The One With Aldacron

I’ve noticed an interesting change of mood in the past few days amongst my Korean friends and students. Many of them have had a tremendous paradigm shift in the days since North Korea’s nuclear test. One of my students, an executive at a Samsung think tank, really summed it all up in our most recent class.

Dr. Yoon is a highly intelligent and, more importantly, practical man. He speaks English fluently enough and often enough that he doesn’t really need me (in my opinion), but we spend two hours talking three mornings each week. I am interested in a variety of subjects which I try to learn about as often as I can. It isn’t unusual for one or more of my interests to be shared by my students, nor is it uncommon for me to learn something about which I have little or no knowledge. I seem to have a lot of students with economic backgrounds, so I’ve picked up quite a bit from them. But Dr. Yoon is leaps and bounds beyond anyone I’ve ever had the pleasure to “teach.” His breadth and depth of knowledge is impressive. Of course, that’s precisely why he holds the position he does — his knowledge is important to the work of the think tank.

As part of his job, he meets with several important people from Korea’s government, business, and cultural sectors. He also has monthly meetings with a group (which he jokingly refers to as “the number 2 club”) of vice presidents, assistant editors, and other second-tier officials who are expected to be the leaders in their field in the coming decade. The group invites one prominent figure each month to discuss their life story, current events, and Korea’s role in the future. So Dr. Yoon is exposed to a great deal of information from many people in many fields, not to mention the data mined by the think tank. I give you this background information on Dr. Yoon to give some perspective to what we discussed yesterday morning.

A few weeks ago Dr. Yoon and I were discussing North Korea. Like all Koreans, he was not at all concerned about the possibility of another war on the peninsula. There have been some tense times over the past 5 decades, but they were usually blown out of proportion by the media outlets in the West. Except for one particularly scary night during my Army service, I’ve never been worried about a war here either. I’ve gotten phone calls from one parent or the other before, worried over something they had seen on CNN that didn’t even register much comment here.

The day after the nuke test, we came back to the topic. Dr. Yoon still wasn’t concerned. He acknowledged that there was a possibility that things could get out of hand, but the likelihood was very small. Yesterday morning, he brought the topic up again. This time, he was very grim. I listened as he outlined different scenarios that could come about as a result of the different responses to the nuke test. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The best result, of course, is that things go on as normal with sabre-rattling and thumb-biting from the North. But there are too many variables.

Dr. Yoon’s place of employment is an economic think tank, but part of their process involves predicting the direction of current events. One of the more likely scenarios that he brought up is a conflict that begins in the East Sea (or the Sea of Japan as it’s generally called outside of Korea) between Japan and the North. With Japan’s unilateral sactions and North Korea’s history of naval beligerence (they have had shootouts with the South in the past, a couple of incidents quite recently), the possibility of shots being fired as a result of Japan attempting to enforce its new policies is something to be wary of. It doesn’t matter who shoots first, any such incident in the currently charged environment could be a powder keg.

Dr. Yoon is willing to lay some of the blame for the current situation on the Clinton administration, but he believes most of the blame lies with Bush. Most Koreans I have spoken to, in fact, blame Bush entirely. It’s a shame that Bill Clinton chose to focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict rather than following up on the success of Albright’s visit to the North, but he did leave the door wide open for Bush to make significant progress. Instead, Bush came in and dropped the ball with his obstinancy. He really missed a golden opportunity. Then came the invasion of Iraq.

What kind of signal did Bush send to North Korea by invading Iraq? It was shortly before the invasion, when it was increasingly clear that an invasion was coming, that the North decided to kick out the weapons inspectors and unpack their plutonium. The Iraq invasion combined with Bush’s refusal to negotiate directly with North Korea was the catalyst that set them on the path to nuclear testing. The Decider’s North Korea policy failed utterly. More importantly, the invasion of Iraq created an aura of mistrust around the Bush administration. When Bush says, “diplomacy,” Koreans hear, “do what we say or we are invading.” Popular opinion right now in South Korea is that Bush is just as unpredictable as Kim Jongil. Does he really want to use diplomacy, or is it going to be the same sort of half-hearted attempt he made with Iraq? For the first time since I’ve lived here, South Koreans are afraid that a war is not only possible, but imminent.

In 1994, Kim Jongil’s father, Kim Ilsung, died. Things suddenly became very tense. The South Korean government warned the population to prepare for a war. Supermarkets across Seoul sold out of ramyon noodles and gas cannisters for portable stoves (that really pissed me off as I was using a portable stove at home at the time, having just left the military). In spite of the government warnings, there was still a general sense that there wasn’t going to be a war. No one believed it would happen. Bush’s aggressive policy toward the North and his track record with diplomacy in Iraq have turned that perception on its head.

So when some of Dr. Yoon’s scenarios this morning involved the possibility of war, I was rather taken aback. It’s one thing to hear a local store clerk say he thinks there will be a war, but to hear it from Dr. Yoon was almost the same as cementing it in stone. It wouldn’t have affected me so much except that his face was grim, even worried, as he talked.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. All of my life I’ve watched news about war, genocide, and other violent tragedies in other places. Not once while I was home in the United States or here in Korea have I ever felt threatened by any of it. But now the possibility for it to affect me is right over the horizon. For the first time in my life I’m in a potential war zone. I’ve always idly wondered what I would do in the event of a North Korean attack. Now, it’s time to stop wondering and start planning.

There is a cloud of doubt and uncertainty hanging over Seoul. I’m seeing it in the faces of the people I meet, hearing it in their voices when they try to speak about the nice weather. Some time in the near future we could all be right in the middle of a barrage of North Korean missiles. My wife and I live too close to the United Nations Command and Eighth US Army Headquarters to feel safe. How many of those missiles would be equipped with chemical or biological weapons? Then there’s the threat of terrorists getting a nuclear device from North Korea into Seoul, or even of the North lobbing a nuclear warhead over the border — regardless of what we read in the press we just don’t truly know their capability.

So life goes on and we all go through our normal routines, but it’s not exactly normal anymore. People try to pretend that everything is going to be okay. They probably really do still believe it to some extent. Others are more transparent, certain that nothing good is going to come of the situation. Still, some actually brush it off, convinced that this is just more of the same. But the overall mood has definitely changed. And while I still try to come to grips with the idea that I might be living in a war zone, I’m saddened by the fact that the President of the United States is trusted as little as a ruthless, unpredictable dictator who starves his people to death.

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