Deoksugung Palace pagentry

Day 2 of Quiring-family visit cont.

After our DMZ tour on Friday, June 29, we were dropped off at City Hall in downtown Seoul. It is right across from the Deoksugung Palace that Jonathan and I had been to back at the end of May. We had wanted to take my parents and Tyler there to show them the changing of the guards ceremony that happens twice a day, and we managed to arrive about 10 minutes before it started. Perfect timing! Although we don't really understand the whole meaning behind the ancient changing of the guards ceremony, it is very interesting to watch. My mum, Jonathan, Tyler and myself all got pictures from different angles and I tried to take several videos as well. We hope you enjoy the visual reenactment we've attempted to create.

All set to start

Marching band (See my parents on the left? My mum looks like quite the professional photographer, eh? :)

Guards

Marching back out

Trumpeters

The leader of the band

The changing of the guards

Conch horns

The drummers had a really fancy flourish to their drumming motions

Photo op! (that I just missed)

Got a good one anyway though

Cymbals

Mini gongs

Tyler

Kind of a mix between a recorder and a trumpet

The ceremonial drum

And here's a small snippet of the traditional changing of the guards ceremony on video for you to watch.

We had a great time watching the reenactment and learning a little bit about this traditional Korean custom. After watching the ceremony, we took the subway a few stops to Insadong, a traditional market in downtown Seoul. (We have no pictures of this as we were having too much fun enjoying the area.) We ate a yummy (and much needed) lunch, and then wandered the cobblestone streets looking in different shops. Jonathan and I bought a few Korean souvenirs for our new house, and my parents and Tyler bought a few things, too. Jonathan found a yut nori game set, which we'd been wanting to get since we played it at our first church's year-end party in December. After several hours of walking around Insadong, we headed back to the subway with our purchases and arrived back at our apartment to get ready for Sabbath.

DMZ Tour

Day 2 of Quiring-family visit

Jonathan and I had wanted to go to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea at some point before we left Korea. When my parents told us they were planning to come visit, we decided to wait until they came to take the day tour. On Friday, June 29, we got up early and took the subway to Dongdaemun Station. We had a few delays* in getting to the pick-up stop, but we managed to get there right in time, and the tour bus pulled up pretty much just as we arrived.

Went by this gate (Dongdaemun) on the way to meet our bus

Contemplation

After a couple more stops to pick up other tourists, we headed north for about an hour. The trip went right along the Han River and was very picturesque. Our guide was a very pleasant and knowledgeable young lady who told us the background of the Korean War and the split between North and South Korea while we traveled. As we left Seoul and neared the DMZ, we started noticing the razor wire fence along the South Korean edge of the river and saw sentry boxes every so often.

Driving by the Han River lined with razor wire and sentry boxes

Another sentry box

Observatory

North Korean mountains

Our first stop was at the Imjingak unification tourist resort, where we had about 15 minutes to look around at a huge bell, an old rusting train engine riddled with bullets from a long-ago trip across the Freedom Bridge, and a few look-out platforms overlooking the DMZ. Everyone hurried to get back to the bus in time. Our guide told us that we had a strict time schedule we had to follow and said that anyone who was late getting back on the bus would have to sing a song for the rest of the tourists. We did hear a couple songs that day. :)

Another giant bell - these things are everywhere

Giant bell knocker

Ali often levitates when she's in a hurry

Old engine that made train sounds

Razor wire

Freedom Bridge

Random statues we saw as we left the Imjingak unification tourist resort

Next we drove into the DMZ. South Korean soldiers came onto our bus at the check-point and we were all told ahead of time to keep our cameras out of sight while we were stopped there. After we were allowed into the DMZ, we went to the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. It was discovered just 52 km north of Seoul in 1978. A brochure we were given for our tour said that, "the tunnel is 1,635m in length, 2m in width, and 2m in height." It is big enough for an army of 30,000 fully-armed soldiers to pass through within an hour. This is the largest tunnel discovered so far. (I believe there have been four tunnels discovered all within a few years of each other.) Our group went into a building and down a hall where we each grabbed a hard hat from a shelf on a wall and then started down a very steep walkway down to the actual tunnel. It was quite a way down and once we got to the bottom we were able to walk another long way to where it was closed-off. In some parts you had to crouch to keep from hitting your head on the ceiling (hence the hard hats). Poor Jonathan had quite the bent-over walk in some parts of the tunnel. As we arrived at the end of where we could walk, we could go one-by-one (there wasn't room for two people back there) to the wall in the tunnel and look through a window to see that the tunnel kept on going as far back as you could see. Then we turned around and walked back through the tunnel and back up the steep walkway. It definitely felt good to come back out into the sunshine after all that time underground! We weren't allowed to take cameras into the tunnel, so we don't have any pictures of that. After walking through the tunnel, our group watched a 15-minute video about the war and how the two countries ended up split into north and south before we loaded back into the bus for our next stop.

Posing by the split globe at the site of the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel

Ali and Tyler pose on the DMZ sign at the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel site

Fits you to a 'd'

Paper cup ad while waiting to enter the theater to watch the video

Drink up!

Smiling

Next we visited the Dora Observatory. On the short drive there, our guide told us that we could take pictures at the Dora Observatory, but we had to stay behind the yellow line to take them. She said if we took any pictures in front of the yellow line, one of the South Korean soldiers would take our cameras and delete those pictures. We were allowed to go in front of the yellow lines to look, but not to take pictures. When we arrived, we realized that pretty much any pictures we took from behind the yellow lines wouldn't show much of anything anyway, so we can't really show you what North Korea looks like... We could see a South Korean flag in the South Korean section of the DMZ and a North Korean flag in the North Korean section. There is also an industrial complex in the DMZ that we could see where some South Koreans go to work everyday. They get bussed in to work in the morning and then are bussed back out of the DMZ each evening. We could also see a propaganda village in North Korea that was built by the North Koreans, but has no people living in it.

Had to stand 10 or 12 feet back from the wall if I was taking pictures. This is actually the DMZ in front of us,
and from here we could actually see a flag and a propaganda village in North Korea

A popular soldier

Our last stop of the day was at Dorasan Station, a very spiffy-looking train station that used to be used for travel between North and South Korea. But after a few mishaps, travel between the two countries was shut down and now Dorasan is basically just a stop for tourists on bus tours of the DMZ. We looked around the station, some people got pictures with the soldiers there, and others used the very nice washroom facilities before we headed back to Seoul.

Dorasan, the last train station before North Korea - the line into North Korea does not get used anymore

The only people in the station are tourists from bus tour groups and a few South Korean soldiers having their pictures taken

Bush at the opening ceremony

Empty station

Stamping North Korean passport stamps on a 1,000 won bill
(would cause problems in an actual passport...)

Riding the bus back

Once back in Seoul we were treated to an extra stop. Our guide told us we could choose between going to an amethyst store or a ginseng store. The vote was for a ginseng store and we stopped there to learn about ginseng and its wonderful properties. We learned very quickly that the whole purpose of the stop was to try to get us to buy their extremely overpriced-but-fancily-wrapped products. Some people decided to try it out, but our little group tried the samples and then discreetly left the store and got back on the bus. At the end of the tour, our guide dropped people back off at a few places around Seoul. In our next post we'll show you what we did for the rest of our afternoon.

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*If you want to hear the story of the delays, here it is: We stopped at a convenience store on our walk to the subway to get my parents and brother T-money cards (cards you can load with money and scan to use the subway and bus systems) so they could use the subway with ease during their time in Seoul. Then we had to get out money at the ATM to load onto the T-money cards. We had planned to stop at the bank right on the way to the subway, but the ATM section was still closed and locked up, so we had to find an ATM in the subway station. Next the machine that loads the money value onto the T-money card wasn't working with the cards we'd gotten. Luckily the convenience store in the station loaded the money on the cards for us and we were off again. We narrowly missed the subway that was at the station when we went down to the platform, so we had to wait for the next one. Then we got out at the wrong exit at Dongdaemun Station and had to walk all around an intersection to get to the place the bus would be meeting us. We did end up making it to the pick-up spot before the bus, though, thankfully!