this is one of the main hotels tourists to north korea are taken to. its located on an island so you're allowed to leave the hotel and wander around, just not cross the moat! plenty of stuff to do in the hotel, shops, bowling alley, casino, bars and karaoke club. you can email and phone from the communications centre but its 8 euros per minute - i went 2 seconds over and was charged 16 euros!

Kijong-dong is a village in Panmungun, North Korea.  It has been called Peace Village on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone.  In the south, it is known as Propaganda Village.  There is a guidebook published in the north that claims the village has the Panmun Cooperative Farm which embraces over 200 households.  There is a kindergarten, day care, senior middle school, and a hospital.  The truth is most people believe the village was built within the DMZ purely for the purposes of propaganda.  There are no residents, except for soldiers.  Some lights do come on at night but they are always the same buildings, at the same time.  From a distance, it looks like the buildings have windows but there is not even glass in the buildings. 

Ironically, the world's tallest flag tower is in Kijong-dong at 160m tall. It is in the Guinness World Book of Records as well.  It was not originally the tallest - the tallest was on the south side in Daeseong-dong.  When Daeseong-dong flag pole was extended, the north responded by extending theirs taller, sometimes touted as the "flagpole war".  We saw the flagpole and tried to get a couple photos but with the haze, it wasn't visible.

You can see farmers in North Korea, near "Propaganda Village" which also blares loudspeakers complete with music and communist commentary throughout the night.  As night sets in, the farmers are removed and the soldiers aka residents come to tend to the custodial village. 

It was so impressive to see the areas and how the North Korean cities situated near the border actually operate.  Pictures are not allowed in these areas so the only photos posted here are actually taken at the Dora Observatory.  Anything you do is under such extreme scrunity and the soldiers are there to protect visitors and South Korea from another invasion.  You are advised against making eye contact and you certainly don't wave, as North Korean soldiers may take pictures of you and use it in their own communist propaganda publications.  The North Korean soldiers taunt and tease those who visit the borders, brain washed by the communist ramblings repeated daily. 

The hills in this area have machine gun emplacements.  Sandbags line the median which are the same.  The Imjin River is filed with nets and spikes and other obstacles, preventing North Korean soldiers and/or vessels from traveling south. 

Once you try to reach the Civilian Passage Zone - soldiers board the bus, check passports, and verify the bus is safe to continue travel.  No South Korean citizens are allowed past this point headed into Panmunjom.  Passing this point brings some interesting scenery including Camp Bonifas where we saw soldiers training. Camp Bonifas is a collection of buildings surrounded by razor wire and land mines and armed soldiers.  The video we watched at the site of the 3rd tunnel showed the 1976 deaths of two US soldiers (inc Major Bonifas) who were hacked to death by ax-wielding Northern Korean soldiers as the Americans tried to trim a tree in the DMZ.  The camp has a one hole golf course - surrounded on three sides by mine fields.  Apparently Sports Illustrated magazine visited a few years ago, dubbing it the most dangerous hole in golf, especially because one errant shot did explode a mine once.     

There were bus passes under concrete overpasses that appeared to have no purpose - they are actually tank traps which can be collapsed with dynamite to prevent the enemy tanks from continuing south. 

South Korea & Japan Winter Trip 2007 - Day 3

15/12 Woninjae, Mingdong, Namsan Park, N Seoul Tower, Sinchon

Since Michelle and me love shopping very much and we found that the skin care in Seoul was extremely cheap, we went to Mingdong for our second round of shopping today!!

Burger King at Seoul, of course we didn't eat it!

Etude is one of my favorite Korean skin care brand, I love the packages of their product and they always use pink as a main theme in their shop!!!  So girly!!!   It's bad that there was only a few types of cosmetic products sold in Hong Kong.

We wanted to treasure more time to shop, so we skipped our breakfast but we did not have a sense of hunger until the late afternoon!! haha...Perhaps, the hyper shopping mood fed us quite well!!!  We went to a Korean restaurant in Mingdong that was cheap but with very high quality on food and services.  The lady served us could identify us from Hong Kong, it's really impressive because she was the first one who was able to identify our nationality.  Also, she could speak English though the accent was strange, we could understand and able to make our order!  I guessed we were very hurried to eat so that we forgot to take any picture of our nice lunch!!

We spent most of our money in Mingdong, actually we only brought $1700 to Seoul and we would fly back from Seoul later, so we had to save some money for latter use.  It's really hard to control ourselves from shopping!!!

Anyway, we had decided to go to Namshan Park and the N Seoul Tower by evening, so we had to control ourselves!! 

A random street near Mingdong leading to Namshan Park

A nice coffee, I love the buildings in this area, they look so comfortable!! 

First time to see some snow on street!!! My handbag and shopping bag were full of skin care  at that moment!!

Normally, I won't do much shopping in my trip as I hate carrying so many stuff for the whole trip!!  If you know me, you probably know that I always bring a big backpack for traveling, so I don't have much space to keep those stuff!!!  Also, I'm a budget traveler, so I don't really have money to shop.  Since we would fly back from Seoul again and we would stay at Coery's home again when we came back!!  Corey is a really nice guy, he let us put all of our souvenir bought in Seoul in his home.  As a result, we could buy as much as possible because we didn't need to carry it!!

The ropeway station to the Namshan Park!

Rain...very popular artist both at Hong Kong and Korea, but I didn't see his poster everywhere as I expected.  In fact, it was my first time to see his poster at Seoul.

We are now at the Namsan~~

We thought we could hike to the mountain, but We were afraid we would be trapped at the middle of the mountain after the sunset...so we decided to take the ropeway.

It was a good decision indeed.  We saved a lot of time and when we reached to the top, the sun started going down, so we could see the city in sunset~

Actually we still needed to walk a bit after taking off from the ropeway, and it's freezing, I was really cold!!

Beautiful sunset~~

Seoul city under sunset~

It's the first time for us to see so much snow in Seoul, Michelle & me were so excited for it.

The N Seoul Tower behind.

Nice view, isn't it?

Alban told me this stuff was used to giving out message by fire in old time that was exactly same as the "fire stage" (峰火台) in Great Wall!!

Some random cute stuff on the top of the mountain!

This is a kids zone...

It's really cold outside, so we had  to come to the indoor areas quite a lot.....That's why we stayed in the kids area.

We didn't go up to the Seou Tower as we're already on the top of the mountain, I guessed the view from the tower would be very similar from the view that I had seeing here.  Another reason was we didn't have enough money!!

This area is so romantic, many couples hoisted they locks on the cage.

It's even nicer in the sunset that makes everything so romantic~~

I wish I could come up here with my beloved in some day and hoist up our locks..

I wish all couples hoisted their locks here will be together happily forever....

Great sentence...Love is Magic......It's quite strange that lock was hoisted alone instead of in pair.  Perhaps, it had a special story behind, I don't know, but still I think if you believe in love, your magic will come in one day...

It's really freezing!!

The power of sun, it's like that God is watching at us~~

Beautiful Seoul view, we're living over the river, we had to cross that bridge everyday to the main Seoul city, it's really far away!

It's very cold on the top of the mountain, we wished we could stay a bit longer to see the night view of the Seoul, but we couldn't bear for that cold!!!!!  Also, we got an early flight to Sapporo in next morning, we wanted to get back Corey's home earlier tonight.  As a result, we left the mountain at late evening without seeing the night view of the Seoul.

It's also the last night for Alban in Seoul as well, he would fly back to France from Japan directly.  So we had dinner with him and his friends.  We went to a traditional Korean restaurant at Sinchon.

It's Paul on the right hand side, he was the roommate of Alban when he was studying in PolyU!!!!!  Yes, so Paul is our old friend, we went to have dinner together when we were living in the hall.  I missed the old days so much!!!!  Paul is a Korean, so he ordered us some delicious food!!!  It's kind of funny to see Paul help us to order food as Michelle & me were always helping Paul & Alban to order food in Hong Kong!!!  It's the first time Paul helped us!!!!  I'm waiting Alban to help us to order a French dinner very soon!! 

We took photo after our dinner!!! We have, Thomas, Alban, Paul, Michelle and me.  Thomas was the roommate in Seoul, they were from same university but they didn't know each other until they met in Seoul!!   Alban was so lucky to have 2 roommates with him on his last day in Seoul.

After the dinner, we wanted to try some snacks, but we're already so full!!!  We met the girls from Ewha Women University we met last night again, they were going to farewell Alban.  Since we wanted to pack our stuff for our early flight tomorrow, so we didn't join them and go back to Corey's home directly.

This shop is in one of our interchange metro station, we identified these 2 dummies as a landmark for going back Corey's home.

There are many interesting things that I could say about Pyongyang, but I am only going to write a short review. My trip to Pyongyang was the most life changing experience of my life. Seeing the Juche Tower, Kim Il Sung Square, the Mass Games at the Mayday Stadium (largest seated stadium in the world), and just simply walking in the parks are well worth everything. Pyongyang, like Hiroshima, have tragic histories indeed, and I cannot blame them for hating American imperialists, but they are very respectful of Americans that are against war and violence. The most important thing about traveling to Pyongyang is respect. When you desire to travel to a country that is commonly misunderstood, you have to try to experience it in a different mindset, and you have to see the country for beauty that it does indeed possess. This city is definately not for the ignorant people of the world, or the people that have no respect for cultural differences or different ideologies. A city like this should only be visited by those willing to have a heart and mind open enough to fully understand what Pyongyang is really about, and remember that, although it has its problems, it is what the DPRK is trying to become that is the embodiment of Pyongyang.

The first day was limited to the hot springs, which I'm not crazy abouot running around w/ a bunch of naked people, so I passed on that. The second day I chose the Manmulsang course and Circus performance (no pics), and the last day I visited Samilpo Lake (no pics). North Korean reps. were spread througout the trails. Soldiers were spread throughout the camp grounds and trails. And there were North Korean citizens that would pass through at guarded crosses.

The Joint Security Area is the only area along the DMZ that gives you the oportunity to cross the border from S. Korea to N. Korea. It was an experience I will never forget. If you get a chance to do the "DMZ tour", jump on it. However, be aware of propaganda. Make no mistake, the two countries have been on the brink of war since the Korea war ended. Tensions are high.