Visit to North Korea

Members of the TOPIK2007 Preparation Committee joined a trip to Geumgangsan in North Korea August 9-11. Despite the rain we were able to enjoy the beautiful scenery, but more significantly we were able to get some idea about conditions in the North and listen to representatives of Hyundai Asan about the challenges of operating a business in the North. Brother Christopher John has written a personal log of the journey in his own blog, Friar's Balsam.

Blog returns!

The main TOPIK website (www.topik2007.org) has taken over the original purpose of this blog - so we decided to give it a new purpose. The blog is now for informal news about the conference preparations.

Fr Joachim Kim is working full-time on the project now, and a number of others are assisting in different aspects of the conference. I've been busy with the website and learning a lot about web design along the way.

A group of us are venturing into the North next week. We are not attempting to scale the DMZ fences and brave through the mine fields. We are joining an organised tour group to Geumgang Mountain. These tours have been operating for a few years now and provide a fairly limited contact between North and South. Mostly we see the beautiful scenery in that region - and are allowed to take photographs of it. But we don't get to travel freely of course. And certainly no photos!