Traveling with the Kiddos

This weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to travel overnight with a few of my students. The school district I teach in organized a program where foreign teachers travel with students from all of the elementary and middle schools to all different parts of South Korea. This weekend 10 foreign teachers, 4 from Fulbright and 6 from the EPIK Program, and 25 students went to Paju, which is North of Seoul and very close to the DMZ. The students come from schools all over Hwacheon and the surrounding villages. Fortunately, two of my fifth grade students and two of my sixth grade students attended the trip. I would have been pretty bummed if I didn't have the chance to bond with students I actually taught.

We left Hwacheon early Saturday morning and drove to Paju. Paju is a really interesting city because it is probably the biggest city that is located so close to the DMZ. Therefore, it has many military bases nearby and many military families live there. Yet, the city is also a haven for artists. The city has two sub-sections called Paju Book City and Hey-Ri. Paju Book City is where I visited during the DMZ Documentary Film Festival and is home to numerous book shops and publishing companies. Hey Ri is also called the Art Valley and is home to numerous museums, galleries, studios, work rooms, coffee shops and several residences. There are already over 40 museums in a very small space. Hey-Ri has many building regulations too. The buildings are constructed to blend in with their natural surroundings so none of them are over 3 stories tall and they all have unpainted exteriors. While in Paju we went a World Instruments Museum, a recent Korean history museum, a currency museum, a trick- eye museum and a puzzle museum. The puzzle museum had to take the cake for the most Korean museum because it was actually just a museum of framed, completed puzzles. Luckily, there was a puzzle room where you could work on puzzles and I really, really enjoyed puzzling with my students. The Korean History Museum was the most engaging of all of the museums. The entire museum was constructed to look like South Korea in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. You were able to walk through the various villages to learn what life was like in Korea during that time. It was really neat and forced me to really comprehend how unbelievably fast Korea modernized. My students favorite museum was obviously the trick-eye museum, which was also particularly Korean. The kids loved taking funny photos and just liked being able to touch everything.

Korea in the 1960s

Na Yeon at a Korean School from the 1970s

The Trick Eye Museum

Besides checking out the museums in Paju, we also went to one of the many craft studios that are intended for visitors to create art. We went to a chalk are studio and had the opportunity to make door signs for our rooms. It was a really fun project, although I learned that Chalk Art is suprisingly tricky. We also rented out a room in a coffee house and watched the movie Flipped.

Na Yeon and I show off our signs

Today, we woke up bright and early and drove from our love motel in Paju to the DMZ, directly north of Paju. It was really interesting to see a different part of the De-Militarized Zone between North and South Korea. We walked around a little and were able to see Peace Bridge, a fully functional (albeit not used) bridge between North and South Korea. We also saw an old train car that had bullet holes all over it from the Korean war. There still is a train line that runs from South Korea all the way to Europe but because of North Korea, it is no longer in use. Another neat display was rocks from countries all over the world. The rocks all came from countries who had unification troubles or civil wars, similar to Korea. 

The DMZ in Paju

Peace Ribbons

A train from the Korean War

The Peace Bridge

That's North Korea on the other side of the river!

After walking around the South Korean side of the DMZ we boarded our bus and actually entered the 2 kilometer wide De-Militarized Zone. To enter this area you need to show your passport and a Korean soldier must inspect the bus. While in the actual DMZ we visited Dorean Station and the Third Tunnel, both of which I visited in August. It was neat to see the places again though. No one else (Koreans and foreigners included) had been to any of these areas and I really enjoyed listening to the varied reactions.   I'm still grappling with the complexity of the North Korean issue myself. Ultimately, reunification would be wonderful but the extreme differences between the countries make reunification extremely hard, particularly economically. South Korea's economy would suffer tremendously, even if other countries helped shoulder the cost of reunification. This seems extremely unfair to South Korea, who was not responsible for it's divisions and yet, how responsible is any country for the actions of its past leaders. There is also the issue of North Koreans adjusting to South Korean culture and society. This is one of the biggest challenges for defectors and is one of the primary reasons North Korean Defectors leave South Korea. Many of the Fulbright Junior Researchers are studying North Korea- South Korea relations and North Korean Defectors so hopefully I can gain more insight into these issues during the rest of my year.