Something About Going North

After 4 years of waiting to going to The Korean Demilitarized Zone I finally made the trip. I went with my Korean language class on Saturday, May 20th.

We left Daejeon at 8:00 a.m. and made our way 2.5 hours north to Paju City. Grace, the director of the hangul school, has a friend that lives there. We had a barbecue in her front yard before making our way to the DMZ. The friends have a beautiful house with lots of property.

Before entering the area consisting of The DMZ we had to pass through a heavily guarded check point.


Our first stop was to The Third Tunnel. This is the third tunnel discovered by South Korean soldiers that was dug by The North Koreans. It was discovered on October 17th, 1978 near Panmunjom, 44 kilometers north Seoul. Approximately 30,000 North Korean armed troops could have passed through the tunnel in one hour had the south not discovered it. Visitors have the opportunity to walk down into the tunnel. The tunnel itself is 2m in height and width. At the end of the journey I was covered in sweat and immediately purchased 2 water bottles at the tourist shop.
Our next stop was the Dora Observatory. It is here that you can take a first-hand look into North Korea.

Our last stop was Dorasan Station. This is the last station before North Korea. The next stop is Gaeseong, North Korea. Gaeseong is where the South Korean companies own factories which are manned by North Korean workers. Right now there has only been one trip north by train (May 17th, 2007). You could theoretically take a train from South Korea all the way to Europe. I think it will take many more years before that will happen.

Something About Oringinality

Check out these news stories over the past few months:

• Anna Nicole Smith's son dies from a drug overdose
• Anna Nicole Smith dies from a drug overdose, starting a custody battle for her daughter
• John Mark Karr confesses to killing Jon Benet Ramsey
• Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian Spy, is poisoned to death
• After 4 years of captivity, Shawn Hornbeck is found soon after his kidnapper abducted a second boy

These are just a few stories that were "ripped from the headlines" and used as plots on NBC's Law and Order and it's 2 spinoffs. While I don't mind a few of "headline" episodes, I really think NBC went overboard this season. What makes Law and Order so great is the suspense and usual twist at the end. When the writers uses headlines there is no suspense: we already now what happens! NBC has renewed the flagship Law and Order as well as Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit for the 2007/08 season. Criminal Intent was also renewed but will be shown on NBC's sister channel "The USA Network." The ratings for all three shows were considerably lower than previous years. It's all about originality, people! These writers are being paid millions of dollars and they are stealing their plots from news stories. I really hope the writing is better next season. Long live Jack McCoy!

Something About Pandora

I received a most unfortunate email this morning from the folks at PANDORA. Apparently they have been given the red light to continue streaming music to countries outside of The U.S. . That sucks! The cease and desist will come down on May 3rd. Here is an excerpt from the email:

Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music - we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global licensing organization to enable us to legitimately offer Pandora around the world. Other than in the U.K., we have not yet been able to make significant progress in our efforts to obtain a sufficient number of international licenses at terms that would enable us to run a viable business. The volume of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing and performance royalty payments for every song we play.

Until now, we have not been able to tell where a listener is based, relying only on zip code information provided upon registration. We are now able to recognize a listener's country of origin based on the IP address from which they are accessing the service. Consequently, on May 3rd, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from your country. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

While I don't listen to Pandora every day, I am going to miss this service.