::A Geek in Korea::

Today I was finalizing some of the details for my friends’ visit to the Demilitarized Zone. We will be going via the USO tour, and there is a series of rules you must agree to and a procedure to follow to be allowed to go on the tour.

If you bring a Korean on the tour, like when I brought my wife a few years back, they have to get a criminal background check. This is so that they wouldn’t decide that they’d rather run to North Korean than serve time in South Korea. I guess this is a logical sort of thing to request to prevent an international incident from occurring.

When I went last time, they had made a big deal about the “Dress Code” we had to follow. Since my family was going in the dead of winter, we’d be wearing coats the entire trip. It wasn’t hard to follow a dress code, but I wanted to review the code for my friends so that they didn’t wear anything that would get them kicked off the tour.

Here is what is not allowed on the tour according to an official document. North Korea and South Korea, through the UN had to come up with the following rules about proper attire at the DMZ:

• Sleeveless shirts, exposed midriffs, tank tops.
• No shirts with insulting, provocative, profane, or demeaning representations.
• No frayed cut off shorts, gym shorts, or shorts that expose the buttocks.
• Nothing sheer.
• No sports uniforms or athletic clothing of any kind.
• No shower shoes or “flip flops. Sandals with straps on the back are fine.
• Items of military clothing not worn in a uniform.
• No over-sized “gangster” clothing. No baggy pants, oversized shirts, etc.
• No leather “biker” clothing. No leather chaps or vests.

Since I paid money to be on the tour, I’m going to follow the dress code, but I guess those North Korean guys just don’t know how to party. Banning booty shorts and leather chaps? What kind of country would have a problem with those? Any upstanding member of society should be allowed to go into military compounds in attire that exposes the buttocks. If I want to

That’s the American way!