smalltownmom, thank you for your kind words. It is indeed the soldiers around the world who deserve all the respect. I am merely a civilian teaching and coaching their kids while their families are stationed over here. Their job is much more difficult than mine. Those guys up in the 2ID/DMZ with their motto "Fight Tonight"....that's a tough gig. South Korea's soldiers also do a heckuva job. They are some big, tough, serious sons of guns whom I would never want to tangle with.
I have been up to the DMZ numerous times. You can stand inside a building that straddles the line of demarcation between the two countries - a 3" high 6" wide 'line' of raised cement. A few times, North Korean guards have come down and peered into the windows while we were in there. One time I had a class up there (weird field trip) and two NK guards came down. They were smiling at my kids outside the windows, nodded politely to them, clearly enjoyed seeing them. My kids had been instructed by our guys not to smile, point, or otherwise interact in any way. But I can still picture a few of my girls giggling and covering their mouths when the NK guards waved politely at them.
Up north, it is all about Kim Jong Il. I have seen the normal human side of the regular people -- and these guards were supposed to be some of their roughest and readiest -- and yet they were polite and clearly enjoyed being around children. My god, had we had a basketball or soc-cer ball, a game might have broken out! From what I have seen, you take that nut job leader out of the picture and you'll have a country of people ready to work hard to build a functional country, raise good families, and join in with the international community.
Sidenote: our realtor is an early-30's guy and was a tank driver when he did his service. He also has one of the largest collections of high-end baseball cards I've ever seen. He never played the game, but for whatever reason he loves it and he spends a lot of his Korean Won somehow buying these cards from the States. His English is good enough that we have been able to have some really good baseball conversations. He knows names, stats, deals....he's totally into it.