Odusan Tongil Unification Observatory

Wow, this is another tardy post as we went to the observatory 2 weekends ago with Father. But ever since we've started teaching, time has become much more of a precious commodity and there hasn't been as much time to blog.

Anyway, two weekends ago we took a 2 hour trip north of Seoul to the Odusan Tongul Unification Observatory. This is located on a mountain by a river, which is the narrowest part of the DMZ. It doesn't have the dramatic effect of the 38th parallel line to see, but you can see North Korea from the Observatory, which is pretty cool.

Here's a more precise description.

It was foggy that day (what's new!), so the view isn't great, but if you look into the distance on the right, that's North Korea!

Here's a map. The area with blue signs is South Korea and the area with red is North Korea. The observatory also had North Korean artifacts and told the history of the split. It is amazing to see how much less developed North Korea is than South Korea.

Here are me and Mark standing by North Korean soldiers. Spiffy uniforms, huh! :)

The one thing of the trip that hit me was how much longing there is for North and South Korea to be united as one. There were stories of families that were separated when the country was divided who have not seen each other. And the Korean people don't talk about "if" their country is reunited, they talk about "when."