into the city.
We spent several hours at the museum with most of our time on the first floor. The first floor of the museum was about human history in the Korean Peninsula, from early prehistory to the early 20th century; ending right before the occupation of Korea by Japan. It was interesting to see and learn about the different dynasties that ruled Korea, including the introduction of Hangeul, the modern writing system of Korean. I thought it was pretty weird though that the history portion of the museum ended just about the time of the Japanese occupation. This is an area of world history I’m much less acquainted with than I’d like to be, so I was hoping that the museum would cover the occupation and subsequent history including the Korean War and modern-day situation between North and South Korea.
Outside the National Museum of Korea Exhibit at the National Museum of Korea
One of the really interesting things we saw in the museum were a set of tactile exhibits that were set up for visually-impaired visitors. South Korea really seems to make an effort to accommodate visually- and hearing-impaired people; more on this in a separate post.
Exhibit for visually-impaired visitors at the National Museum of Korea
After we left the museum, we headed to Ewha to see the Ewha Womans University and surrounding area. The campus seemed pretty, but fairly hilly. We heard some drumming resonating through the area and made our way to the Student Union, where some students were performing what appeared to be traditional Korean dancing and drumming. We then explored the area around the university, which really reminded me of Berkeley, CA and the area immediately surrounding UC Berkeley.
Ewha Womans University Drums and dance at the Student Union of Ewha Womans University
Later, we met up with an old friend of mine who has been living in Seoul for a few years. She took us out to a restaurant in Hapjeong for Korean BBQ for dinner. Apparently South Korea has some fairly strict meat import laws, so to get (good) beef you need to look for a restaurant serving Hanwoo beef. We ordered chadolbaegi (thin-cut brisket) and side dishes including gyeran-jjim (steamed egg), naengmyeon (cold noodles), and a doenjang-jjigae(fermented soybean soup).
After dinner, we went to another restaurant in Hongdae for drinks. We sat near some college students (young men) who seemed to be very animated and loud in their drinking games. We ordered two sojus: grape-flavored and unflavored. After trying the grape-flavored one, we decided that it was really good and exchanged our bottle of unflavored soju for more of the grape-flavored kind. We went through several bottles together and had a great time catching up after about a decade of not seeing this friend. At the end of the night, my friend caught a cab home (since the subways had stopped running) while Grace and I walked back to our AirBnB.
The big news of today is that Park Geun-Hye, the South Korean President, was impeached. We had received a warning from the US State Department about protests and possible violence, and family and friends at home sent us some messages expressing concern. However, we stayed safe and were far enough away from the government center of Seoul that we didn’t even see anything except a somewhat-increased military presence in the city.
In the morning, we went to the main shopping area of Hongdae to look at new glasses. Grace had researched prior to the trip and found a number of people who had good experiences getting prescription glasses cheaply in South Korea and we decided that it would be good to try; my current glasses were a fairly old prescription (about 5 years) since I wear contacts all the time, and it was about time to get new glasses anyway. We had brought our prescriptions from recent eye exams in Seattle, so we didn’t even need to have an exam done. We ended up getting a few pair of glasses for an average cost of about $50 (frames + lenses); mine were slightly more expensive because my vision is fairly bad. We looked in the store for frames that would be nice, but I had a hard time; I think my face is a different size and shape than is typical in South Korea. However, the woman who was in the store was able to find frames that I ended up liking reasonably well. The glasses were ready quickly (they made them while we waited; took about 10 minutes) and they seem to have come out well, though they do have a fair bit more distortion around the edges than glasses I’ve had made in the US. Regardless, it’s pretty hard to beat $50 for prescription glasses.
Once we got our glasses sorted, we went to Gwangjang market for some food. Gwangjang market is known for various styles of Korean pancakes, with mung bean pancakes being the most prevalent that we saw. We grabbed some pancakes and Grace also had some knife-cut noodles that she really liked.
Food vendors at Gwangjang market Mung bean pancakes
After finishing at Gwangjang, we walked to the nearby Cheonggyecheon stream. After a nice walk down the stream, we headed back to our AirBnB to rest.
Cheonggyecheon stream
In the evening, we went out for Korean fried chicken and beer (called chi-mek: chicken and mekju) in Hongdae. We went to a fairly tourist-friendly place, but the food was pretty good anyway. The beer tasted pretty similar to American-style lagers, which are not my favorite, but still paired pretty well with the fried chicken.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Beer!
After dinner, we left for Dongdaemun market. We went to the wholesale street tents that focused on fashion items like clothing and accessories; much of it counterfeit. It was interesting to look at the goods and see if we could spot differences between what was being sold there and the genuine version. We were able to identify a few differences, but didn’t take any pictures as it wasn’t exactly easy to do inconspicuously. We got there around 10pm and left just after midnight, catching one of the last trains back to Hongdae.
We woke up pretty late today and didn’t really get moving until almost noon. At least we were well-rested!
Once we finally got going, we left for Namdaemun Market. Namdaemun Market is a really big, really old market that was filled with tourists and vendors hawking their wares. We walked around for a while so Grace could see if anything caught her eye and so we could get a sense of what street food was available. Grace ultimately bought a few things, but I didn’t really buy anything other than food. We then got some dumplings, donuts, and hoddeok as well as a sweet potato latte to drink.
Namdaemun Market
When we finished at Namdaemun Market, we left for the N Seoul Tower, a large radio tower on the top of Namasan Mountain. Because it was at the top of a mountain, we took the Namasan cable car up to the top. Apparently there’s a tradition of leaving love locks at N Seoul Tower, so along with the great views of the city we saw a lot of locks on the fences and sculptures. There was also a performance group at the top of the mountain performing, so we saw some demonstration of traditional Korean martial arts.
View from Namsan cable car Love locks at N Seoul Tower Seoul, as seen from Namasan Mountain
We then walked down the mountain instead of taking the cable car. It was pretty, but also fairly long. By the time we got to the bottom we were fairly tired and decided to scrap the rest of our plan for the day and head somewhere closer to our AirBnB so we wouldn’t have far to travel.
We ended up walking to two department stores to look at the food options: Shinsegae and Lotte. We ended up in the Lotte food court; Grace got a spicy sujebi dish and I got bibimbap. We also got some fried dumplings from a different stall in the store. After dinner, we went to one of the bakeries and got some baked goods.
Bibimbap from Lotte Food Court
We then headed back to the AirBnB to rest for a bit before venturing out again. Once we decided to head out, we went to walk around the Hongdae area and look for stores to buy glasses. We came across a few street performance groups that were “dance busking”; they looked like college students.
Today we woke up a bit later than the prior day, since we didn’t actually need to be anywhere at any particular time. Our agenda for the day included a morning focused on Korean history and an afternoon/evening of exploring Korean neighborhoods and shopping.
We left our AirBnB in Hongdae in the morning via subway and made our way to City Hall Station; from there we walked to Gyeongbokgung Palace. This palace was destroyed and rebuilt a few times, so it’s not exactly original but it is quite beautiful. We wandered around the palace grounds for a while taking pictures, and then made our way to the National Folk Museum of Korea, which is located on the grounds of the palace.
Statue of King Sejong the Great, from the walk between City Hall Station and Gyeongbokgung Palace One outer gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace Palace guard in traditional dress Ornate interior gate at Gyeongbokgung Palace Gyeongbokgung Palace throne room exterior Gyeongbokgung Palace throne room interior
When we finished at the museum, we made our way walking to Bukchon Hanok village, a residential area with traditional Korean architecture. Bukchon Hanok village was clearly a residential area with people living there, as there were a number of signs admonishing tourists to be quiet. After leaving, we stopped to grab some Hoddeok to eat along the way to our next stop. We also saw some protests outside that seemed to be related to the controversy with Park Geun-Hye.
Hanoks at Bukchon Hoddeok Park Geun-Hye protest
We then walked to Jogyesa Buddhist Temple. It looked like there must be some festival coming up, as many decorations were already in place and people were actively hanging more decorations (the internet claims that Magha Puja Day is March 12 of this year, but I don’t know enough about Buddhism).
Decorations being hung at Jogyesa Decorations at Jogyesa
At this point it was about 1:30pm, so we made our way to Gyejeol Bapsang (a Korean buffet) for lunch in Insadong. Grace had had Gyejeol Bapsang on a previous trip to Korea and really liked it, so that was a must-do on our itinerary. I thought the food was pretty good, though I mostly had various preparations of Chicken. Even though I was not trying to eat spicy food, it eventually caught up with me and my mouth was on fire. We left Gyejeol Bapsang quite full and proceeded to walk through Insadong to look at all the shops.
Gyejeol Bapsang Toilet cafe in Insadong Shops at Insadong
We made our way back to the AirBnB to rest a bit, and then went to Myeongdong for dinner consisting of street food and for more shopping. I had a pizza-cone thing (cheese and tomato sauce inside a dough cone; pretty good, if difficult to eat because the cheese was so stringy), an egg-bread thing, a hoddeok, and split a croissant taiyaki and spiral potato with Grace. Grace had a skewer of odeng (fish cake) and a bowl of jajangmyeon. We found a currency exchange place that Grace used on a previous trip and exchanged some cash (so I finally had cash of my own) and went into a bunch of skincare stores.
Pizza cone street food Egg bread Croissant taiyaki – we got the Nutella-filled variety
After that we came home and went to sleep, ready for Day 4!
The big highlight of today is our tour to Panmunjom and the Demilitarized Zone.
We woke up at 6:00 AM after about 8 hours of sleep (we had finally gone to bed around 0:00 PM the night before) and got ready to head out by 7:30. We went back to the subway station and caught Seoul Subway Line 2 to City Hall Station and then walked to the nearby Koreana Hotel from which our tour departed. When we checked in, we got to try on some of the uniform elements of the ROK Army guards which made for a pretty goofy picture.
Sam looking goofy
We took a bus for about an hour to reach our first checkpoint and enter the Civilian Control Area (CCA) that lies immediately south of the south side of the DMZ. At the checkpoint, a soldier boarded the bus to check everyone’s passports. We then drove to the second checkpoint, at the entrance to Camp Bonifas, where our passports were checked a second time and all the names were checked against a passenger manifest. They gave us clip-on badges to identify us as guests of the United Nations and we went inside for a briefing on the history of the DMZ and what to expect on the tour. We then drove to the Freedom House (main building on the South side of the border) inside Panmunjom (truce village/Joint Security Area) and walked into conference building T-2. This allowed us to cross into North Korean territory while still being safely inside a UN-controlled building; all the blue buildings are controlled by the UN Command, while the gray buildings are controlled by the Korean People’s Army (North Korea)/Chinese People’s Volunteers (China). Bisecting the buildings directly on the border is the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) which marks the official border between the two countries as set forth in the armistice agreement. Inside building T-2, a conference table is in the middle and the microphones in the middle of the table mark the MDL; outside the buildings, a concrete slab marks the MDL. Unfortunately, pictures inside the CCA, DMZ, and Panmunjom are extremely limited; most places have prohibited photography and the only pictures we were permitted to take were very constrained in terms of angles. The only places we could take pictures inside Panmunjom were directly at the border and angled toward North Korea, so I have no pictures of the Freedom House, the UNC observation posts, or any of the military fortifications (physical barricades and barriers) that exist in all of these areas. (I surmise that this is to reduce the amount of information that can be leaked unintentionally; details about physical fortifications can give insight into how to overcome them and details about the number/type of cameras or number/size/arrangement of antennas can expose observational capability.)
Building T-2, centered Military Demarcation Line (MDL) as seen from the inside of Building T-2. The shot is taken from the North Korean side of the MDL; South Korea is on the left side of the picture and North Korea is on the right.
Soldiers from both sides patrol Panmunjom, but I only saw two North Korean soldiers out today. According to the US Infantryman who was guarding us, the North Korean soldiers really only come face-to-face with the ROK/UNC soldiers during high-level meetings or other VIP-type scenarios. However, he assured us that they were watching us from their main building and their nearby observation post.
North Korea’s Panmungak building, visible in the background behind Buildings T-2 and T-3. North Korean observation building, set behind the MDL
After spending only a few minutes at Panmunjom, we departed and went back to the visitor center in Camp Bonifas so we could visit the gift shop and head toward Imjingak park to look at monuments to the war.
Freedom bridge, on the left. It’s now a train bridge, but was originally a pedestrian bridge. Flags and ribbons hoping for peace Ribbons hoping for peace
We then left for lunch at a local restaurant. They served beef bulgogi, and it was decidedly not the best bulgogi that I’ve had. Neither Grace nor I finished it.
Bulgogi and banchan at the restaurant near the DMZ
Following lunch, we left to visit a tunnel dug by North Korea into the DMZ. This was, again, another area where photography was unfortunately restricted. However, our tour guide was careful to point out all the evidence* of the tunnel being dug by North Korea instead of South Korea; apparently this is a topic of contention between the two countries. We took a mine train (with seats that look to have been ripped out of the rear of a car) deep under a mountain through an extremely narrow tunnel; people needed to crouch and hunch over to avoid heads and shoulders hitting the rock. At the bottom, we walked through the tunnel as discovered by South Korea a few hundred meters to a concrete barrier that was constructed to block the tunnel. I think we were all thankful for the hardhats we wore; Grace and I both hit our heads a few times on the low ceiling. We then rode back up and visited a museum showing more about the tunnel and the DMZ in general
(* I do not feel qualified to judge whether or not the supplied evidence does indicate the provided conclusion. Prior to taking this tour, I did not doubt that the tunnels were dug by North Korea, however the insistence on the three particular pieces of evidence seemed odd to me.)
Model of Panmunjom at the museum near the third tunnel
Our next stop of the tour was the top of the mountain at Dora Observatory. From here, we could see both Tae sung dong village (South Korean village inside the DMZ) and a North Korean propaganda village. We could see both gigantic flagpoles (South Korea’s is 100m tall, North Korea’s is 160m tall) and hear the propaganda being broadcast via loudspeaker from North Korean territory.
Our final stop on the tour before heading home was Dorasan Station, a train station within the CCA that serves as the last station before North Korea. Trains used to run to the Kaesong Industrial Region prior to increased tension between the countries; now it’s just the terminus of trains in South Korea. A piece of the Berlin Wall was donated to Dorasan Station and stands as a monument to strife created by building walls between people; the Berlin Wall stood for 41 years and the separation between two Koreas has endured for 71 years so far.
Empty platform at Dorasan station Chunk of the Berlin Wall, donated to Dorasan station
On our way back to Seoul, we got to ask questions of a North Korean defector who had been on the tour with us. She told us of her escape and her struggle, and of her family that is still in North Korea without any means of contact. It’s really crazy to hear what a different world it is inside the hermit kingdom.
One of the overarching themes of the day was reunification. I didn’t realize before coming here (and especially before taking this tour) how much some people really hope for the end of the North Korean regime and for civilians to be reabsorbed into society. The extent to which families have been divided by this conflict is pretty immense. However, my opinion on this hasn’t really changed; I don’t see a path to reunification while the Kim regime stands and I believe it’s going to be an extremely long and difficult process if it ever does come to pass.
Grace and I went back to our AirBnB to rest after a long day. By the time we started feeling better, it was already getting late for dinner. We debated where to go and settled on trying to go somewhere close. Looking online, we thought that a Mr. Pizza (South Korean pizza chain) was nearby, but we couldn’t find it when we walked to the address we found. We then found another address, and it wasn’t there either. We ended up at Pizza Hut, which was a much nicer sit-down restaurant than I’ve seen in the US, though the food was fairly similar to pizza in the US. Along the way, we discovered a Kakao Friends store that Grace wanted to visit, so we went there on the way back.
Pizza Hut in Seoul “Ryan” Kakao character
Today, we discovered that Google Maps works really poorly in Seoul; according to an old friend who now lives here, this is because the South Korean government restricts the information that can be seen to try and reduce the risk of attack on the city. I’m hoping that we have better luck with it tomorrow; it’s really inconvenient as a tourist to not be able to have good directions on your phone.
As we were getting close to Korea, I noticed that the flight path was deviating from what the seat-back map had predicted. Instead, it looked like we veered to head toward Beijing. As we got closer it became clear that we were just steering clear of North Korea’s airspace.
KE020 flight path avoids North Korean airspace
We landed at Incheon at about 5:45pm local time. We managed to get off the plane fairly quickly, grab the first shuttle to the main terminal, and get through both immigration and customs in pretty much record time. We then found the place to pick up our wifi hotspot for the week, and went down to the train.
We thought that we needed to take the A’REX Express train and bought tickets for that. After we got on, we realized that he Express train skipped the station we needed to go to for our AirBnB. We rode all the way to Seoul Station, got off, bought new tickets for the regular A’REX and finally made our way to Hongik University Station in Hongdae. After wandering around for a few minutes, we found the AirBnB building, grabbed our key, and made our way to it.
We went out a bit more to grab some supplies (bottled water and something for breakfast), then came back to unpack, shower, and sleep.
The shower is a bit different from what I’m used to; the floor is pretty much level with the rest of the bathroom so water gets everywhere and you need to wear sandals inside. Aside from that it was a pretty normal shower though.
It’s very late now (by Seattle time), so I think we’ll turn in and get some sleep before our tour tomorrow morning.
