the lugubrious expat

what do you want to do? go to north korea?
haha. yeah. but first some breakfast. one needs a full stomach to take on kim jong il. haha.

north korea.
what!? where!?
there.
where?
all that.
all the other side of the river?
yes, babo.
holy shit! fucking cool! wow. thank you thank you thank you!!

{click for more info}

we drove along the splattered highway in her mum's car. a white jeep with a terrible turning circle. all on our left four layers. road, barbed wire, water, north korea. it was hard for me to get over, or perhaps i just didn't want to. as marty said to me before i left, "it's a sweet deal, and you are right next door to a crazy mother fucker.", or something to that effect.

we drove to one of the bridges, right to the gate, and stopped in front of some large yellow spiky things. it was hard to tell if this was it. it was all a little underwhelming. hasisi thought we could go further. there was after all, a large number of ordinary looking vehicles going in and more importantly, coming out. but i was hesitant. they would check ID and i didn't have mine on me. so we did a u-turn (which is, incidentally, the same word in korean and thus, easy points, assa) and made our way back in the increasing rain.

on the way we passed a giant ship shaped restaurant in the middle of nowhere and i thought of chris and roadside dinosaurs. i also thought of pirates of the carribean. we stopped in to a sort art township called heyri. it was a lovely yet strange place. innovatively designed galleries and artists residences dotted amongst piles of junk and construction sites. was this post-modernism or plain laziness? regardless it was a charming space and not a speck of neon! we ate club sandwiches and drank espresso and scribbled dedications into cafe tables like teenagers.

as an aside, i have been asking a few koreans about how they felt about the north's recent missile launches into the sea of japan. most seem unconcerned and a number of reasons seem to underpin this. one point of view is, i guess, common to a lot of westernised nations and that is a dominant concern with local or personal issues and not wanting to feel down or scared about things that dont really impact their lives on a day to day basis. another is that south koreans have seen actions like this before from the north and this is one is seen as no different with the exception of drawing more attention from the international community. if nothing happened afterwards before, nothing is going to happen afterwards now. a third is more complex and i will endeavour to find out more. many koreans feel some sense of unity between south and north, perhaps for past and future, and believe north korea would not harm the south and thus, do not feel threatened.