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Gatekeeper Editors trip Note: For two weeks, Star editor Randy Smith traveled to North Korea and South Korea with a dozen U.S. journalists. The trip was set up through the Gatekeeper Editor's program with the International Reporting Project at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Contact Smith at rsmith@kcstar.com. |
Here are pictures from Randy Smith's visit to South Korea and North Korea with an editors group.
The setting here is stunning. A dozen wooden structures, looking like they probably did 1,400 years ago, are nestled into this pine forest that is far away from the rest of the world.
Our 13-hour flight took off at 1:10 a.m. Saturday out of Los Angeles, and we flew the whole way to Korea in darkness, landing at 6 a.m. local time in Inchon just as the sun began to peek over the Yellow Sea.
Sunday: We crossed over the Hangan River, the giant body of water that divides Seoul, to head to the Yoido Full Gospel Church, which claims to be the biggest Protestant church in the world with 750,000 members.
One went to China to seek a better life. One lost faith in his government's leadership. Another saw his entire family harshly punished because of his father's misstep with authorities. On Monday afternoon, our editors group had lunch with a group of North Korean defectors, among the roughly 10,000 who now call South Korea home.
The day was saved by a luncheon with three well-known women artists. And, later in the afternoon, we toured Samsung's massive facilities here. Part of the Samsung tour, which was through its highly protected research facilities, was supposed to be off-the-record. But we were able to get company officials, as we were leaving the facilities, to change their minds. Quickly, let me introduce you to the three women artists.
Tucked away atop an obscure office building in Seoul, the Eugene Bell Foundation is making a difference in a crisis that much of the world does not know about: the dramatic rise of tuberculosis in North Korea. Dr. Stephen Linton, the foundation chairman and a member of a third-generation American missionary family based in Korea, is quite familiar with the issue. He has twice been infected by the disease.
I spent the afternoon with Nobel peace prize winner and former Korean president Kim Dae Jung. And in the evening, I ate dinner with a family who was about to become homeless because of a cruel battle to turn a squatter’s camp into a multimillion-dollar condominium project.
We got up early to travel an hour by bus to the demilitarized zone. Once there, I thought it was the biggest, military-protected natural habitat in the world. Where else could you go in Korea to see wild boar, pheasant, deer and perhaps a tiger?
A resort in southeastern North Korea, the easiest place for foreigners to visit North Korea, is an experiment to see how leader Kim Jong-il will handle the economic reform that has helped transform China and Vietnam.
North Korea is an absolutely gorgeous place when you can't see what's happening on the ground.
For the last ten days, I've been collecting observations, answers to questions and personal thoughts on South Korea.
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