Coconut Travels to Korea - Part 4 (The DMZ)

 One day we took a tour of the DMZ.  That stands for "demilitarized zone".  A long time ago the Japanese took over Korea.  They were not nice to the Korean people.  They made them speak Japanese and even took most of the food for themselves.  Some of the Korean people learned to grow sweet potatoes and hide them in special storage places in the mountains.  The storage place we saw was like a cool cave.

Finally there was a big war called World War II.  When the Japanese lost the war they had to leave Korea.  The United States and Russia took over.  They were supposed to help the Korean people rebuild their country, but they couldn't agree on how to do it.  After awhile they divided Korea into two parts and the two parts started fighting.  Lots of people died and at the end of the fighting Korea was still divided.  Now the line between the two parts is called the DMZ.

We saw a train that was all shot up in the war and big guns that were used in the fighting.  We also went down into a tunnel that the North Koreans dug to try to get to South Korea.  I don't know if they were trying to attack or just escape.  Lots of people want to escape North Korea because they don't have enough to eat and a lot of people have family on the other side that they are not allowed to visit.

We went to a place where you could see North Korea through telescopes.  There were no trees there.  They told us that people burned the trees because they didn't have any heat.  The visit to the DMZ was very sad.  There were lots of people there who were learning about the war just like we were.  I met a couple of Teddy Bears who had traveled around the world.

The Korean War was never officially over.  People on both sides of the DMA are still afraid the war will start again.  Later in our trip we went to the beach at Sokcho.  Sokcho is not too far from North Korea.  Every day the army patrolled the beach to make sure it was safe.  Sometimes they even flew helicopters over the beach.  One day we saw 14 tanks drive down the street in front of our hotel.

People used to go from Sokcho to a resort in North Korea where there is a very tall and very famous mountain called Gumgang San, but now North and South Korea are not too friendly with each other and they don't let people from the south go to the resort any more.

Grandma says that lots of families got separated from the war and never saw each other again.  I would be very sad if I could never see my family again.

Coconut Travels to Korea Part 3

 Korea is a very old country.  Korean people trace their history back around 5,000 years.  That's a really long time!

A long time ago they had kings who lived in palaces.  We visited one. It wasn't a castle like in our fairy tales.  Instead it was a lot of buildings with cool painting under the roofs and big stone lions outside to protect the people inside.  The kings must have had really big families because there were a lot of buildings in the palace and our guide said we were only seeing part of it.

The palace had guards with big swords.  Korea is a tiny country that has always had to defend itself from bigger, stronger countries that want to attack it.  All the cities had walls around them to protect them from attacks.  The palace had a wall around it too.

Korea has lots of mountains.  You can always see mountains wherever you go.  A long time ago the Koreans had a system of guarding the country from attack.  They had watch stations on the tops of mountains.  If everything was safe, the guards at the first station, close to the ocean or the boarder, would light a fire.  When the the guards on the next mountain saw the fire, they would light a fire, too.  Then the guards on the next mountain lit a fire, and on and on until the guards at the palace could see that everything was safe.  If the guards on one mountain did not light a fire, then the next station knew there was an attack and they sent out the army to protect the country.

Because Korea is so tiny, the military had to be very smart.  They had lots of inventors who made special weapons.  They made a boat with armor that looked like a turtle.  It was the first armored ship ever made.  It had big guns and other weapons that nobody else had.  They used that ship when Japan attacked Korea, and beat the Japanese.

 
            They had other peaceful inventions, too.  Korean people used to write with Chinese characters.  They were really hard to learn so not too many people knew how to read and write.  About 600 years ago, the Korean king decided that more people should be able to read so he had his inventors make an easy alphabet that everybody could learn.  Now everybody in Korea knows how to read.  The Koreans also invented the first printing press with movable type.  That meant that they could print lots of books really fast so that everyone could have lots of books to read.

Korea still has lots of inventors and other people working to make life better for everyone.  Even though they have had lots of wars and attacks, they still work hard to make their country stronger and better.  We learned a lot about what people are doing to make their country better.  I'll tell you more about some of them later.

Coconut Travels to Korea Part 2

 While we were in Seoul we stayed in a tall building with a lot of apartments in it.  There were lots and lots of tall buildings full of apartments in Seoul.  They looked like bee hives.  That's not the way people always lived in Korea.

The first day we walked around our neighborhood we found something different.  It was right in the middle of the city, but Grandma said it looked just like houses used to look when she was growing up.  She said that when she was little most houses were made out of mud bricks with straw roofs, just like this one.  The heat came up through the floor.  Nobody was in the house.  I think it was there so that people would remember how it was in the old days.  Grandma said that when she was a little girl she helped make houses in her village by stomping on the mud that was put in a wooden frame to make the bricks.  Then when the house was built and it was time to harvest the rice, everybody in the village helped to tie the rice straw together to make the roof.  Her story reminded me of the story about the three little pigs who built their houses out of sticks and straw.  I wonder if the Korean kids know that story.

Korean people eat a lot of rice.  We ate it three times a day.  Rice needs a lot of water to grow.  The wooden wheel in the picture helped move
the water from the stream or the ditch into the rice field.  Grandma said they made the wheel turn by walking on the wooden steps.  Another day, when we were traveling out of the city, I saw somebody actually walking on one of those wheels.  It really did pump water for the rice.

Next we saw some tall scary looking faces.  I was a little scared, but Grandpa held me and I felt better.  Grandma said the posts were made scary to keep the evil spirits away.  When I found out that the scary faces were there to protect me they weren't so scary any more. The oldest religion in Korea is Shamanism.  That means that people believe in  spirits.  They believe that spirits live in everything, even trees and rocks.  They need the scary faces to keep the bad spirits from hurting them.

Korea has a lot of religions.  One is Buddhism.  Buddhist believe that when you die you might come back as some other kind of animal.  They don't eat any kind of animal, only plants.  They don't kill any animals either, not even mosquitos.  I don't know if I could be a Buddhist or not.  It was Buddha's birthday that day.  There were lots of pretty colored lanterns hanging in front of Buddhist temples.

Lots of Koreans are Christians, too.  We met some Korean Christians who told us about their work, but that's a lot more stories.  I'll tell you more about that later.

Coconut Travels to Korea part 1

Hello,
My name is Coconut.  I belong to a little boy named Tyson.  One day Tyson played at his grandparents house while his mom worked.  Me and my friend, George, went with him but when it was time to go home, Tyson left without us.  His grandma saw us sitting on her couch and told Tyson's mom that she would take us to Korea with her since she and Tyson's grandpa were going there the next day.  Tyson picked George up, but he let me go to Korea.

Tyson's grandma grew up in Korea so she was very excited about the trip.  Grandpa had never been there before.  I think he might have been a little nervous.  I would have been nervous, but I didn't know anything about Korea, I just knew I was safe with Grandma and Grandpa.  I learned a lot on this trip.  I'll tell you all about it, but I have to tell a little bit at a time because there is so much to tell.

I didn't know where Korea was.  I thought you could drive there, like to Grandma and Grandpa's house, but Korea is much farther away.  We got on a plane and flew for a couple of hours and then got off and waited for another plane, and then another.  The last flight was really long.  Grandma and I watched 3 movies and tried to sleep some.  It took more than all day to go to Korea.

Korea is so far away that when the sun is out at home, the moon is already out in Korea.  They are on the other side of the world, 14 hours ahead of us.

When we arrived in Korea it was late in the day, but even though we had traveled more than a whole day, it was still the same day we left Minnesota.

We took a taxi from the airport and saw a lot of the city of Seoul.  We found out later that is was a lot more of the city than we were supposed to see and that the taxi ride cost way more than it was supposed to.  The money in Korea is called Won.  It takes a lot of Won to pay for things.  It takes over 1,000 Won to make one dollar.  That can be confusing when you have to learn all those big numbers in Korean.  Later we did a better job bargaining and learned to ride the subway instead of paying for taxis.  I'll tell you about the subway later.

When we finally got to where we were staying we were on the 13th floor where we had a beautiful view of Seoul.  We were very tired, but ready to start an amazing adventure.  I'll tell you more about it later.  Keep checking back for more about my trip to Korea.