please enjoy this is a great insght into beautiful south korea.enjoy one year ago i went on a strictly guided seven-day tour in north korea where they took away my passport and didn't allow me to explore anything on my own north korea was the weirdest country i had ever visited and throughout that trip i kept wondering what life was like in the south, becuase itsed to be the same country just over 60 years ago that is why is promised to visit south korea this year why at the end of that trip i promised myself to visit south korea this year so that i could compare my experiences in both those two countries, and that is exactly what i did during the second world war korea was under the control of japan when the war ended in
1945 the japanese forces had to leave korea and it was eventually divided into two spheres of influence the north was controlled by the soviet union and the south by the united states in 1950 a war broke out between the two koreas and it only ended in three years having claimed lives of millions of people on both sides then korea was once again split into two along the 38th parallel which is called the demilitarized zone when i was sitting on my plane to south korea it has already been over 60 years since the division and even though i knew the countries have grown apart during this time. i could never have imagined. how this they have actually my first glimpse of life in south korea was the internet international airport. it was one of the biggest airports
i had ever seen that was filled with thousands of travelers from all around the world after an hour-long ride on the metro. i finally reached my hotel which was a traditional korean house situated in the center of seoul currently half past 12:00 at night? so there's not much happening and that is why i'll go straight to that and wake up early tomorrow morning to explore as much as i can the next morning. i met up with my friend jumped on his motorbike and went for a ride around seoul it didn't take me long to understand why so was the 16th largest city in the world featured tons of high-rise buildings historic monuments construction sites and millions of cars eventually we made our way to this tiny amusement park that was situated just a few kilometers away from north korea
that is an amusement park that north korea a few meters away from the park they had the so-called freedom bridge that basically connects the two koreas and is almost never being used by train and yang the capital of north korea is only 208 kilometers away from where i am now this is the banks no one can cross because not create. they're on the other side so what can we see inside?
others there's another fence okay, so still a few kilometers until you reach north korea, but it's basically just there just one year ago i was there on the other side just a few kilometers away, and now i'm here i'm this close yet at the same time so far because it's impossible to get to the other side from here. you would have to fly to china and then the next morning it was a very fortunate to have the chance to meet john who was born and raised in north korea but escaped the country ten years ago and was now living in south korea when i asked him whether he was from pyongyang he started laughing and told me only the privileged people get to live in the capital and that it's very difficult for ordinary north koreans like him to reside there he told me he came from a little town in the north of the country he told me stories about how the people living in
that area smuggle foreign movies from china and when they watch them they think all of those things on the screen are fake the tall skyscrapers the modern cities the fancy cars and everything else meanwhile we arrived in this extremely beautiful islands called nami psalm that attracts over 1.5 million tourists every year first off we put some life vests on and hopped in a super-fun speed then we rented a tandem bicycle and went for ride around us gorgeous little it's apparently there are dozens of middle-aged people playing baseball with with a football turn ah ah she's writing that ha ha ha ah
she made it for his base ok after the game we walked back into the car and talked about how jang managed to escape from north korea told me she was led out of the country by some people smugglers who did it for a thirty thousand dollar fee that he had to be won. he reached south korea? escaping the country with extremely difficult jang had to spend three years working on a farm in china until he got all of his papers to get into south korea eventually we arrived to the garden of morning calm which was a traditional korean garden house and over?
5,000 different types of plants the park was filled with gorgeous water ponds traditional korean houses tons of visitors and a super fun bridge this bridge is variant. thank you later that evening junk. took me to a part where he said only the local people hang out being there, i couldn't stop thinking about the park i visited on my last day in north korea it also happened to be the birthday of their eternal president kim il sung you see our guides also told us that we were finally allowed to visit a part where only the local people hang out when we entered the park we were surprised to see hundreds of people dancing and seemingly having a good time that felt a little strange? to us because throughout the whole time in north korea people seemed afraid to even look at us and in this park everyone suddenly very outgoing and sociable
that's why most people on my guided tour were convinced this must have been staged and then it suddenly hit me that if jang had not escaped the country ten years ago i might have met him right there in that part where we'd be a few meters away from each other but couldn't even talk or look one another in the eye however here in the south. we're riding rico's together have an awesome lunch exploring gorgeous botanical gardens, and we're free to do whatever else. we wanted to do even something as crazy as this over the next few days i visited dozens of interesting places in seoul the first one was the largest palace in the city. that was originally built in 1395 and still looked as beautiful as ever i also visited this place called myeongdong
which is one of the most expensive shopping districts in the world that attracts millions of visitors every year? then i went to check out the famous hanok village which was over 600 years old it's a very very famous traditional, korean village where apparently the houses look exactly the same way they looked hundreds of years ago and there's so many of them the same day i made my way to the han river which was filled with thousands of people having picnics riding bicycles and marring the local street it is friday night, and there are literally hundreds of people in this park just having picnics and hanging out with their friends and the vibe is amazing. i don't know everyone's so happy and i don't know just having a great friday evening. i love it
as much as i enjoyed all of those places my favorite one was called lotta tower which was the fifth tallest building in the world so apparently this shopping mall has nine floors of luxury good. that's got the nine floors look i can see the bottom with it it's quite far eventually i found an elevator going to the top and jumped on so we're are that's the beds over son look at the building game. it's drawing the observation deck features six floors of spacious halls with incredible views of seoul and the surrounding area wow everyone's dating pictures
my last day in seoul. i met up with my korean friend kim. who are studying political science master's degree in new york. yes i rose at first stigmatise former university campus which was established in 1885 and was the oldest university in south korea being as at university brought back memories of my days in north korea where almost every day we would be taking to various schools or other learning centers and pretty much every time the students have to perform here however divide was very different students couldn't care less about a tourist visit because they were all busy studying and hanging out for their friends
later that evening kim took them to a few bars with his friends where everyone made sure i tried all the traditional food and drinks and dishes i got the next day i took advantage of the fact that i was free to travel all around the country and hopped on the same as bullet train going down to the south of south korea 285 blocks an hour welcome to the bamboo card. it's just me and millions of bamboo trees right now on all sides. oh man. this is so good then i continued my trip to a little mountain town situated next to the biggest national park in south korea there wasn't that much happening in that town, so i decided to check out the roof of my hotel. wow look at that through faked
being on that roof i couldn't stop thinking about otto warburg he was a university student from the united states who visited north korea just a few months for i visited the country myself ready all right ready to throw it at me soon what? he allegedly went to the staff only area of this hotel and tried to steal some propaganda poster that was hanging on the wall he was later discovered and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in north korea then he reportedly fell into a coma and was released in the united states over a year later where she died just a week after returning home? autumn was exactly the same age as me and he went to north korea. almost the same time as me a year later
i was entering staff on the area of my hotel in south korea and walking a little feeling completely safe whereas he was dead for trying to steal some random poster from a staff only area the hotel early next morning i set out to hike the second tallest mountain in south korea that stands at 1900 15 meters above sea level so far kilometers away from the top but is not that little way i wasn't very lucky with the weather that day, but i couldn't care less because i was surrounded by beautiful nature being free to do whatever i wanted to do oh
oh this is it right. yeah, the summit. it's a 1950 meters above sea level yeah, we're in the cloud and i can see quite a bit of nature. it's all surrounded by gorgeous rocks that's got good back, then i visited the opal wetlands which were the biggest wetlands in the country at that park i made friends with this guy called ben who explained to me that most of their visitors would either be young school kids or elderly people no because it was difficult to make them remember the names of various
plants and animals he created over 30 different dances to help them memorize wow that's so cool haha eventually he told me we had to go dance together apparently ben has traveled all around the world he finishes masters in new york he spent six months living in australia visited london paris and quite a few others. lee ah good guy i'm very good as does with him representing, okay dancing is a smoking habit, nz something every single day that i spent in south korea i couldn't stop thinking about how weird it was
that even though just a few dozen years ago the korean people lived in the same country under the same conditions these days they were leaving such dramatically different lifestyles. i kept asking myself why the people in the north needed special permits travel in their own country and going abroad was completely impossible? while people in the south could really go to any place, they wished both inside and outside their country why was the whole power in the north concentrated in one person's hands was considered to be a god? whereas in the south people had the power to elect their own leaders and dismiss them if they didn't do a good job and why were the people in the north not allowed to freely interact and share their thoughts with me well the people in the south will do whatever the heck they wanted seeing these differences firsthand broke my heart
why has life become so different for the korean people? in just a few generations you
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