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So I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the ongoing aggression between North and South Korea lately for completely understandable reasons. The media have been hyping it a lot, not only in South Korea, but around the world. Regardless of the facts on the ground or the actual likelihood of renewed military actions between the two feuding brother nations, this is the one of the most important and historical moments unfolding anywhere on the planet at this moment. It’s a conflict in which the world’s major powers have vested and complicated interests and it’s one that spans some of 20th and 21st centuries’ most defining moments.
In some ways, the ongoing Korean soap opera is about nostalgia. It’s about looking at the present and seeing how far both nations have come (albeit in different directions and with different aims). It’s about looking at the past and assessing how we have arrived at this moment. And of course, it’s about both nations defending and touting all that they have built in 60 years.
Overall, nobody at my school seems the least bit worried about this. Nobody in my community seems worried about it, even though many of my local friends have confided in me lately that this is the first time they have ever found themselves considering that the Koreas COULD conceivably go to war again. That possibility is a specter that is looming large at the end of 2010. It will make or break 2011 and set the pace for the next decade (or decades) of relations between the two.
And here I am caught in the middle of it all because I couldn’t find a freaking job in retail or something simple in the U.S.A.
I should qualify the statements I’m about to make by saying that I’m not a religious person. I’m occasionally a spiritual person and I sometimes believe in Fate without actually knowing whether or not to believe in God (consider this my confession). Some people would probably find this incredibly ironic or even contradictory. I get that. But it’s been hard for me to feel like this whole conflict between the Koreas doesn’t have something to do with me on some infinitesimal level. The November 23rd attack on Yeonpyeong, after all, occurred the day after my 25th birthday. On the heels of the sinking of the Cheonan warship in March of this year, tensions between the Koreas have escalated to unprecedented levels and I just happened to pick this year to throw myself into the fold.
Now, as if matters weren’t already kind of stressful for my friends and family back home, I’ve gotten this news from MSNBC and CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/12/22/south.korea.drills/index.html?hpt=T1
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40775126/ns/world_news-asiapacific
Yep, just as things were beginning to settle down, Korea is going to hold the largest live-fire exercise since the Korean War on my doorstep. We’re talking less than the distance from Bagdad to Shelbyville, Kentucky, these drills will be taking place and the Pocheon region where I live will officially make itself a target along its border with the DMZ. I’ve heard the fighter jets and choppers all week. I’ve seen them in scores on my two trips to Bears Town resort to go skiing with friends. And tomorrow afternoon while I’m at school, if I open the windows or go to the roof of the building, it is very likely that I will be able to hear the tests. It’s exciting for someone with my academic background, but a little intimidating as a naïve, young man, as a son, and as a teacher in over his head.
It’s hard to say what, if anything, will come from this. Maybe North Korea won’t go back on the (albeit, mostly ambiguous) concessions they made earlier this week, but this definitely comes as a slap in the face. Granted, it’s one that North Korea has had coming for a long time, but you can only rattle sabers in a crowded room for so long before someone gets cut. The North will reply to this whole ordeal with their usual condemnations and I have no doubt that the North will flex its muscles yet again at some point in the coming months. All that remains to be seen is the extent to which they will respond and how long it will be before they suspect they can sucker-punch the South, as that’s really the only hand they’ve dealt lately.
Sean Chandler...in Korea 