Dropping in on North Korea

I finally had my trip to North Korea this past weekend! It was a fun adventure and a good experience. I went with a group of about 90 foreigners. We left late Friday night, attempted to sleep on the bus, and got off and checked through in both the South (drove through the DMZ) and then the North Immigration office. You couldn't bring your cell phone, camcorders, cameras with too much zoom, etc...into North Korea. You were very limited on what you could take pictures of. There were soldiers spread out throughout the area we drove through either standing in fields or in little huts in their full uniform with red flags. If they saw anyone take pictures of soldiers or landscape from the bus they would throw up their flag and all the buses would have to stop (there were around 12 buses). They would go through all the cameras and delete all your pics if you were the one who took the pic. I believe you would also get a hefty fine. Anyways, there were some amazing shots that I really wish I could have taken but yeah...

We did a lot of hiking and went to hot springs on the first day in Geumgangsan area. The weather was rather chilly but it was a good time overall. There are a lot of people standing on guard throughout the trail so they could fine you if you did anything wrong...It was beautiful though and typical Korean hiking (waiting in line to get up the mountain). I believe this weekend there were about 1,000 of us Tourists in the area; last weekend 2,000.

When we were on the bus we were able to see some North Koreans but I definitely wonder how much of it was propaganda. Everyone bikes or walks everywhere it seems, including the soldiers, but the area is so empty. There were random clumps of shacks but they seemed miles apart from one another. Anyways, when you walked anywhere it seemed that there were soldiers watching your every move. One of my friends and I walked to the pic of Kim Jong-il -North Korean Pres.(a little ways from the hotel) and there was one path for the foreigners and a guarded off area a couple feet away for the North Koreans with guards everywhere. There were tanks sitting on some mountains too. crazy...

The trip overall has definitely raised a lot of questions for me about North Korea though. I obviously would have loved to see more of the villages and people, and see what true North Korea was like but you take what you can get I suppose. Anyways, I can't really describe the whole experience in a blog but the trip overall was good and I wish I could have stayed longer.

I'll put my pics on my flick account so if you're interested you can take a look.

On a random note though, I have been sick for about a month and I have no idea how to get over it. I've gone to the doctor but it hasn't really helped...hmmm hopefully I'll get better soon.

Teaching with Avalon-well, I'll write about that more next time. The new students are good right now but give them a couple weeks and I could be singing a different song. :) We are getting some new teachers pretty soon so hopefully that will be good. Okay I think I'm going to go to the doctor again so I'll write more later. I hope you all are well much love from Korea----