Waegook Wanderings Part Two

As we soon found out, Samcheok is a city full of very pleasant surprises. We stayed in a “love motel” right beside the bus station and took off to find ourselves some kimbap for dinner. After wandering a bit, we found ourselves in the midst of a good sized market, still open in the evening. It mostly was selling various fruits, vegetables, and fish. I’ve never seen so many anchovies in my life!

Eventually we found a little place that had kimbap. Now, kimbap is actually made with ham, so we’ve been ordering it without ham. This place had their kimbap premade, so we had to pick the ham out (which isn’t particularly hard if you have good command of chopsticks). This gave the ladies running the shop quite a laugh, but they came over and helped us remove the ham. Between the 2 of us we had 2 rolls of kimbap and 4 red bean pastries. The total for our meal came to a whopping $3.

After dinner we decided to see what kind of a jimjilbang this Samcheok place had. And then our minds were blown. We caught a cab, and happened to get a female driver, which Laura tells me is extremely rare to see in Korea. We told her what we were looking for and she excitedly took off exclaiming that we were in for a treat! (Okay, I don’t know what exactly she was exclaiming, but from the tone of her voice I could tell she had something special in store for us.) We pulled up in front of this huge building, which we were told housed a pool and a karaoke room, along with the jimjilbang. Clearly Samcheok has more to offer than giant wooden phalluses! (And a cave, but we didn’t have time to see the cave.)

The jimjilbang was incredible. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that it alone was worth the 7 hours on a bus. And we didn’t even check out the pool and karaoke room! We slept very well that night. So well, in fact, that we didn’t wake up until after 10am. We had to leave that same day to go back to Seoul, so our intentions had been to get an early start to the day. Instead we threw our stuff into our bags and threw on some clothes, and headed out to catch the city bus out to Penis Park.

Penis Park is exactly what you except it would be, well, it was exactly what I expected it to be. The story goes that there was a young virgin who was due to be married and she was collecting seaweed (or something) on a rock out in the sea. Her fiancé was supposed to collect her at the end of the day, but because of a storm he was unable to and she drown. After her death, the village experienced a shortage in fish. Then, one day a man was attending to “nature’s needs” (I’ll leave it to you to interpret what that means) and exposed himself to the ocean. That day, the fishing improved. And so the villagers began erecting giant wooden phalluses in order to appease the dead virgin girl’s soul.

The park is actually situated between the sea and the mountains, so the scenery is quiet beautiful in and of itself. All in all it was a very enjoyable trip and we were both sad that we didn’t have more time to discover all that Samcheok has to offer. It was now Feb. 13 and we had a tour scheduled of the DMZ for Valentine’s Day, so after we took in the penises we were back on a bus to Seoul.

The DMZ tour starts very early (like 7:30am early) and we were running a bit late. Fortunately, the start time we were given was a big earlier than the actual time the bus leaves Seoul, so we didn’t really need to run from the subway to the USO (our tour guide was actually on the subway with us and watched us run to the USO, he informed us of this after our bus got underway). The DMZ is about an hour or hour and a half’s bus ride from Seoul. On the way you drive alongside a river that is heavily watched by the South Korean army for North Korean submarines.

When we arrived at the DMZ we were inspected by an American military personnel, who then provided us with a tour. We had to wear UN visitor badges for the duration of our tour and were told when and where we were allowed to take photos. First we had a presentation on the history of the Korean war and the DMZ, and then we were taken to the boarder, where we were instructed not to point, smile, or make any attempts at communication with the North Korean military. Since it was a cold day, there was only one person outside from the North Korean army, and he was way up on their building. There were others inside the building, you could tell because he would go stand beside a blacked out window and talk to them. (You couldn’t hear him talk, he was a ways away.) We got to go into one of the UN buildings that straddles the boarder and is used for peace talks, and inside this building we were able to cross over into North Korean territory. In this room there are microphones on the table and everything is recorded, so you know whatever you say will be listened to by the North Korean military. It’s a very weird feeling.

Afterwards we were taken to a lookout point where we could see both Propaganda Village (NK) and Freedom Village (SK) off in the distance. We were taken to the bridge of no return, though we weren’t allowed to get out of the bus because they believe that the North Koreans guarding their side of the bridge don’t obey the rules on allotted weaponry within the different sectors of the DMZ. We were also shown one of the caves that the North Koreans dug underneath the DMZ. The North Koreans claim they were mining coal, though it is very clear that there is no coal to be mined in these tunnels, and that the South Koreans dug them anyways (but it’s obvious from the way it was dug that it came from the North’s side). There are several of these tunnels, and they are all intended to end at point near Seoul to facilitate a surprise attack. While this is unlikely to happen, they still haven’t found all the tunnels that have supposedly been dug.

That was quite an interesting experience, and if you’re ever in South Korea the DMZ tour is not to be missed. I’d like to take it from the North Korean side one day, but as it stands right now it costs about $10,000 to go on the government controlled tour of North Korea.

Well, that about concludes my trip to Korea. My last day was just spent relaxing and doing a bit of shopping and then Laura and I parted ways at the bus station and I headed on to Singapore (for about 2 hours) and Melbourne, where I am currently getting myself set up and established. There will be much, much more to come on that!