Following Josh

By Dave Norman

From Beijing's hutongs to the "always undefeated" city of Warsaw, follow Josh along with author Dave Norman as they explore the Far East and Eastern Europe by rail. Whether drinking with nomads in Mongolia, dining with locals in Seoul, or exploring Russian paintball combat with a "retired" Soviet arms dealer, Norman's blend of humor and history makes the adventure come alive. At its core, "Following Josh" is the story of two friends reuniting on an epic adventure across Eurasia. After teaching abroad, Josh is homeward bound while Dave takes the long way from their hometown to a new start in New York City-different trajectories, even while traveling together. Trapped together in stuffy Russian rail cars and cheap hostels, they realize just how far apart they've grown...and what it takes to start anew-in friendship as well as in life.

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Excerpt from page 134: "...she embodies my image of a Mongol grandma: skin like oiled leather, glistening brown eyes that search through heaven and time and space, her hair a rainbow of silver, one shade for each of her two or three hundred years moving around the steppe."
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Dave Norman is the author of three other nonfiction books, including the history title "White River Junctions" and the industry-leading "501 Paintball Tips, Tricks, and Tactics." He lives and writes in Portland, Maine and Columbia, Illinois.

• Language: English
• Publisher: f/64 Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452449166

Dave Norman

Born and grew up in Southeast Texas, inspired by astrology and the aerospace industry, studied at University of Houston, Texas A&M and Prairie View ext. college. Worked for NASA in association with LBJ Space Center in Clear Lake, Tx. and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Loves to write stories for children and poems for both kids and adults. Continue to encourage young adults to study enthusiastically in education to be successful, dream big and learn all you can about one of the greatest adventures of the world (Space Exploration).

Book preview

Preface

My flight climbs out of St. Louis rising twenty, fifty, ninety feet towards the morning sun. Banking over Illinois, the window frames my hometown. The wing points down at the old high school, old church, old neighborhood, these things that are new to the kids who replace me.

I once leaned over the railing on a bridge above a crevasse, trying to feel that potential energy you read about in textbooks. I felt only the breeze. But I feel something here, in seat 34A, tumbling into a grand adventure.

My old life recedes in the jet wash, my new one lying far over the horizon—at the end of a journey across Asia and Europe by train. I’ll land in Seoul, where an old friend will meet me at the airport. The journey we’re beginning together ends separately—for him, back home in St. Louis. I’m off to make a new life in New York City. We’re booked on the Trans Mongolian and Trans Siberian railroads, from Beijing to Warsaw along 8,500 miles of track—certainly the scenic route from St. Louis to New York. Who knows how much farther we’ll go before it’s over. Life isn’t a destination, after all, but a journey.

So here we go.

* * * * *

I met Josh Vise in a high school play many years ago. Funny and adventuresome, he was easy to like. Taller and thinner than me, with lighter hair and very different style, there is no mistaking us for kin—rather, we became brothers of a different sort.

Josh took a college semester in Thailand. His parents threw a welcome home party, filling the house with friends and family and pictures. Josh wandered among them, subdued by more than jetlag; watching him from across the room, he acted like just another guest waiting to greet someone important who was due any moment—anonymous at his own party.

He pulled me aside. I tell ‘em a story, he said, and pretty early on, they can’t relate. They just don’t—they can’t—know what I’m talking about. So they stare at me politely. I mean, what’s the point? I’m just gonna listen to them. That’ll make everyone more comfortable.

He went back to Thailand for another semester, then back again. He spent this past year teaching English in Korea. I’ve been working in New Hampshire. Our in-person friendship became internet based. We compare notes on new places and routines, on daytrips, on politics and headlines... These days our interaction—perhaps our friendship—seems predicated on entertaining each other. We haven’t had a beer in person in forever.

We have a history, but not much of a present.

When he meets me in Seoul, he’ll be more than a dialogue window; we won’t be able to turn our computers off and walk away. It’s like that point in a long distance relationship where you move in together, except we aren’t lovers. Each week we’ll move in, together, to a whole new country.

For him, our journey leads from Korea back to his old room in his parents’ basement and—hopefully—a new start. Living abroad, he said, is fun, but with its challenges; teaching is a job, it pays the bills, and he likes it, but...something is missing. He’s ready to get on with life, if not entirely sure how.

I never asked him what he was looking for over there, or if he was running away from something. Most people don’t move to Asia on a lark. When he wrote home, he talked about beaches and bars and the freedom of a good exchange rate. It was interesting, but topical.

Some people find themselves in college, or by moving away from home, or by backpacking across Europe. Sometimes it’s a junket, sometimes a pilgrimage; some people try harder than others. I mentioned that to Josh, that this might be the coming of age adventure, the Odyssey, he needs before he can wash ashore as an enlightened adult. He laughed at me. I laughed at me. I raised a toast of morning coffee; he raised a midnight beer and logged off.

But maybe there’s something to that; maybe he needs a flourish to close this chapter and begin a new one.

I certainly do.

* * * * *

I had a nice apartment in New Hampshire, a part time radio job, the run of a comfortable town and a fresh Master’s degree heavy with promise—heaven for a bachelor. I mixed adventure into an otherwise quiet life—hitchhiking to Mississippi to report on Hurricane Katrina, flying to Malaysia to write about sports, couch-surfing across England... I revel in learning about the places I go from the people I meet. I read about countries while wandering through the land itself—adventure, for me, is about learning as much as doing.

Then I struck up a long distance relationship with a woman rooted in New York City. My friends graduated and moved away. I don’t deal well with change like this. Suddenly my nice little life felt lonely; I’m not sure which changed more, my circumstances or me, but it’s clearly time to move on—to a career, a marriage, a big city, whatever we tell ourselves comes next.

But first, I want a fitting farewell to that life...a chance to see something new, learn something strange, have an adventure—everything a bachelor party should be. I sold everything I could, donated the rest, and drove back to the Midwest to visit my family as a way of honoring the past before chasing the future.

So this is the story of rediscovering a friendship and taking on the world; honoring life’s changes and celebrating new tomorrows. Meeting new people. Trying new things, and seeing what fits.

Or so I hope. These are my thoughts from thirty thousand feet, airplane pointed west now, towards the first stop: Seoul, South Korea.

Seoul, Korea

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been.

Travelers don’t know where they’re going.

—Paul Theroux

The Author

Demilitarized Zone, South Korea

5 August 2007

Photo by Josh Vise

Won in my pocket and crime on my mind... Ten bucks a night... Chewing the bulgogi... Josh goes shooting... Chill, Mellow Yellow... Own Flippin’ Program...

Josh is a tall, rail-thin millionaire with bundles of Korean Won in every pocket. Do me a favor? he asks at the airport. Change this into USD. You’ll have to fill out a form... This morning he cashed out his Korean savings account, filled out the form, changed ten bucks shy of the tax-free limit and hopped a train to Seoul with a year’s pay crammed into his pockets.

He slips me a million Won—about seven hundred bucks—which I change with a sly grin, telling the girl in the currency booth that I’m on the next flight home. I give Josh the green American bills, a little money laundering to set the tone. He leads me to a bus and we’re off.

Incheon International Airport sits on a man-made island in Kyonggi-man Bay, across the Yellow Sea from China. Some civil engineer looked west from Seoul and thought I can put an airport on that sandbar. Or maybe his boss told him to do it, so he passed the buck to the junior engineers and a thousand laborers. March into that swamp and build me an airport.

Ne!—yes!

There’s no room in Seoul for the thing. Engineers knew how to bulk up shoals to make oil storage facilities, so it was just a matter of time and bug spray to put in the airport. Incheon is pretty cool—lots of glass, shiny metal. These are the things you remember at the far end of a trans-Pacific flight.

Our bus takes the long bridge over tidal marsh and coastal swampland that looks the way Washington DC probably did in the 1600s. How’s Seoul? I ask.

Oh it’s great, he says in a high-pitched voice that hasn’t changed much in the years I’ve known him.

You still look the same, man, I say. Maybe skinnier.

You’ve gained weight! he jokes. Josh looks elegantly emaciated whether or not he works out, so he usually doesn’t; anyone looks fat by comparison.

Voice hasn’t changed either, man.

Yeah, I’ve got the voice of a twelve year old. But with an adult’s range and fullness—exactly halfway between a kid and an adult. It fits. Adults don’t chuck it all and wander the earth unemployed, but neither do kids. That grey area between school and whatever comes next can stretch on as long as it has to.

But can a twelve year old, Josh continues, do this? He puts his nose on his shoulder and makes an elephant noise, flopping his arm like a trunk. It’s pretty good; I’d be scared if I was a peanut. The kids love it. They call me ‘Joshua Teacher.’ You know, I kinda like kids. I can relate.

They’re your people.

My people?

I don’t know... and truth is, I don’t. He’d sent me self-pictures taken at arm’s length, aimed down so he stands freakishly tall over a ring of kindergartners hugging his leg. It was an artifact from a different world, where my younger friend is the adult—a teacher, no less. I feel like a teenager who keeps waking up in a late-twenty-something body. I bust his chops a little, Did you tell ‘em the elephant call is a traditional American greeting? Man, I weep for the future.

No... he says, dragging it out, furrowing his brows, in a—teacherly, not a Josh—kind of way. I’m back in that old friendship we had—the way I knew how to talk to Josh.

I’ve got some catching up to do.

Ten bucks a night...

The bus drops us off at a subway station and disappears into the madding traffic. We descend the fluorescent-lit entryway to a thoroughly modern platform. This city reminds me of the cleaner, neon-flashier parts of New York; to be fair, most cities remind me of New York, which is architectural chicken—everything tastes kind of like it.

For a moment I feel tall and strong, something of a bush league giant with aspirations. I worked out for the last few months, figuring I ought to be able to carry my frame and day packs—my only luggage—for three miles at a healthy pace...just in case. You never know.

He carries no pack this evening, having already established himself at the hostel. He wears a black t-shirt and jeans, and I brought him a pair of black combat boots that match mine—waterproof, sturdy, good for keeping your socks dry while hiking through who-knows-what. Bobbing that subway dance, heads and shoulders lagging just behind the train car wobbles, he smiles with the goofy, unselfconscious grin of a man who refuses to take life seriously. Working abroad, sink or swim, has strengthened that smile. Many things change, but some things shouldn’t.

I feel like a giant, I tell him, my English turning a few eyes nervously towards us (and then away quickly). I’m eye level with their hat brims; with the pack, I weigh as much as any two of them. I’m Paul Bunyan in a pine forest. Then I look at you.

Ha! he laughs. You’ll get used to it.

I follow him into the neon shadows and throngs of people schooling like fish. Asia is full of people, and neon. And little shops. Each little shop has its own sign, Korean letters taunting me—the same symbols appear over and over, so that the whole tableau would make sense if I could just figure out the basics. I point to one, and Josh sounds it out phonetically, giving me a quick Korean reading lesson that goes mostly over my head. I’m struck by the way that someone I grew up with, who is younger than me no less, can know such things that I don’t. So I just listen.

The characters on these signs come from the 1400s, when Sejong the Great ordered that Korea should have its own written language, something more than their mishmash of ancient Chinese and Japanese characters. Sejong had artists create distinctly Korean characters to represent their spoken sounds, taking that final step to a unique Korean language. Now there are nineteen consonants and twenty one vowels that are generally combined into twenty four sounds, analogous to letters in our alphabet.

Memorize the symbols and what they sound like together, then read left to right like we do—Josh is a quick study at it, though going from sounds to meaning is way more complicated. I see the patterns, but can’t make sense of them; the most important signs, thankfully, have English subtitles.

Coffee. Lunch. Stop. The road signs come in familiar shapes and colors, but with Korean letters and occasional subtitles. This is important when crossing the street, where the difference between survival and dismemberment—not just death, I mean actual dismemberment—is waiting for the right sign or crosswalk signal...then waiting one second longer.

Seoul traffic is orderly, though dense and fast and dangerous. Drivers push the red lights, but usually don’t blow wantonly through them. Cross while the light’s green, and you’re burger; wait for the red, let the last daredevil through, and you have relatively good odds. They also drive on the American side, having never been under British rule, which helps—I instinctively look left when stepping off a curb. In Seoul, that means I’m looking at actual threats to my safety. In former British colonies like India or Malaysia, I’d see the taillights of the car ahead of the one that’s going to kill me.

These are important comforts when you’re jetlagged—the little things, far from home.

Josh booked us seven nights at Windroad Guesthouse. I haven’t stayed in a hostel before, but don’t expect much for the price—this dim-lit alley, the dingy 7-Eleven, and the festering dumpsters seem fitting. A corrugated metal door on a heavy steel frame groans and shudders, a cat shrieking in chorus. Inside the walled off grounds, we go up some concrete stairs with crumbling edges and down a long outside balcony, up to the last door. He jiggles it open without a key. We take off our shoes, and I survey our quarters: six bunks in a little room on the left, and two right there in the hallway; a washing machine, with a black and white cloth fedora—a stylized jazz hat for yuppies—crowning a forgotten pile of lost t-shirts from many continents; and a bathroom around the corner.

Asian bathrooms take some getting used to. This one has a Western-style toilet, as opposed to the porcelain square with an oval hole like elsewhere; there’s a small trashcan (don’t flush the paper), a curious plastic housing over the toilet paper roll, a communal pair of pink rubber flip-flops and a shower wand on the wall. Lock the door. Turn the water on...it’s freezing cold. I’m used to a giant water heater quietly burning propane day and night somewhere in the bowels of the building, hot water just a few seconds away.

Not here.

The water heater is built right into the wall in this shower/sink/toilet-cell. Turn it on, pick a temperature between City Water Main cold and Sort Of warm, and away you go, hosing down your body and everything else in range, including your towel—there’s no good place to hang it, except on the hook outside the door. The sink has only one knob, dispensing only one temperature, which must chill your bones in winter.

But it’s a hot summer day now, August 3rd, and my framepack is stowed under my prison mattress. Our room has a fan, yellow linoleum floors that aren’t glued down—the bubbles remind me of slowly boiling curry, except they don’t pop—and the entryway is two inches lower than the main floor. So is the bathroom, but that’s for drainage.

The lowered entryway is a Korean custom, and great for stubbing American toes in the dark. It provides a little place to kick off your dirty shoes, a custom taken seriously. This is a good country for loafers; my combat boots are comfortable, but with such long laces trussed up tight, they’re a royal pain to take on and off, and on, and...off...and...

The office on the ground floor is open when the surly teenage manager wants it to be open, and the refrigerator in the adjoining social room hasn’t been cleaned in months. It’s an archeological treasure, if you’re into that sort of thing and don’t have any sense of smell. Opening the door clears everyone out of the room, a trick Josh says he relishes.

Then there’s the blood smeared on the wall, where sated mosquitoes met their gruesome end.

You get what you pay for.

Chewing the bulgogi...

We spend the day talking, walking, getting caught in a cloudburst and laughing like fools in the rain. By evening we’ve run out of old friends to talk about, and twice been through my account of changes back home: gas has gone up. Tim Irwin got married. Hardee’s burned down. They lowered the highway speed limit...our hometown, changing without us. We trade memories like currency.

With the past exhausted so quickly, we embrace the present. He treats me to dinner, playing my host to Korea, ordering bulgogi: Korean BBQ, with shiitake mushrooms and onions, carrots and bean sprouts. Our waitress uses a pair of scissors to cut a chicken breast, bone and all, into strips that fall on the pan recessed into our table. She turns a knob and propane bursts with a whoosh down by our knees, dinner just moments away.

Think you’ll come back to Korea? I ask.

Maybe, he says, in a carefully wistful way that is loath to discount anything from his life. But I’ve got some stuff I want to do in St. Louis, some videography. I wrote a script I need to work on, so many things, you know? The waitress brings our Hite beer, which is unremarkable—a watery lager better suited to dank fraternity basements than meal-pairing. I could teach college here, I was offered a position.

Joshua Professor?

It could be fun. I’d meet some new people, and it would pay better than the hogwon, the term for a language academy like his recent employer.

Are you happy here? I mean it as a bomb-dropping question, requiring a life-changing answer.

Yeah, it’s a cool place, he says offhandedly. Then he pours me a glass of water with both hands on the bottle—a Korean sign of respect that means nothing to Americans, though we’re the only ones at the table. But so was Thailand. Asia’s pretty neat, you know? I mean, Asia—who do we know who really spends time here?

If I want to see people who look like me and speak English well, I can go to Europe. The Far East, though... Josh and I are attracted to Asia because it’s so incredibly different. Here they eat things you’ll never find on American menus; the languages are written and spoken in completely different ways from Western tongues; the incense-filled shrines are impossibly mysterious. Asia is completely foreign to the American Midwest of our youth...and holds all the romance of true adventure.

Even the mundane things, to a Korean anyway, are hopelessly novel to me...like bulgogi, and holding the water bottle with both hands. We talk while each bite cools between chopsticks, savoring the dinner and this chance to reconnect. This is my week, he says, to get my body adjusted to the time zone and Asian cuisine—to dodgy hostels and living out of a framepack. He’s forgotten that I’ve travelled quite a bit, although not quite like him—Josh is one of those rare souls who truly embraces his freedom to shake hands with the world.

He planned our next month of adventure; all I can offer him tonight are stories from our past. It’s good enough for this evening.

Josh goes shooting...

We stuffed our pockets with glossy tourist flyers for shows and tours and food, food, food with ads like neon signs pulsing eat, eat, eat. One of them has a bull’s-eye. The advert reads Learn art of Pistol Shoot! Josh thinks it’ll be fun; I target shoot all the time as a form of meditation—high-velocity yoga. I don’t feel compelled to do it here, but Josh is excited; perhaps he wants to give me something familiar in this foreign place, an appreciated courtesy. Target shooting is an upper class leisure sport in Korea, where ammo is expensive and licenses are hard to come by—it appeals by conspicuous consumption.

The Won-flush millionaire is gung-ho.

The range is on the fourth floor of a tall building, an exceedingly odd place for a shooting gallery. They’re set up like a golf pro shop, only instead of clubs and balls, they sell bullets and earplugs. An overly-enthusiastic instructor shakes our hands and walks us to a table; his uniform makes him look like a police officer from a low budget comedy film. There’s a book on the table with laminated pages featuring dramatic photos of different pistols and their rental fees, with a column for ammunition costs. I see why it’s elitist—no one in their right mind, even the most gun-starved expat, can afford this.

Josh orders the .50AE Desert Eagle and ten bullets—for a good day’s wages. The instructor smiles and asks what I’d like to shoot. No thanks, I say. Too expensive.

How about revolver? No.

Smaller one? No.

Nothing? Right.

Ho-kay!

He ignores me and helps Josh into a bulletproof vest. Unless they plan to exchange fire, this is utterly pointless. They walk into the range, on the other side of bullet proof glass, where another instructor brings in the Desert Eagle. It’s a massive piece of Israeli engineering, a gas-operated, magazine-fed semi-automatic with a barrel wide enough to stick your thumb inside. It’s one of those pistols that well-heeled collectors buy because they can; the firearm equivalent of compensating for a personal deficiency with a fancy sports car with such power that you’re quietly thankful for the speed limits.

The instructor clips the trigger guard into a box on a taught cable running sideways across the range—now Josh can’t turn the muzzle more than a few degrees off target. So much for...for... whatever dubious intentions they thwarted.

And so much for the experience. You shoot a fifty to feel the recoil; to feel your arms go numb holding up a five pound gun. Target shooting is fun because it’s hard. Hook the pistol to a cable?

Lame.

He loads the magazine, chambers the first round, and I spare a thought for the office on the other end of the backstop. I wonder what they think, the insurance salesmen or bankers or whoever works over there, knowing that tourists get their jollies firing jacketed hollow points at their wall.

Aim. Fire.

Pooft.

Guns make lots of different noises. Pooft is not usually a good one. It jams. The instructor fixes it. Josh aims, squeezes, pooft.

Sub-velocity loads. Josh paid for the sex and adrenaline of shooting a mad dog hand cannon; to work with their steel-and-rubber backstop, they loaded custom rounds to have a tenth the power the gun’s designed for, like revving a Ferrari up to twelve miles an hour. Pooft.

Bullet proof vest?

Pooft.

Cable retention system?

Pooft.

One...hand...clapping...

One hour. Ten bullets. Sixty dollars. Josh folds his target into his pocket with a smile.

This is how the trip starts—not with a bang, but a pooft.

Chill, Mellow Yellow...

We’re back from drinks at a basement bar, back from hearing a band play for only us on this Sunday night. Back, to a blacked-out stranger on the bunk above mine in the hostel at the end of my wits. There’s a puddle of something soaked into his sheet. I’m gonna say that’s soda, Josh says.

It’s yellow.

It’s Mellow Yellow. Go to bed.

We wake up to the drunk man screaming. He thrashes around, punching the wall, kicking the bed frame.

Chill, Mellow Yellow, Josh pleads in the darkness. More screaming, cursing, punching. Hey! Mellow Yellow! Chill the fuck out!

Ten bucks a night.

Own Flippin’ Program...

A few days in, the bustling capital city is stressing me out, and it’s only the first of five capitals on the schedule Josh set. He proved good with logistics, our dream taking shape under his direction, so I let him run with it. I prefer to travel by my wits, drawn to the countryside and places where life slows down to the pace of tea brewing in stoneware pots—I can somehow find these havens if I can just wander within range. It makes planning pointless and counterproductive—you can’t schedule a whim, or indulge a whim on a schedule.

So I trusted Josh with the details and my credit card and now we have tickets clear to Warsaw with hostels booked along the way. I appreciate that, but it means we’re on a tour of the biggest cities in Central Asia...not exactly my scene. I plan to wander a fair bit, following my fancies.

I think we should tell each other where we’re going, Josh said. For safety, you know, and so we can go together if we want to see the same things.

With no hard feelings, I added, if an invitation is declined. Exactly.

I invoked that rule this afternoon, setting off on OFP—my Own Flippin’ Program, the civilian-legal version of a Marine Corps epithet that fits me to a tee. I’m wandering the quieter parts of Namsan Park to get away from the crowds and neon and flickering LCD billboards; Josh is exploring Changdeokgung Palace, alone with his camera, for similar reasons.

Though Josh is an urbanite, Seoul can get a little big for him—he boycotted it for months before working up the courage to visit. Then he came during the Chinese New Year, expecting the city to be packed; it was vacant. Koreans go home to celebrate with their families, he told me. A lot of them moved in from outside the city, so they went home and Seoul wasn’t crowded at all.

The folks who remained were in high spirits. They met in parks to play games, have picnics... I think of cities in terms of towering glass and giant steel and the anonymity of crowds, where the sheer number of people ought to make getting to know any of them impossible. But that weekend in Seoul, Josh said, he found a refreshing sort of community...and here in a city he thought too big even for him, he saw life on a human scale.

I watched this girl skip rope, he said. About seven years old, maybe. Her parents swung the rope, and she jumped at the wrong time. Got whacked right in the face, started crying... So her dad hugged her and kissed her head, and then made her get back in there. Made her keep jumping rope, crying the whole time. It was...it was the funniest, most macabre thing I’ve seen here.

Now he likes Seoul in small doses—the secret gardens, ninety cent subway rides, and the nightlife. He likes good views from tall buildings, bar hopping, and late-night cafés, all of which abound. Wherever he goes, Josh makes friends with strangers and follows them like tour guides. With other tourists as a filter, he sees the best places that several people can find...then he moves on, lathers, rinses, and repeats. In these ways, he is much wiser and more adaptable than I—when not wandering the countryside, I roam the streets and avoid white people and pretend I’m the first Anglo in Asia. It’s random, unfocused and somewhat deluded, but works for me.

You’re always welcome to join me, he said, but yeah, no hard feelings. We agreed, and word is bond.

Glorious People’s Coal Mine... Disrespecting the yellow line... The land of Budweiser... Soju and the acid reflux of doom...

I wake up early, my body on American Samoa time as it catches up westbound to this time zone. Josh is out cold, sleeping with grim determination. Mellow Yellow is splayed diagonally across his bunk, arm and leg dangling limp over the edge like tentacles.

I sneak out of the room, strap on my boots, and walk to the bakery at the end of our alley. The counter girl speaks self-conscious English, beaming with a schoolgirl’s smile as I navigate the bins. Try the bungeoppang, she urges, pointing to a small waffle in the unappealing shape of a fish; red bean paste is pressed in the middle, like blood, and I wonder if it has little pastry bones, too. I politely decline.

Korean pastries are more filling than ours, probably from the fiber in the bean paste they use like we use frosting. I grab a few round pastries, one with a semisweet black paste, another with fried poppy seeds in brown paste. Very good choice, she says slowly, my smile sending her eyes nervously down to the cash drawer. She hands me my change in her right hand, left hand touching her right elbow—a custom I’ll adopt from here on.

With some mini bananas from a street vendor, the tiny fruit adorably delicious, I’m set for a power breakfast in motion. There’s no time for a proper Korean meal, and along our alley, nowhere to find it.

Locals might wake up to a hot bowl of tofu or mushrooms in clear broth; perhaps with tofu strips served sweet, white rice, boiled potatoes, fruit—lychees, bananas, pears—and kimchee, the universal Korean side dish. It’s paired with pork and chicken, lunch and dinner, soups and salads, and even breakfast—spicy, fermented cabbage to get you going in the morning.

Back at the hostel, Josh is awake; we walk to a main street to get picked up for a tour of the 38th Parallel.

We’re heading for the Demilitarized Zone, that swath of border about two and a half miles wide and just over a hundred fifty miles long that separates Kim Il-Sung’s experiment from South Korea. Kim Jong-Il, Il-Sung’s son and the current Glorious Leader of North Korea, keeps firing dud rockets into the Bay of Japan and making crazy threats. The nuttier he gets, the better a spokesman he becomes for the South Korean readiness campaign.

The DMZ is the most heavily defended border in the world, and if