****If you missed part one, please click here.****

Visiting the darkened half of the Korean peninsula is never a joyful experience. However, at its best, it has a frisson of excitement; a sense that you are a young pioneer – an explorer in an unknown land. For a second, it is easy to entertain the illusion that you are a fabulous cultural raconteur, that you really are interesting, charming – blessed with extraordinary insight into your own and other cultures alike. However, by this point in our journey this feeling had disappeared, only to be replaced by a real