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U island



Is there any place that you can't go again even if you want to?
I have. U island - a place where I saw hundreds of blackfaced spoonbills. 
U island prohibits public access because of its location that is so close to North Korea (A soldier told us that one soldier escaped from North Korea and came here through U island in the past) It was lucky for our DMZ exploration team got a chance to look through it for exploration purposes. (The government might have allowed us to explore it because CNN was filming DMZ, exploring it with us.)
After we heard precautions from soldiers, such as 'don't take any pictures and upload it' or 'Don't go too close to a barbed-wine fence', we went into a small guard post where we can see U island at a glance. As soon as we finished installing telescope and adjusting its focus, we started to find blackfaced spoonbills, and I couldn't stop overusing exclamation. Can you guess why? We didn't have to 'find' them, but had to just look at them since there were hundreds of blackfaced spoonbills eating, flying, and resting in the nest. Hundreds of endangered species in front of me! I am sure that it was the moment that keeps me study biology. 





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