The past week...

I just started a week long backpacking trip in Europe. It began yesterday and I'm actually at an Internet Cafe in Paris waiting for the train station to open (By the way, I've noticed that Paris seems to be such a more lively city than its dead and limp counterpart in England). I have nothing, but praise for this city in the couple days I've been here except for the outrageous price for food and drinks. I'm comparing this experience with visits to Wales, Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh), and Northern Ireland (Belfast) over the course of living in London for the past month and a half.

There's a lot of things that I'd like to talk about it in the coming week, including:

Earlier on in this decade, during the height of the Sunshine Policy, many countries in Europe including the United Kingdom opened up diplomatic relations with North Korea with strong encouragement from the government in South Korea. So, on my last day in the U.K., I decided to go and visit the DPRK embassy. To my surprise, I found the resident ambassador to be quite accessible, even though I came after closing hours for the embassy and I left with some magazines. More on this later.

A visit to where the DPRK mission in France should have been.

I know Koreans and, perhaps, Americans, have this image that Korea is a very small country. But, if you think about it. It's not at all that small, depending on your definition of what constitutes a small country.

Consider that France, the United Kingdom, and Italy each have a population of about 60,000,000 with France having the largest number of people with 64,057,792(CIA World Factbook). Spain and Poland are each then att 35,000,000 or so.

So, if you think about it. Korea's not that small. And, I guess whenever Koreans use the excuse that we're a small country it's just not sound reasoning. So, on this basis, Korea isn't that small by any means. South Korea stands at some fifty million and, if unified, would outnumber all countries in the E.U. with the exception of Germany. I guess