Demilitarized Zone and Doosan Bears

Having done my homework it was obvious that a trip to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) (which is a horribly incorrect name for the area) was a must. A trip to the Joint Security Area (JSA) within the DMZ was apparently the main highlight of many peoples trips to South Korea. So we'd booked this trip several weeks before leaving, sent our papers to UN to be cleared and was ready, but the South/North Korea conflict being what it is, the trip to JSA was cancelled while we were in SK.
South Korean protesters sent 200,000 leaflets with anti-Pyongyang information/propaganda over the border, NK does of course not like this and started shooting at the balloon and the border was shut down.
The SK government says this is within their freedom of speech, but the activists gives them a heads up before they do it so the border patroll can make arrangements. Happens quite often, but still annoying that it had to be the day when we had planned to go there. A tip for any other travelers, book this trip on one of your first days, increasing your chance of changing your date if they open it again before you leave.

There were no other days we were able to go to JSA before going back home, but we were able to re-book for a trip to DMZ so we at least got to see NK from afar.

The DMZ is a two kilometers border between north and south with strickt regulations, a few people live here, farmers and a few who runs some small stores, other than that it's military and wildlife.

Pick-up was early and we joined a huge bus with mostly americans on the trip.
The first stop was a viewpoint of the DMZ itself, overlooking the river and that was about it.
The next was more interesting where we first were given a short view of a border museum, before being presented an extremely pro-USA propaganda movie about the border situation. The fun/scary/surprising thing about this movie was that most of the americans didn't react at all to how it was created, but they did agree when I pointed out things like the graphics of the south engulfing the north at the end and some other "not-so-balanced" views in the short movie.
After this we were able to go into one of the attack-tunnels NK had dug towards Seoul, but never been able to use. There were apparently several clear signs that it was NK who had dug them and not SK which some sources claim. Personally I can't say that I have any idea, but there are enough people skilled in propaganda to have been able to build this in a way that it "had" to be NK, while it was themselves who dug it to gain support. Purely speculations, but I am sure the story would've been told differently on the other side of the border.

Next stop was the viewpoint towards the NK propaganda-town where they'd set up speakers calling for people to cross the border just after the war went into seize-fire. There was a massive flagpole which they called the "ridiculous flagpole" in SK as it was immensly high.
From what we understood, NK had set up a flagpole, SK had then set up a higher flagpole before NK increased their to this side.
As with so many topics it seems to me that we only get the SK/USA-version of these conflicts, which we have no way of really verifying if are correct or adapted to fit their view better.

Last stop was a trainstation SK had built towards NK in a hope they could be able to connect to the mainland in other ways than just planes/boats, but where NK has never used their side even if it's already built. SK used this station now as a kind of tourist goal, but I am very glad we booked a full trip and didn't just go here ourselves. We wouldn't really been able to see anything else than this trainstation if we'd done that.



After the DMZ tour we stopped by the shirts store where we'd ordered several tailored shirts. These were ready on time, but the fit wasn't really what we'd hoped for. They were however thankfully too broad around the belly, and this is one of the easier things to fix. Hamilton Shirts were without any quarrel willing to sew them in and have them delivered to our hotel the next day. They did as promised and the shirts (well, the 4 out of 8 I've used so far) fits perfectly. I will return to get more shirts from them if I ever return to Seoul.

We spent the remainer of the day at the tech-area in the city looking through various stores with gaming consoles, photocameras/lenses and more or less all other goods in those categories. I bought a lens which I thought I got cheap compared to back home, but when I looked through prices back home it was more or less the same.

Saturday was spent at Samsung D'light store/showroom where they show some of their future developments.

The main highlight of the day, and actually the whole trip was when we went to the baseball game between Doosan Bears and LG Twins. Both being Seoul-teams charing the same ground, and this being a play-off game during the weekend I'd asked in the reception if we should get tickets earlier, but been told it would be no problem. The game was however sold out, but there's always sharks so we ended up paying double the facevalue, which still wasn't worse than €15/NOK 120 per ticket.
The general feeling of this game was in short just amazing. I've uploaded two short clips, but they really can't justify the atmosphere in the stadium. As written, this was THE highlight of the trip, and I would recommend anyone going to Seoul to go to a game, even if you don't know anything about baseball or even care much about sports in general.

Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon

Getting up early for the trip to Jeju and also returning quite late meant we took a few hours extra sleep thursday morning, we did however have plans ready and these also held a timeline. 

In Suwon, a city so close to Seoul that it is actually connected by subway there was the 51st Suwon culture festivale, and we'd pointed out something that would probably translate to "parade of the king" to look at. The bus was supposedly a lot faster than the subway, so we jumped on one and got there in about an hour. We did of course have no idea where to go from the bus/trainstation where we were dropped off, but a taxi did the trick and we were released into the wild at a policeblockade and told to walk past it and inwards.
After a few hundred meeters we saw the first performers getting ready for their show in the street, and a few hundred more we saw the first temple gate. 

The crowds were getting thicker and there were more and more performeres who had found their spot in the middle of the street. 

After a while we also found a huge crowd of a couple hundred who were warming up for their rope-pulling contest. I'm guessing/hoping it was east vs west of the city or something like that, but I really have no clue, neighter do I know more than the ones closest to the square won. Good for them.

We kept on moving farther in, hoping to find something and surely enough the parade started after a while, and it was a long one. We guessed that the Hwaseong fortress which we were really there to see should either be the start or end point of the parade, and knowing where the parade ended elimnated that direction. 

After fighting our way to connect to an open wifi we did however get a reply from google maps that it was a few streets away from us. 

Arriving there we realized that the whole area actually was the fortress and this was only one of the entrances, but also where you could easily enter the wall. 

The wall was massive, and at most gates there were large temple-like towers. 

We took the longer and steepest road, southbound, and ended up at a hill overlooking the whole fortress city of Hwaseong. As mentioned in my previous post, my GoPro had a defect memory card, but arriving very late the day prior I didn't know this yet and lost even more photos using this card. 

At the bottom of the hill they held the culinary part of the festival which was packed with people and to be honest, it was a bit chaotic. 

A quick look through the main buildings down there before we headed for the "chicken street", where we managed to find a chinese resturant that didn't sell chicken. 

After some gesturing we did however get something else, mostly fried rice and some brown/black onion sauce. It was okay, but not something I'll be looking to recreate at home. 

Still believing that the memory card was working, and with an amazing sunset pushing through, we found a nice spot overlooking the city with the hill and a temple in the background. This timelapse is probably the footage I will be most annoyed by missing from the entire trip, but ot much to do about it now anyway.

Managed to salvage a few pictures, but it's a bit depressing to think how great a timelapse of the sunset would have been

We stayed at this spot for about half an hour before it started to get a bit too cold, found a taxi and got back to the busstation for one of the most aggressive busrides I've experienced. The busdriver really didn't have his best day, and I am happy there were seatbelts.

Got home a bit late again, but for the next day we still had to get up early for the trip to DMZ.

there is a change I've improved the colors in the sky slightly in this picture...