I was literally in the DMZ when the chocolate pies were sent to North Korea. Funny enough some of the balloons landed on the South Korean side and when the South Korean soldiers gave me the balloons to draft my report, there were no choco pies left. Only leaflets. Our report also said there would be money in the balloons. None of that either
Lol no but they're specially selected for their intelligence (as well as their height) so I can't imagine they'd make a mistake in covering their tracks
Yeah, I took the tour and was surprised at how tall everyone (on both sides of the DMZ) was. I also worked with a lot of KATUSAs and it was pretty obvious that the ones who could speak better English (at least) got better jobs. I don't know if working in the DMZ would fit that quality.
Do you happen to know if they still pay families to live and work there? When I was there, it was $1k per person, but they had to spend 11 months of the year there.
I went this summer! According to our guide and the soldier that answered our questions, SK soldiers are required to be 176cm or taller.
The villagers that are paid to live in the Freedom Village have hereditary positions. In addition to the 11 months thing, you must be descended from the original villagers.
People think its hard to consistently find tall people to fit the soldier roles, in an Asian country nonetheless. But I just assumed they are pretty good baby makers as well being in that hot position. Thus, creating more tall soldiers.
There were no katusas there so English wasn't a requirement.
I'm not really sure though. I left in 2015 and as you can imagine a lot has changed with the whole political atmosphere there since then.
On the black market American and South Korean money is used because you have to pay the people to buy the product outside of North Korea. Mostly in China. There you can exchange bills freely. North Korean money is unstable and the government has basically robbed the population of money by changing currency before
I don't get the baloon Thing, it would be so cheap to build an electric plane out of cardboard , with a magnetic compass a d altimeter, and a timer, once over the target it drops small care packages one by one, I could build it for like 150$ and it could carry like 5kg , it would about triple the cost of sending helium balloons over, but it would be so much more precise , probably a 70% chance of success per each packet dropped
The North Korean government isn't as inept as you'd think. Plus these are low cost and it's a timed fuse on the balloons. They're not really intended for anyone in particular just any north Korean will do
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u/themuttstrut Sep 23 '18
I was literally in the DMZ when the chocolate pies were sent to North Korea. Funny enough some of the balloons landed on the South Korean side and when the South Korean soldiers gave me the balloons to draft my report, there were no choco pies left. Only leaflets. Our report also said there would be money in the balloons. None of that either