Not going to Japan - an update of Korea visit

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First: We are not going to Japan. We have changed our plans, so we are going to Taiwan instead - had also been on our wishlist, but there was not time in the original schedule.
Why? The Danish Foreign Affair says all travels should be cancelled, a friend sent me an article from a Danish journalist writing from Tokyo - it was all deserted except in stores where people where cleaning the shops for food. The transport is worrying - allready many of the airlines have changed their flights, so they go to e.g. Osaka. Many things that could have been explored, like Disneyland are closed (power cuts).

Now, just an update of some of the things we have seen in Seoul and South Korea. First, we were worried about the language - and that they spoke worse English than in Japan - and that says a lot. Well, we should not have worried - they can both ask 'here/to go?' and say 'hot/cold?' when buying a Café Latte... OK, but seriously, there are actually many who can say much more than that, surprisingly, and the Subway is working excellent and easy.

We have been to the Gyeongbokgung palace, where the children where very impressed with the guard (see picture), and the adjoining museum was quite interesting - also a 'children museum' where the children could try to be dressed up. The first days here were like spring (16 degrees), and in Seoul Grand Children's Park, it seemed like half of the city was here - nice. The food is great, as is the French breakfast shop across the street where we buy too much pastry and latte's.

Yesterday we went on a tour to the DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone - the border to North Korea. The most interesting part is the Panmunjeom place where the two nations face each other directly - but children under 10 years cannot go there. So we could only go to other nearby places, like the unification bridge, the Dora observatory where we could look into North Korea. One thing that surprised me was that there was a town in DMZ with South Korea factories having North Korea labours (for much smaller wages).
We also visited the 3rd infiltration tunnel - one of the tunnels made by North Korea into the south. You go down with a small mono-rail to 73 meters underground and can go into the tunnel, quite close to the North Korea border.

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