The North Korea Situation

Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth. - The Boy Who Cried Wolf

**Disclaimer: I reserve the right to make or not make wild accusations and gross assumptions without any scientific basis or expert knowledge.

A lot of people back home ask me what is up with North Korea. I know it has been dominating the news lately, what with the bombing of Yeonpyeong Island, Lee Myung Park's threats of retaliation, Kim Jong Il's threats of nuclear war, and the US involvement in South Korea's military training exercises yesterday along the disputed maritime border. But I'm not worried.

For the most part, South Koreans tend to ignore Kim Jong Il completely. They don't pay attention anymore to the angry, bespectacled little Korean man who keeps crying wolf. When something serious happens - a boat sinks, or a bomb explodes - some will hold candlelight vigils and call for blood. Yet his threats of war, or a nuclear holocaust go largely unheeded by the public. Even the news of an actual, isolated attack will blow over within a month or two, and he will disappear from media coverage for a time.

Soon after I arrived in Korea, I asked my co-teacher whether she worried about the situation with North Korea. "Not really." She seemed surprised at the question. If the North attacked, Mrs. Yoon said, she wouldn't be able to go anywhere to escape. What's the point of worrying about something you can't control?

The fact is that Kim Jong Il is a loose cannon. No one is completely sure what he is capable of. In addition to the recent bombing, which killed two soldiers and two civilians, in March 2010 he was blamed for torpedoing a South Korean Navy ship, killing 46 soldiers. (China, Russia, and North Korea disputed the results of the investigation.) Yeonpyeong is the third attack blamed on North Korea in the 16 years that Kim Jong Il has been at the reins, and the second this year.

But crazy and violent as Kim Jong Il may be, he's not stupid. He knows that, while the South Korean public may ignore his persistent wolf-cries of war, the military and global political machines will not. They can't afford to. His reputation as a wild card, as someone who is capable of anything, is the best thing going for him right now, and probably forever. Like a child with a hair-trigger reaction and a penchant for tantrums, Kim Jong Il knows that his "parents" don't want to do something to provoke an outburst. They'll do anything to appease him, even if that means ignoring the occasional broken lamp and trash fire, and giving him a regular allowance.

But he also knows that there's a line. If he crossed that line, and instigated a war with South Korea, he must know that China and Russia would likely abandon their support for him, and the South Korean-allied forces would crush him and his regime quickly. He wouldn't just be sent to his room, with his Xbox and coloring books. He would be sent to boot camp.

To be fair, though, it's not all Kim Jong Il's posturing that is to blame for escalating tensions. South Korea patrols and conducts regular military exercises in disputed waters in spite of North Korea's claim over the territory. Perhaps they are more likened to kid siblings, who pull each others' hair and call each other names, trying to push the other across the line. The one who starts the fight, after all, gets sent to his room. The other, even if he ends up with a black eye, gets an ice cream cone.


Kim Jong Il and the Boy Who Cried Wolf are like two sides to the same coin; the one claimed that a wolf was attacking his sheep, while the other claimed that he was a wolf. Whether or not Kim's claim is valid remains to be seen. In the end, though, the lesson is the same. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth. A wolf is no match for a human with a spear.







On a lighter note, here's Kim Jong Il Looking At Things:
http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/

Scuba diving in Sokcho

Video coming soon.

Over the weekend Lisa and I went SCUBA diving in Sokcho (속초), South Korea's smallest and northern-most city.
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About 50 miles from the border with North Korea, Sokcho lies at the base of the Seorak Mountains (서락산), a famous mountain range that attracts thousands of visitors in the fall, when leaves are changing color. On the other side Sokcho abuts the East Sea (Sea of Japan).

We signed up for a dive trip with Deep Blue Quest, a dive company run by Russell Krogh out of Seoul. Since we were coming from a different direction, we opted to ride up with our friends Ara and Ruthie, and meet up with the company at Mun-Am Resort (문암 리조트), the dive site. They were bringing a team of 4 Open Water dive students who would be completing the open water portion of their certification requirements. The four of us, plus one of DBQ's DiveMasters, were the only fun divers for the trip.

About halfway up the coast the weather changed dramatically, and snow began to fall. By the time we arrived in Sokcho about half an inch of powder and slush covered the ground, and it was continuing to shower. We considered the weather ruefully for a moment, but decided to make the best of the situation and ago ahead with our scheduled dives.

The water was COLD - from 3 to 5 degrees - and, though relatively calm, visibility was atrocious. On our first dive Saturday afternoon visibility was less than 1m. There was a lot of sediment from kelp plants floating suspended in the water. We didn't have much time to look around anyway. Within twenty minutes of our descent one of us was too cold to continue, and we would rush back to the office to warm up with coffee by a space heater.

warming up

Cold-water diving was a first for all of us, and after our first dive we weren't thrilled about it. Lisa, whose hands and feet get cold even indoors, decided not to go on a second dive on Saturday afternoon. Though visibility was better on the second dive, we still didn't see a lot of animal life. There was a variety of starfish, sea cucumbers, and sea slugs, but the fish, octopus, and nomura jellyfish we were hoping to see were absent for the duration of our visit.

getting the gear in order

the view from our minbak

We were scheduled to complete three dives on Saturday and one on Sunday with an optional 5th dive Sunday morning. As it turned out we barely squeezed in all four dives. DBQ seemed a bit disorganized. The four of us were sharing equipment with the dive students (although we had paid to rent our own gear), so we had to wait for each other to finish diving, strip gear (and in some cases wetsuits), and hand it over before we could head out for our next dive. We didn't even get in the water on Saturday until after 2pm.

dive briefing in the snow

beach dive

We were forced to abort a boat dive on Saturday afternoon as well, in a controversial turn-of events that ensued when aKorean dive team was sent to anchor the buoy line to the seabed. We sat in our wetsuits inhaling carbon monoxide fumes from the boat engines as the snow continued to fall around us. We waited for 20 minutes until we decided we were too cold to even get in the water at that point, and told the boat captain to take us ashore. He yanked on the buoy line to alert the divers below (who were nice and toasty in their expensive drysuits), and they surfaced five minutes later with an octopus in hand. Though we never got the full story out of them, they claimed that they spent the 20 minutes searching in vain for the line anchor.

Though Deep Blue Quest was competent and professional, their services were on the expensive side. The trip cost 350,000 won/person ($310) for four dives, minbak accommodation (our room was SWEET, with a balcony overlooking the ocean, but cost only 40,000 won), and three meals. We never got a cost breakdown, which would have been nice. I can only hope that we had top-of-the-line insurance (damn, I guess I should have asked about that in advance).

geared up

fishermen preparing their nets

Surprise! Euna Lee gets a book deal

What a surprise! Eun Lee, one of the journalists captured by North Korea and rescued by Bill Clinton, will write a book about her experience. Her partner in crime, Laura Ling, is apparently already pitching a book with her sister Lisa Ling.

Did anyone NOT see this coming? The fact that these women will profit off of their naive and irresponsible actions strikes me as rather appalling. The only way I could see them justifying their books is if they donate ALL of the proceeds from their sale to organizations working to smuggle North Koreans out of their country. Their original documentary, after all, was supposedly about the plight of these refugees, who spend months or years fighting for their freedom, often only to be recaptured by the Chinese and shipped back North, where a lifetime of labor camps (a fate that Lee and Ling miraculously escaped) awaits them.

South Korea upgrading communications with North Korea

I just saw this headline this afternoon; though it was two days old, it was the first I had heard of it. While I suppose a communication infrastructure between the two Koreas is convenient, it hardly seems necessary. Particularly in light of the fact that one of the communication hotlines runs to an unused resort in the North, owned by a South Korean company. The article also snuck in, near the bottom of the page, the revelation that "the rival militaries also share a hotline." Does this seem strange to anyone, for two nations that have technically been 'at war' for the last 50-odd years to be sharing military information?

DMZ (Or, Crossing the Border)

On Saturday, Cassidy, Lisa and I booked a trip to the Demilitarized zone (DMZ), the ironically named border zone between North and South Korea, which is basically a very heavily armed line in a very large sandbox. It marks the location of the war front at the conclusion of the Korean war, when the armistice was signed. Interestingly enough, South Korea never signed the armistice, so the only troops technically allowed inside the 4km-wide DMZ are UN and North Korean soldiers. UN troops, however, are made up exclusively of South Koreans and Americans.I still can't quite figure out why the UN allows tour companies to bus tourists into the middle of such a tense and delicate situation, but I have a feeling that it is for one, or perhaps both, of the following reasons:

1. Money. Tours range from $40 to over $80 for a one-hour tour of Panmunjeom, the Joint Security Area, where a cluster of official government buildings straddle the actual border. The whole tour, including lunch, takes about 4 hours.

2. To make North Korea look silly and childish. They spend a lot of time talking about the petty things the North Koreans do to make themselves look better. In fact, it makes South Korea look pretty damn silly itself, because they always come back with an equally childish reply. In the 80's, SK erected a 100 meter flagpole in Daesong-dong, or "Freedom Village," the only town visible from the North. NK responded by erecting a 160-meter tall flag pole, the tallest in the world, in their border town. When our South Korean tour guide told us this at the debriefing before the tour, she smirked and said "but our flag is still bigger."

After a 15-minute debriefing at the military base just inside of the DMZ, including a brief history of the Korean war and the DMZ itself, we boarded a military bus for the 2km ride to Panmunjeom. We were instructed to get off of the bus in an orderly fashion, and to immediately line up in 2-person rows.

We walked through the building and into the MAC building, one of three small blue buildings built on top of the physical border and used for official two-party meetings. The border runs through the center of the buildings, so half of the buildings are located in each country.
Once inside, we were introduced to the two Korean soldiers guarding the room. This one was protecting the UN flag:
The microphones on the table mark the location of the border. This is the only place in the country where you can step freely into North Korea and, just as freely, back again. The other soldier was guarding the door behind him, which opens into North Korea. We were instructed not to go behind him. If a North Korean soldier opened the door and grabbed us, there would be nothing he could do.
They were all very serious, and it just felt plain awkward to be there, smiling and taking pictures. But we did it anyway, because we were tourists, and that's what tourists do.

We also climbed a pagoda that seemed to be built just for tourists to gaze over the border and take pictures of the North Korean guard standing in front of their official government building. Which is what we did.
He just stared back at us with his binoculars, and would occasionally duck behind the post to his right. Before we climbed the tower, we were told not to point or otherwise make any gestures towards this building, as there were cameras mounted in multiple places that were constantly taking pictures of us. NK would use these pictures in their propaganda campaigns attacking the US or the UN or anyone else that happens to annoy them on any given day. There is supposedly a strict dress code to get on this tour (ie no t-shirts, ripped jeans, or sandals), but three really dirty Europeans managed to sneak into our group unnoticed. They all had nappy dreadlocks, tight tshirts, and saggy, ripped jeans. It was easy to picture them on posters plastered all over Pyongyang, with a caption like "They can't even afford clothes that fit!" or "They don't bathe!"

The pagoda tower also afforded us a nice view of "Propaganda Village", SK's pet name for the only NK village visible from Panmunjeom.

It's all rather funny to me, since SK calls Daesong-dong, their own border town, "Freedom Village." There seems to be a lot of propaganda flowing freely on both sides of the border. SK claims that Propaganda Village is not a real village, and that NK citizens are bussed in for the day to walk around and make the town appear lived-in. Some of the buildings, they claim, do not even have windows. Daesong-dong, in comparison, has a population of about 200 people. Were it not for an exorbitant gift of farmland (something like 30 times the average Korean's plot), and an exemption from taxes and the military draft, I can't imagine that many of those 200 people would choose to stay. It seems to me that "Freedom Village" is really just SK's own "Propaganda Village."
Afterward we visited the UN's gift shop, where you could buy North Korean-made blueberry wine, some NK money (expensive!) and t-shirts and other knick-knacks to prove that we had been to the edge and back. It all smacked of cheap sensationalism. So I bought some shot glasses.

North Korea rocket update

Sunday morning at 11:30 or so, North Korea supposedly launched their "satellite". Kim Jong Il called it a success. "The satellite is rotating normally in its orbit.'' Everyone else called it a failure. 

"The remaining stages, along with the payload itself, landed in the Pacific Ocean"...North Korea’s public portrayal of the event as a complete success was similar in its celebratory tone to the happy note it struck in 1998 after having failed to loft a satellite into orbit.

North Korea's communist regime painting its failure as success? No surprise there. 

Not only does Kim Jong Il call failure success, the DPRK's "Dear Leader" calls other people's success his own. My sister told me a while ago about a documentary she saw on NK, where they allowed an American eye surgeon into the country to perform corrective surgery on a couple dozen blind NK citizens. As the bandages were removed after the successful surgery, every patient ran, past the surgeon who had restored their eyesight, to bow down to the picture of Kim Jong Il that hung on the wall.

I'm sure there would be stories galore about this kind of egregious man-worship, if North Koreans were actually allowed access to information outside of the DPRK's propaganda machine. 

In related news, Lisa's friend Cassidy is coming to visit on Friday, so we'll spend the weekend in Seoul. First on the schedule: DMZ (de-militarized zone) tour.

US Embassy's stance on North Korea

Just got an update from the US Embassy in Seoul (see, Mom, I registered!) about the "situation" in North Korea. Apparently we have nothing to fear, though they didn't mention anything about "fear itself", which I assume must still be a terror suspect list somewhere, causing Homeland Security's threat level to hover perpetually above the warm color spectrum. Anyway, here's what they said:

North Korea has announced that it will attempt a rocket launch between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on one of the days during April 4-8, 2009, from a site in northeast North Korea.  This possible event has received much media attention.  At this time, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul sees no potential danger to American citizens in South Korea as a result of the possible launch and does not believe that any special actions are warranted by American citizens other than to pay close attention to local news reports during this time period.

The Embassy is monitoring the situation very closely.  We will apprise the American citizen community of any important information via this email system and the Embassy websites athttp://seoul.usembassy.gov and www.asktheconsul.org.

Navy secrets. Shhh!

Last night I met a couple of the Navy's finest at a local Pohang bar called Whistler. I must have looked pretty trustworthy, or they were just really drunk,  since a handshake and thirty seconds later they were confessing what I  believe to be top-secret secrets. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "So are you guys here waiting for North Korea to shoot off their satellite?"

Navy guy 1: "That ain't no satellite. When have you ever seen a satellite attached to a rocket?"

Me: "Well, I've never seen a satellite attached to anything."

Navy guy 1: "Well it doesn't matter because Japan's gonna shoot that baby down in five seconds."

Me: "You think so?"

Navy guy 1: "I know so."
Me: "Do you really think that North Korea will try to shoot a missile straight into Japan?"

Navy guy 1: "Either Japan or Alaska."

Me: "That would just start a war."
Navy guy 1: "That's exactly what they want! War! They've been lookin for a way to start one."

Me: "You think North Korea is ready to go war?"

Navy guy 1: "I know they are."

Me: "How do you know?"

Navy guy 2: "We can't really talk about it."

So now you know. If war breaks out in the next few days, you'll know who broke the story first. Well, that would be Navy guy 1. But after him, me.