On this particular day we tried to go to the DMZ with my family, but apparently it’s closed on Monday, so we went to Imjingak and then the Unification Observatory. Imjingak was decent save for the elementary school kids that assaulted my clan with shouts of “Hello! How old are you?” (As a quick aside at least one of the kids knew that “How old are you?” is an inappropriate question to ask a middle aged woman and chided her classmates).
So Imjingak…we saw North Korea, I got yelled at by some dude with a machine gun for going to close to some fence, and I bought some awesomely kitchy North Korean stamps from the 1970s featuring North Korea’s 1970 vision of a space program. The stamps were utterly insane and in reality warrant a post of their own…perhaps such things will come to pass.
Following Imjingak we headed to the Unification Observatory and observed some unification…or looked at some North Korean television, played school in a mock North Korean classroom, looked across a river, and then purchased North Korean alcohol. Oh also I made my brother have a hard time because I busted out all manner of Korean while I was purchasing some sort of North Korean wine. My brother, being throughly unable to speak Korean (I believe at last count he knew the words for “beer,” “hello,” “thanks,” “Attention!” “Bow!” and “bulgogi”) went up to purchase something from a woman that now mistakenly believed all in my party could speak Korean.
Following our trip to as close to North Korea as one can go on a Monday we grabbed some dinner at a Taiwanese restaurant. The dinner was outstanding and enjoyed by all. Following dinner we headed to Namsan Tower to get a view of the entire city under cover of dark. From there we parted way and headed back to our respective domiciles.
