This past weekend I visited the DMZ-- that is, the demilitarized zone, the two kilometers on either side of the border between North and South Korea. The videos they showed and the signs giving information were talking about how relations were getting better and better between North and South Korea... obviously they were all made before the past few months!!
I wasn't allowed to take pictures of any of the cool stuff, I guess because they're afraid of spies or something? Who knows. But I did get to see the border itself; you could see the South Korean flag flying on one side, and the North Korean flag on the other. (To tell exactly which flags they were you'd have to view it through those coin-operated binoculars, but I could definitely see each of the flagpoles with my naked eye.) Also, North Korea built these villages with very affluent-looking houses right on their side of the border. The idea is to make it seem like conditions in North Korea are good, but they're *very* obviously fake. We also toured these tunnels that the North Koreans dug between North and South Korea, in an attempt to invade Seoul directly. The North Koreans claim that they were mining coal, and even painted (yes, *painted*) the ceiling and walls of the tunnels black. However, it is clearly rock painted black, and not coal, so we are pretty confident it was actually an intended invasion tool.
I probably shouldn't do much more traveling this month, though, as the trip to Seoul and the DMZ pretty much wiped me out. I need to start saving some money!
Last night I ate dinner and watched baseball with Brett and the Korean teachers; it was very fun. The game was Korea versus Japan, and I imagine it must be quite a grudge match-- the Koreans *hate* the Japanese (considering the Japanese occupied them for decades in the early 20th century, can you really blame them?). I explained the rules of baseball to Brett-- did you know there's this big worldwide baseball tournament going on right now, World Cup-style? Because I sure didn't, although apparently America's participating too.
I tried to explain to Koreans how patriotic we get about baseball-- you know, the whole "As American as baseball and apple pie" thing. It was hard to express using very simple language; the closest I got was to say it was like kimchee for Koreans. This isn't quite true, but the Koreans were for some reason *very* impressed with this explanation. Mr. Gim was also impressed (or something) with my cheering for the game. He called me a "passionable" woman. (Okay.)
It was actually a rather boring game-- there was only one run the whole game, and it came right at the beginning. But KOREA WON!!! YAAY!!
So, Koreans and Americans (or people from any English-speaking country as far as I know) answer negative questions differently. Specifically, Koreans answer them logically, while we answer them illogically. So if you say "Don't you want to go to the movies?" and you did, then you would say "Yes," right? But Koreans say "No." Technically Koreans are right-- No, I don't not want to go to the movies. But it makes for a lot of misunderstandings-- if you think how often we ask negative questions, there is a lot of the time that a person is actually answering exactly the opposite of what it sounds like. Last night, this general source of confusion led to the other teachers believing that I have a secret husband. ("You are not married?" "No." *look of shock* "WHAT?!") I fear this may become a running joke.
There's another cultural difference, and this one I just discovered last night: Koreans make a habit of feeding their friends (particularly after they've taken a big gulp of alcohol). Like, Mr. Gim picked up a strawberry, and after I took a sip of beer, fed it to me. Luckily I'd been prepared for this a few minutes earlier when Brett fed Mrs. Song a strawberry. This is a completely friendly thing to them, with no implication of romantic interest or the like.
It's strange that something so intimate in one culture is so commonplace in another, isn't it?
