Winter Vacation

I had the last week of January off, and James flew down to visit for the week. We did a bunch of day trips in Seoul. It was a fun week. This is a picture of us in Insadong (I think) by a Korean temple. There are a lot of these in Seoul.

These are some shots from our boat cruise on the Han river.

The highlight of the week for me was going on the DMZ tour. DMZ stands for Demilitarized Zone, and in this case it refers to the border between North and South Korea. The Korean DMZ is about 4 km wide and 248 km long, and it is the most heavily armed border in the world. Technically North and South Korea are still at war. The Korean War ended in 1953 with a ceasefire, but there was never a peace treaty. There have been a number of incidents since then, and each one increases the tension between the two Koreas. 

This picture is looking into North Korea. We were not allowed to take a picture past that yellow line, so we could see North Korea, but couldn't get a picture. I actually tried to get one of the crates by the wall there and drag it back to the yellow line to stand on and get a better shot, but the army guy made me put the crate back. I guess he was just doing his job.

Part of the DMZ tour included going down into one of the four tunnels that North Korea dug to try to invade South Korea. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures of it. This picture is from a train station in South Korea that is not in use. South Korea is all set to send people to Pyeongyang, North Korea once the two Koreas reunite. In 2000, their presidents met and agreed to seek out a peaceful reunification, but the situation has grown more tense since then.

This is a cool statue symbolizing the efforts to bring the two Koreas back together. I'm trying my best, but James doesn't seem to care so much.

At the end of the week, James and I went hiking in Bukhansan. It was surprisingly mild for the end of January, and it was great hiking weather.

This last shot is from snowboarding in Jisan. Korea isn't the best place to go snowboarding, but we still had a lot of fun. All in all, a pretty good vacation.