Weekend Wrap-Up (DMZ) - (Korea) Days 131 & 132

From left to right: The young hawaiian's buddy, the air force master sergeant,
me, and the young hawaiian.

Saturday: Had to wake up at 0610 this morning in order to get ready and video chat with my wife a bit before heading to the USO. We had to be at the USO by 0730 for the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone…A.K.A. the boarder between North and South Korea) tour we signed up for. By we I mean, me, the young hawaiian & his buddy, the air force master sergeant in my office and PFC Pickle. We all arrived there except for PFC Pickle. He had called me last night and was sounding a little iffy. I tried calling him, but he didn't answer. There is a waste of $35 for him.

We all signed in and boarded the bus. It was a full bus and we headed out for the drive towards the DMZ which took around an hour. Our tour guide on the bus talked to us most of the way giving us a number of interesting facts. When we arrived near the DMZ at an army base, we switched buses and an army soldier boarded with us and took over as our tour guide. We headed up to the JSA (Joint Security Area) which is where any diplomatic talks take place. In most areas of the DMZ there is 2 kilometers on each side of the line that is uninhabited, but the JSA is an area where both sides come together. We were shown the conference room where diplomatic engagements take place. This room is actually right on the boarder of the two nations, so I was able to "step into" North Korea by going to the far end of the room. I can now add that to the list of countries I've been to…LOL. I was hoping to see a number of communists today, but unfortunately they only had one out and ironically he was taking our picture. We were told there were a number of North Koreans in the various buildings keeping a watchful eye on all of us at all times.

We then headed off to see some other various sites such as the "bridge of no return" and heard about all the various incidents that have occurred here since the war ended. It was all very informative and pretty interesting. After stopping at a few different places we headed to a place called "The 3rd Tunnel". This was the 3rd infiltration tunnel the South has found that the North has created for a surprise attack. Up until now they have actually found 4 and suspect there may be up to 16 more. We were able to walk down and actually check out the tunnel itself. It was quite a walk down and up. It's pretty crazy to think that this was even built.

Our last stop was an international railroad station called Dorasan Station. This station was built when relations were warming up between the two Koreas and the plan was to have a train travel all the way through North Korea and allow people to eventual travel to China and Europe. Relations soured after a North Korean soldier shot and killed a South Korean woman and the station was never used except for a few test runs. It's now basically only a tourist stop. I found it very strange to walk through the station. It was all quite and empty, but all the electronics were on. It was like some movie where all the people just vanish, or perhaps a zombie movie where all the normal people have disappeared. Either way it was an odd feeling walking around the place. There was a gift shop there, but that was about it.

We then headed to lunch and returned. I think most of the folks including me slept most of the way back. The trip wore everyone out. We arrived back a little after 1600. I headed back to my room and did some schoolwork. I then met up with the young hawaiian and we went to the movies since they are still free this month. We watched "The Eagle". It was a decent movie about a roman trying to regain his family's name after his father lost a legion of men in England. I'm glad it was free though, it's a movie that I would suggest putting in your Netflix queue, but not spending the money on renting. It was no Gladiator.

I then went back to my room and drank my bottle of communist beer that I was able to purchase during our trip. Surprisingly it wasn't too bad. After that I ended up doing some more homework before going to sleep.

At the JSA. North Korea in the background and the diplomatic meeting rooms in blue

The lone communist I was able to see this weekend

Inside the diplomatic conference room. Our US Army tour guide along with a
ROK soldier there for our protection. He's standing at "ROK Ready" 
perfectly still & showing no emotion.

Some North Korean items that were obtained during one of the many
incidents that have occurred at or near the JSA.

Sunday: I slept in…always nice. I then did laundry and had a chance to video chat with all my kids and my wife for hours. Gotta love it when that happens. I really hate being away from them for so long. I start to feel very guilty at times for not being there and being with them. I hate hate hate being apart.

The rest of the day was pretty mellow. I just did schoolwork, went to the gym and worked out, then came back and did more schoolwork. I then watched some TV and called it a night.

EO - (Korea) Day 17

This was a picture on a slide in one of the meetings I was watching

(a quick google image search found this copy for me) It's very interesting

The photo is from space and shows both North and South Korea at night.

Since the Korean war the North's economy has floundered and the South's has thrived...

which can all be seen just from this photo alone!

This morning I had to head into work early so I didn't do any PT. I'll probably do a little this weekend and hopefully I'll have a normal schedule next week and do PT in the morning each day. We are supposed to start having half days next week because of the upcoming holidays.
This morning we had a meeting to setup in another building. While waiting for our escort in the waiting area I checked out a trophy case they had setup. They had a number of items displayed such as rifles, pistols, id cards, ration cards etc. from North Korean defectors. It was a pretty interesting display. When we got to the meeting to setup it seems the same scenario plays out every time. We have name tags that we place according to a seating chart. There are always last minute changes, certain people want to sit in certain places and it's always a big deal because these are all high ranking officers. Why they can't get it straight before hand I guess I'll never know, but it's always a rush to try and get everything setup correctly before the meeting actually starts. It just makes me laugh (on the inside of course) to see how people can blow even the simplest things out of proportion.

The day was pretty slow after that. I had to go through some mandatory "equal opportunity" training on my own, which consisted of going through some PowerPoint slides and then signing a paper stating I went through the PowerPoint slides. The guys in our office then had to put salt on the steps and driveway leading up to the front door because of the snow that had been coming down. It seems our office is kind of a jack of all trades office and we do stuff for the entire building.

I setup for a meeting in my conference room which was for the ROK army. They brought in two laptops and one of them didn't want to display on the screen. When I tried to take a look and offer some help, I quickly found out that there was no way I would be able to help at all because of course their Windows laptop was all in Korean! D'oh! Plus there are a number of Koreans here that don't know English very well at all, so trying to communicate with them can be challenging at times. (This is where the KATUSAs come in handy as they are required to know a minimum level of English) They ended up running and getting another laptop and it worked fine for them. I then just hang out during the meeting in case there are technical problems. In the middle of the meeting they were complaining that the microphones at the table were not producing sound. Everything was turned on and I couldn't find anything wrong with the system. After the meeting we found out that someone had unplugged all the microphones at the table itself. When we plugged them back in there was a bunch of feedback (I guess that's why they were unplugged). They are all plugged into a box underneath one of the tables in the room and I think people have just kicked it one too many times. SPC Short took a look and said it's beyond his ability, so we'll have to get a professional audio person in to take a look. Until then only the podiums will have microphones.

I got off work and headed home…lol strange that I call the barracks home now. My roommate had already left for the weekend. I talked to my wife via Skype for a bit and then watched "Faster" to wind down my evening. A movie with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson where he gets out of jail and seeks revenge on everyone who betrayed him in the past. A good action flick with some nice driving sequences.  In the middle of the movie I got a call from SPC Roy and was told we didn't have to go in tomorrow morning as we previously thought. Nice! There was a meeting scheduled for 7:30 AM on a Saturday which meant that we would have to be in at 6:30. Now we are just on stand-by in case they decide to have the meeting on Sunday. Depending on world events (a.k.a. North Korea's actions) we can get pretty busy here.