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Hi Everyone

I feel like I am falling out of the habit of communicating with all of you. I don’t write to anyone as regularly anymore, and I don’t hear much from anyone either. I don’t want to lose contact with my mates, so this email / post is me reaching out to all of you.

It’s not laziness that has kept me from contacting you, I have been extremely busy. Keeping up with classes, and trying to keep a constant flow of creative ideas going is both time consuming and tiring. At the end of the day I am buggered. At least my effort at school has really been paying off. I feel that my students respect me, and that they enjoy my classes. The students’ participation in my classes has been through the roof of late. Sure I have one or two dud groups of students, who doesn’t, but even some of these students have warmed slightly to my classes.

My poetry competition was a huge success, so much so that I have not been able to keep up with the submissions. So my teaching life is going well, but I must admit I don’t have as much energy as I did several weeks ago. Even with my recent trip to the DMZ I feel worn out. I need a break, but I only have the odd day off through until February. Don’t feel sorry for me though. Feel sorry for my students, they are working doubly hard. Their attention hasn’t begun to slip in class yet, but I think this largely thanks a lucky streak I have had with my lesson planning. All I need is one bum lesson and I am going to have heads on desks.

Jess and I visited the DMZ last weekend. I’m haven’t fully got my head around the experience yet - it was bizarre. Within half an hour of leaving Seoul one begins to see barb wire along the Han river, which runs through Seoul, and soon after that guard posts begin appearing at regular intervals. The closer one gets to the DMZ the more regular the guard posts become. Seeing the guard posts begin so soon after Seoul really brought home how close it is to the border, and the substantial threat that it is under. There can be little doubt that North Korea has selected numerous targets in and around Seoul, and some of the outlying areas are probably within reach of North Koreas artillery. Taking such measures no doubt serves as a valuable dissuasive measure against any rash military action on the part of South Korea.

Once one reaches the DMZ a bored soldier enters the tour bus and checks everyone’s IDs. Touring the DMZ is big business and the soldiers that man the entry points have to check several hundred IDs a day.

The DMZ is a bizarre mixture of tourist attractions, military installations, monuments, viewing points, and ‘education centers’. The weather was miserable on the day that we visited, so I didn’t take any pictures, but I doubt there would have been much worth photographing anyway. On this occasion I left the picture taking to some of the less serious members in our group who took every opportunity to have their pictures taken next to imposing, and unflinching, border guards; as well as next to the really kitch theme park style statues of the same soldiers at other points. After photographing themselves next to the kitch statues the same people would rush to be photographed next to the more appropriately serious statues. Once again they would grin and pose, or lean, all over the statues flashing grins and peace signs with little going on behind their eyes.

With hindsight the DMZ was not worth seeing. I didn’t gain much from the experience. It wasn’t informative, and the whole experience was geared more towards voyeurism than meaningful reflection.

When feeling cynical I can’t help but feel that South Korea has been so corrupted by its unabashed pursuit of wealth that it has turned a sad reminder of the Korean war and continued division of thousands of families, into just another money making racket.

Once back in Seoul among the hoardes of fashion clad people, massive billboards, and screaming advertising Jess and I got chatting about the likelihood of the two countries uniting again one day. The sad thing is that even though most south Koreans view South and North Korea as one divided country, I doubt very many would be prepared to substantially fund the extend the high standard of public services to the north Korean public. South Koreas cities simply don’t seem to be producing socially minded individuals, and with each successive generation the horrors of the Korean War and continued tension may well attract less interest.

Kim Jung Il and the north Korean military are an obvious major stumbling block to reunification, but beneath the surface the huge development gap between the countries may well push back the possibility of reunification back by decades after the final demise of the Kim regime.

I wonder how many South Koreans wonder about the development gap, and the problems it poses to reunification. Everyone sees Kim and his acolytes as stymieing meaningful discussion, but what if all Kim Jung Il et al disappeared overnight? After the euphoria resided would south Koreans be prepared to pick up the massive bill that would surely be entailed in reunifying the country?

We spent Saturday evening with Clint in Dongducheon. Dongducheon is north of Seoul and home to the US military base Camp Casey. As a result it is not uncommon to see groups of heavily built western men. A number of clubs catering to the soldiers have sprung up in a suburb near to Clint. The clubs, all with dodgy names and exteriors - and most likely still dodgier interiors, didn’t interest us; but we took the opportunity to visit Chong’s American Breakfast House on Sunday. Chong’s American Breakfast House is staffed by Phillipinos, and we really got a multicultural experience with our large American style $12 breakfasts that we ate while sitting among hulking, tattooed and crew cut men.

The breakfast wrapped up our weekend up north. Five minutes after it ended Jess and I sat down in a train station to begin the wait for the train that would take us into Seoul. There we caught the comfortable KTX express train which we swapped in Gimcheon for a forty minute ride on the substantially less comfortable train to Sangju.

Last night Jess and I attended a small farewell for one of the foreigners who has come to the end of her contract. Everyone in our small community of just less than twenty people was invited, but only five, excluding Shirley who is the person that is about to leave, attended. I felt a little sorry for Shirley. She wasn’t great friends with anyone and a number of faces in our community have changed recently, but I had expected more people to attend. The five people that attended were all South African. Was it simply a coincidence that the five of us were all South African? Do South Africans place greater value on a sense of community, are we less individualistic? Who knows, perhaps there is something to gleaned from last night; but then again five people is simply to small a number to extrapolate from with any confidence.