Rice Field Blues (pronounced brues)

What ho, Korea? Part II

My apologies, dearest readers, for this belated 2nd installment of Rice Field Brues's What ho, Korea?

To summarize Part I of What ho, Korea? as succinctly as possible, my initial days in Seoul, although thrilling, were somewhat complicated by the affairs of a delinquent Swiss tourist with stalkerish tendencies, homophobic Swedish hostel mate, marijuana-dabbling Kansas-born hostel clerk named Clay and sprightly Korean restaurant hostess with insuppressible penchant for fried chicken. With these important ideas established, let's onward, friends, to What ho, Korea? Part II...

Now where was I? Ah, yes, Saturday, DMZ day...

The alarms sounded at 5:45 A.M. Although I felt convinced they were air sirens alerting us of yet another Japanese invasion, Marina reminded me we had set her travel clock to go off a bit earlier this morning so we could catch our 7 AM bus to the Demilitarized Zone.

After setting us several minutes behind schedule so I could check the news headlines and reassure myself that, indeed, Marina's alarm clock wasn't the masked signal of a separate but simultaneous Japanese armed invasion, we purchased our $0.90 subway tickets to catch our $4 2bus at the USO base.

My, what a merry morning! I remember pleasuring in the crisp dawn hour's dew as it massaged my camera lens. Actually, in retrospect, it was raining, which no doubt diminished my enjoyment of the landscape. In fact, I remember it also being rather cold. It was indeed a treacherously inclement morning.

We walked on and on for a couple of blocks. Yet, eventually we discovered that the USO Base from which our bus was supposed to depart – which boasted its location only one block away from the metro station – in fact, was nowhere to be found.

"Sillye hamnida!" (It means "excuse me" and was one of the four Korean expressions I had learned on the plane.)

I approached a friendly gang of Korean police officers.

"We seem to be lost."

Several officers ignored us; a couple others flashed us a friendly peace sign and invited us to pose with them in a picture.

"Sorry, friends, not now."

We moved on and confronted the next batch of unsuspecting, non-English speaking Korean police officers.

"Sillye Hamnida. Camp Kim?! USO Base?! Camp Kim?! DMZ Tour!!"

Although the officers were friendly and tried to be helpful, it just so happened that none among them spoke English either.

Eventually, we stumbled upon someone who pretended to speak English.

"Camp Kim?! USO Base?!"

I can only imagine how he perceived the spectacle of two white Western females parading about the streets of Seoul at dawn on a Saturday morning in the pouring rain, demanding the precise locations of the nearest US Military Base.

"United States Base? Oh no, that is very far from here. Very, very far. Very far indeed. So far, you'd have to take a taxi. Yes, take a taxi very far."

This is the point at which the plot thickened.

Marina and I crossed the street – of course, waiting first at least 12 minutes for the traffic light to change – to wallow in a swampy puddle ridden corner-cum-cabstand, whilst my dreams scattered into dust. Dreams of North Korea: of barely mediated gazings through binoculars into the foggy outlines of what a military officer would tell us is North Korean communist soil; of hearing stories about the Dear Leader; of posing with ROK army officers who wear those cool sunglasses; even of purchasing exciting military ID apparel that I could one day sew onto the sleeve of my favorite jacket (presuming I ever learn how to sew).

The point is, after all the buildup about going to South Korea and visiting the DMZ, all of the stories I'd from people (at least 2) that the DMZ was the highlight of their trip, my heart, usually a feisty organ, began to sink.

And just when all hope was dashed, a taxi pulled up and splashed us with dirty rain water – just the ilk of sludge one's dreams are made of. And through the puddly trenches of Seoul's mean city streets, we advanced into the taxi.

"The DMZ! Camp Kim! USO Base! Our tour! We are late! Right away!"

The taxi driver evicted us out of hopeless confusion.

Indeed, everything after that point remains a bit hazy. Yet, among many muddles of frantic details, I vaguely recall running back and forth across the main street several times, communicating with some Russian tourists who also did not really speak English, posing in several more photos with streetside Korean police officers and, finally, encountering someone who knew of the exact whereabouts of the USO Base who was able to shepherd our taxi exactly 2.5 blocks eastward to its location.

Bursting out of our cab liked the Allied Forces at Normandy, we managed to catch our tour bus no more than several seconds before it pulled away.

The DMZ.

Now, did the DMZ live up to all of its hype? In a sense, how could it?

'Twas a foggy day. Little of the North Korean landscape and few of its figures were remotely visible even through high-powered coin operated binoculars at the height of the Observation Tower. And, much to my disappointment, the gift shops sported only South Korean military apparel. No DPRK patches for me!

Further, the agenda, which had been set in stone, felt about as spontaneous as the stylistic range of an Ayn Rand novel. In other words, a touch on the tedious side.

Of course, like all misadventures, it had its highlights...

1) Four seconds into the tour, just as we were posing for photos with armed ROK officers on the official North Korean side of the Conference Room, my camera ran out of batteries. (hmm, perhaps in retrospect it wasn't such a great idea to take all those pigeon and inanimate object travel photos.)

2) Posing with the ROK officer for my friend's camera with our shoulders at least 3 inches apart lest, as our US Army officer tour guide warned, we invade his personal space and thus provoke him to "get physical."

3) Our tour guide's (Sgt. Naumenkov) subsequent quip that he'd be happy to provide an explanation for anyone who is unclear about the implications of "get physical." (heh, army wit.)

4) Radioactive poisonous army lunch in the mess hall during which I ever so discreetly romped about the room photographing groups of US soldiers while they attempted to enjoy their lunch.

5) Propaganda film about the history of the Korean conflict during which a small North Korean girl sporting a bright red peacoat sheds tears whilst standing in some type of communist rice paddy. (I suspect 'twas an early work of Spielberg.)

6) Our vital march through the 3rd Tunnel – the largest of the treacherous tunnels the North Korean Army furtively constructed during the '70s – during which the man in front of me had to duck down the whole time because he was too tall and his head kept bumping against the ceiling.

7) In said tunnel, bumping my own head against the ceiling several times. As our tour guide pointed out, height-related tunnel awkwardness issues were among the many disadvantages of growing up in a society that gives its citizens food.

8) I did manage to see a couple North Korean folk through the high-powered binoculars. Albeit, they looked like ants. Yet, like communist ants. 500 won well spent!

9) Upon my innocent inquiry as to how Sgt. Naumenkov had managed to get himself stationed as DMZ tour guide, instead of shooting down Sunni insurgents in Baghdad – to which he responded, "bad luck and good looks" – he revealed to us details about his year in Iraq as a US soldier. (R.I.P. his best friend whom, he said with remarkable detachment, had been shot down two days previous by a Chechnyan sniper in Kurdistan.) (Um, also R.I.P. the hundreds of multiple-tour US deploys who are continuing to die during our Brave Leader's latest troop surge.)

10) The bus ride back when some fellow tourists among us started reveling in making racist generalizations against the French – e.g. "they are weak," "hah! They would be so easy to defeat militarily!" "Hooray for the US!" "hah!" "ahahahahah!" "The French are worse than us!" and so on.

11) Returning to Seoul and then going to Starbucks.

Thus, to relieve ourselves of the harrowing traumas of demilitarized, rigorously scheduled psychological warfare – a.k.a. guided tourism – we put our weary feet to rest against the plush upholstery of a Seoul Starbucks.

Although our final day's adventures in Korea would also yield many more exciting discoveries, including multiple daily rediscoveries about how delicious kimchi is, really, nothing compared to that first night at the hostel when Clay couldn't find our room keys and then some Korean woman gave us fried chicken.

I shall remember Korea fondly.