Thursday May 26, 2016

On Thursday, after a tough three days of wrestling, we got our first full day of break from training to visit two places that hold great cultural significance in Korea. This was also the first time that the whole team had been reunited in those three days, since groups of wrestlers have been travelling all over Seoul and staying in different locations. We first stopped at Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery, and then one of the most popular tourist destinations in Korea: the DMZ.
We took an hour bus ride from the hotel in order to get to Yanghwajin. It is located on the north side of the Han River, just outside of the city. Inside the welcome center, the director of the cemetery greeted us and we watched a video about the first missionaries in Korea and the establishment of the cemetery.

As we were guided around the cemetery, everything became a bit more solemn as we remembered the lives of the missionaries that first spread Christianity to Korea. Many of them sacrificed everything in order to teach in schools, run hospitals, and spread the love of God to a country that had never heard of Christianity before. There was also a small museum dedicated to these individuals, and it contained some of their journals, Bibles, and medical equipment that they used over 100 years ago. It was moving to think that these people indirectly gave us the opportunity to visit this great country as missionaries and help spread God's kingdom.


After we toured Yanghwajin, we got in the busses and went north toward the North Korea / South Korea border. We got to see the memorial which commemorates the United States involvement in the Korean War, the train tracks that runs through North Korea to connect South Korea to the rest of Asia, and the observation post from which one can safely view across the DMZ to North Korea. Unfortunately though, it was so overcast that we were not able to see across to North Korea.
The highlight for many of us at the DMZ was the tour of an underground tunnel that North Korea had created after the Korean War in an attempt to dig their way to Seoul for another attack on the country. A total of four of these tunnels have been discovered, but they were not very successful (none of them extended more than a few hundred meters from the DMZ.) The tunnel we toured was approximately 75 meters underground, and we were required to wear hardhats so that we did not hit our heads on the exposed rocks. We were forced to uncomfortably squat as we walked along the damp path, and it was bizarre to imagine that the North Koreans thought that these tunnels would be successful. Also, we got to see Coach Brunk get stressed out about being in such a tight space and refuse to continue on through the narrowest part of the tunnel. We definitely all got a laugh out of that.
For dinner, we had one of the most interesting entrees of the trip: pig's feet. Many had mixed feelings about this meal, but others claimed it was the best dinner we've had yet. Most of us were just excited that this restaurant gave us Pepsi with our meal, because we have only been served water at every other place we've been to. Once we got back to our rooms, we had a bit more free time than normal and so many went out and continued their explorations of Seoul. Others made a more responsible decision and went to bed in preparation for our early morning workout the next day.

Matt Darok (Class of 2019)