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DMZ

I went to the DMZ a few weeks back with a group called WiNK (When in Korea). They let me tag along their trips in exchange for photos. It’s an excellent arrangement. The DMZ was an interesting experience, but if I could, I’d not have wasted my time there.

The divide between the Koreas is tragic and is one of the darkest catastrophes of the current political order. Koreans pride ourselves on our pure blood (ironic how I use the pronoun ‘our’ when I’m only half ) and strong sense of unity. Koreans refer to Korea and Koreans as 우리나라 and 우리사람, “our country”, and “our people”. And yet, we’re a nation divided. And  more sadly, the South has largely forgotten the North. The DMZ reflects this. It is a tourist attraction where one is shuffled from museum to attraction to gift shop to fast food to viewing spot in an air conditioned tour bus with no possibility to stop and solemnly reflect on the tragedy and gravity.

It also didn’t help that our trip coincided with a Chinese holiday and we had to compete with tsunamis of squawking Chinese tourists.

But on a positive note, the tunnels were quite fascinating and the museums for informative. I really couldn’t imagine the poor saps who had to pick through that rock with probably nothing more than some pick axes.

Everland During Chuseok

For Chuseok this year I went to Everland! About 3 weeks ago I decided to move back to the States in December, so I’m trying to cross everything off my Korea bucket list within two months. I have a lot to do! But for this Chuseok break, I hit Everland with some fine people from the Samsung Global Strategy group. For those that don’t know, Chuseok or 추석, is the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, celebrating an abundant harvest.

We had a lot of fun, but it’s obvious that we’re getting older. Instead of racing around to the roller coasters we mostly ambled around looking at animals, roses, and decorations.

Everland gives a discount for foreigners for this week. I wonder what would happen if Disneyland had a discount for foreigners. Probably riots. But this is definitely not America.

The highlight of the trip was Everland’s new (as of Oct 2008) joyride, T-Express. Apparently it is one of the largest and steepest wooden roller coasters in the world. It was freaking amazeballs. Ruben and some others were having trouble in line wrapping their heads around it.

We also got to take some pictures with Psy. And this pillow would literally give me nightmares.

And apparently polar bears are cute as hell.

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Hiking Namsan

I live right next to Namsan Mountain, home of the iconic North Seoul Tower, and so Tobes and I hike up to the top at least once a week. The top is full of couples and tourists who take busses or the cable car to get there. But the real beauty of the mountain is in the labyrinth of trails getting there.

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Brand New Blog!

What is up!!!

As you can see this is a brand spanking new blog – and as new blogs are, it’s quite lonely and boring at the moment. However, this will soon be filled with all of my day to day adventures. I’m looking to stretch my photography towards documentary style storytelling.

For now, here’s one of my favorite pictures of Toby from when he was about 6 months old. dat tongue.

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