I think our battery died and we didn't have a spare so I'll have to fit in everything else we did even though it's boring and you don't care. But this is my page so sucks for you.

So Jieun's mom was afraid we'd be bored so she sent us on this tour, kind of weird, it's a tour guide, a driver, and just us two. The whole point is for us to have an English speaking guide but she ends up being not so great at English. I dunno, just kind of odd, and a waste of money, if you ask me.

Anyway, one interesting thing we did was go to this North Korean observatory right on the border. Utterly fascinating. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day so we couldn't actually see into North Korea but they had all these exhibits and stuff, what we're standing in front of is this timeline that kind of shows the high and low points in terms of North/South relations.

North Korea just utterly pisses me off. It would be funny if it wasn't so depressing. Like, the towns on the border get a lot of propaganda funding since they're so heavily observed by the South. But it's ridiculous. Like, this border city had a radio station or something or other that broadcast propaganda about how strong and self-dependent North Korea is. They eventually had to shut it down due to lack of electricity. They also initiated a big apartment building construction project to show the strength of the economy. The project was abandoned midway, most of the buildings lie unfinished and deserted. It's thought most of the people live in mud huts. This is the 21st century. I dunno, it would be comical if it weren't so sad.

We also found out, so like South Korean males have to serve in the Army roughly 2 years, something like that. North Koreans have to serve something like 13 years, it's insane. And that's down from what it used to be.

As a side note, the number of restaurants serving boshingtang, dog stew, increases heavily the closer you get to the border.

The rest of the tour was fairly boring, we saw a few sites, heard a few stories that were mildly interesting through the broken English, did a little shopping. The most absurd site was the Blue House, Korea's version of the White House. Due to security, you can't get really close, so we took a picture where just a single corner of the actual residence is visible. Then we left. An absurd tour. Oh yeah, the tour guide was anti-Bush. Everyone in Korea is.

We also met with Jieun's Stanford friend at their place, the biggest place I've seen in Korea. Incredible view just by the river, they have 3 plasma TVs, 2 pianos, one grand, tons of rooms, just an incredible nice place, you don't see places like that in Korea. We also had Pizza Hut with a ring of chestnut paste all around the outside which was incredibly delicious. And that was pretty much the trip. It was more interesting than my explanation.