* = You give and You take (주 이름 찬양 - church-goers will recognize this as a [quite good] translation of the praise song "Blessed be The Name." I know, I know - just bear with me here.
There was an air raid in Seoul today. It wasn't a catastrophic one - it was planned and orchestrated and unless you happened to be outside or on public transport while it was going on, the average person's life wasn't really affected (I was home the entire time, bothered by nothing except the sirens that blared for about 20 minutes). I saw some coverage of it on the news while eating dinner at one of my local eateries of choice, and most of the kids in the restaurant who were watching started laughing as footage was shown of people bundled up in winter coats and scarves being given faces masks, being herded into underground bomb shelters, and made to take cover as though bombs were falling from the sky.
Two things:
1) Why are you laughing, Koreans?
2) I never thought I'd ever see an air raid, largely because I was born just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and anyway, I think America realized that having students hide under the desks with their arms above their heads probably wasn't going to be very effective if NYC were to be nuked. But thumbs up to living in the only relic of what is supposed to be the dead Cold War. I am trying to remember if I ever thought that something like this - witnessing an air raid - was even a possibility before I moved here. I don't think it was, although I did move around the time of the sinking of the Cheonhan - so I was semi-prepared to face a little more than trivial uncertainty when it came to Pyeongyang.
To comment ever so briefly (snort) on the first, it used to be absolutely astonishing (to me, anyway) that Koreans are so unaffected by this mess with North Korea. 아버님, JM's dad, told me that he was certain there wouldn't be a war, and her mom didn't really remark much on it except asking me if I knew what to do in an emergency (NB for American readers: go to the sports dome in Jamsil to be evacuated up outta this joint), and offering that she told JM, her eldest daughter, to "take care of her sister" if anything were to happen. But other than that, daily life continues here like no other. Among my friends, I would say I am the biggest news-monger, the one who googles NK news 3-4 times an hour and is consistently bringing up North Korea - it's like I want someone to tell me to get the hell out of here because the powder keg is gonna blow at any moment.
A lot of people have asked me how I feel, if I am worried. I wrote this in answer to a friend who emailed me this question back in May, when the international investigation found North Korea responsible for torpedoing the Cheonhan:
"But let me ask you one thing - are the people you're talking to
Koreans? Because if they're not (even if they are living in Korea),
they will talk about any perceived threat from North Korea from the
perspective of a foreigner, without the understanding of what it is like
to live under this threat. And to be honest, nobody except for Koreans
is qualified to talk about what it is like to live - permanently - 30
miles from the DMZ. In my experience, it's a lot like talking to
Israelis; Americans can talk big talk about how horrible it is to live
over there, what with the threat of terrorism (especially during the
second Intifada in the early 2000s), but my friends from Israel were
never, ever as concerned as outsiders were. You can't be, or life just
slows to a halt. Similarly, none of the Koreans I've spoken to have
expressed more than average concern about Kim Jong Il. Keep in mind
that they've lived there for years and years, and he's been firing off
these sorts of threats periodically throughout their lifetimes. I just
don't think we, as foreigners, could possibly comment knowledgeably on
how we SHOULD be feeling about the current situation when this is
reality for millions of Koreans.
War on the Korean peninsula is always a possibility, and the
political situation right now is admittedly very bad. I'm not thrilled
with it by any means, but I've been following it as closely as possible
and there are so many dimensions to what is going on right now that it's
not even funny. Potential power transition in the North coupled with
already strained relations since Lee took office, plus the everpresent
nuclear thing, plus I don't know what else - it's insane. I agree with
many who claim that China is the pivotal card here. They're reluctant
to condemn the North, but I don't think China would outright support
them if they were to wage war, and a war would be honestly suicidal for
the Kim regime in Pyongyang. A dictator is not really concerned with
anything more than the survival of his regime, and the regime would
collapse if the North opted for war - and you can be sure as shit that
Kim Jong Il knows that.
I don't think anything's gonna be decided immediately, and it's my
hope (or imagination) that this is gonna wind up being a lot of
diplomatic smoke with little tangible result on either side (I mean,
South Korea's hands are really tied - they can't do ANYTHING, especially
not retaliate militarily, and North Korea already gets aid from
basically no one, so what the hell are sanctions gonna do?). God forbid
anything else happen, at least you are an American citizen. Get the
address of the embassy, learn it, and figure out how to get there in the
event of any danger (I think it's around City Hall - don't quote me on
that, though)."
Obviously, I think recent events have rendered my last few points kind of impotent; there is no question that the South must respond militarily if the North attacks its civilians again. To clarify, I am NOT AFRAID of the North attacking Seoul; such an act would mean a global war without question (the number of shells that North Korea fired at the sparsely populated Yeonpyeong-do killed four; fired into a normally congested area of Seoul, they could kill thousands), and it would most likely spell the end of Pyeongyang as a city. My real concerns are (1) a chain reaction, and (2) China. Let's suppose that NK shells another island in disputed waters. A few civilians are killed. The South must now retaliate militarily; but how do they do this? And if they retaliate, what does Pyeongyang do? Is this enough to catapult this peninsula back into total war? The South must tread extremely carefully; it is absolutely impossible to forget that (read this carefully) a nuclear-armed North Korea is not a threat to South Korea because North Korea could, with a snap of KJI's fingers, destroy a good half of Seoul using little more than conventional weaponry and ballistic missiles, which are aimed at this capital city 24/7. Admittedly, destroying Seoul would definitely be the last thing that KJI ever did, because America would just destroy Pyeongyang and probably the rest of North Korea right back. But....god, everything is just one long "but" after the other. The scariest thing about this situation (as WikiLeaks revealed) is that 80% of what goes on at the government level in dealing with these questions is basic guesswork.
And China. Well, I don't need to go into great detail here, but if war - real war - does break out between North and South, and China were to side with the North, then you've got World War III right there with the two global and regional hegemons duking it out. Expect the involvement of basically the entire planet. Samuel Huntington, anyone?
Which brings me to the title of this post. I have heard some absolutely insane theories about this conflict (the North is the scourge of God - God's punishment because South Korean churches are corrupt, etc etc - one day I'll post about this country's obsession with mega-churches and whacked-out brands of Christianity), but it certainly wouldn't hurt if my readers - and everyone who is out there - prayed to whatever or whoever they believe in ( for the record, I'm Catholic at heart, so if you are not drinking the Jesus-juice, I don't think you guys are going to Hell) for rationality, sensibility, and peace to prevail in this situation. And if not peace, at the very least for there to not be an escalation that leaves two countries and one people completely devastated.
Amen.
Are South Koreans from other cities more anxious about the situation than those in Seoul? It might be worth checking out some online opinion pieces to see if there is much variation cross-regionally.
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious how this subject is approached in public schools... are North Koreans demonized the same way Russians were in American schools during the Cold-war era?
"if you are not drinking the Jesus-juice, I don't think you guys are going to Hell"
ReplyDeleteI love you, Dana d.
Air raids were still going on periodically in 1997 when I first arrived. I also walked into a just-tear-gassed subway once after one of the last big student demos. And then things really cooled down.
ReplyDeleteActually, the Korean War basically WAS World War 3, even as it's called "the forgotten war" now. You had the U.S., China, and Russia - either directly or by proxy - engaged in war. MacArthur moved to have the nuclear bomb brought to bear, and only his removal possibly stopped that drop (on China).
The "good news" from that conflict is that it stayed conventional - no nukes. Even then, of course, some 2 MILLION civilians died and the country was a wasteland where there had been cities and lives.
My in-laws actually fled during the war, evading North Korean troops, surviving getting across the Han River on a sinking ferry after the bridge had been blown (with civilians on it, by the U.S. to cut the North's advance). Of course, they had suffered under Japanese rule and still know Japanese today, so these are people who have lived a reality entirely differently from ours or from most Koreans alive today.
Anyway, I think that as long as North Korea cannot count on China the way it could in 1950, things will remain nasty but limited in terms of conflict.