We had breakfast with Favid and Elizabeth before they caught the train back to their town and we packed up and headed to the airport.
Before I wrap up Korea, I want to relay a story David told me. In the US we hear about the movie “The Interview” and how it upset North Korea. That was minor in South Korea compared to a recent incident that we heard Little to nothing about in the US.
First some background. On the DMZ tour we learned there is the Kaesong industrial complex just north of the DMZ that about 120 South Korean companies invest in. They get cheap labor from over 50,000 NK workers to build their products while NK gets the economic boost. This was one of the purposes of the railway link I mentioned in a previous post, to ship the goods south from the complex. They have to use trucks now since the railway is closed.
Anyway David told us that the North Koreans love wagon wheel snack cakes, Choco-pies, or Orion pies as they are called in China. Basically marshmallow between two cookies covered in chocolate. They love them so much that when they work overtime in the factory complex they accept payment in wagon wheels instead of money. They got so popular that they became black market currency and NK banned them.
The incident started when certain nongovernmental groups in South Korea started sending boxes of wagon wheels over the DMZ with balloons, with anti-NK government propaganda in them, knowing that the NK citizens wouldn't be able to resist picking up a box of wagon wheels. This resulted in the NK soldiers trying to shoot down the balloons. The South Koreans seeing the North Koreans shooting, started to return fire. Thus a shoot out almost started over wagon wheels. Luckily cooler heads prevailed.
Anyway we made it back to our apartment in Beijing without incident.
-David
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