Osama

After writing a fairly substantial novel's worth of material about my recent trip to the DMZ and North Korea, I am going to keep my thoughts about Osama Bin Laden's death succinct.

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

(Kudos to MJF for finding the perfect quote to eloquently sum up everything I'd been thinking already, even if it's not really MLK. Whomp whomp)

Cheers!
- Christine -

Sendai Earthquake

Like the last time I documented a major current event that had everyone at home worried about my safety and tsking about my decision to move to Asia (“I toooold her not to go…”), I wanted to wait a couple days and figure out what was happening myself before passing on my thoughts to you.

Friday afternoon at around 2:30 pm, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred about 131 km from the eastern coastal city of Sendai. Although Japan is no stranger to earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, seeing as it marks the border of several tectonic plates, Friday’s earthquake is the largest ever reported in the region and the fifth largest ever recorded since people started recording these things. To make matters worse, the earthquake triggered tsunamis that extended not only across Japan, demolishing cities with 10 meter waves littering debris, wreckage, and even boats all across the country’s costal regions, but it also triggered tsunamis as far away as Ecuador and Peru almost 10,000 miles away!

Seoul is maybe 700 miles away from Sendai, and somehow the earthquake and ensuing tsunami didn’t impact us one bit.

Friday was a completely normal day for me. I got to work at exactly 1:59, and promptly started calculating how to afford a new camera, a new laptop, and Photoshop before my contract ends in July. (It’s technically possible… if I don’t eat for the next 4 months) At around 4:10, I finished my number crunching and ran over to the bank to send some money home. In the bank, there was a big plasma screen tv flashing images of some natural disaster happening behind the tellers’ heads. It looked like a flood, these strong waters plowing over towns carrying trees, homes, debris, and even boats. As I watched the waters moving further and further inland, I kept expecting it to stop somewhere, to reach a point where there was just no more water left, but it kept going. I pieced together in my broken Korean that it was Japan, and when my transaction was finished, I headed out to obtain a much-needed Friday latte, blissfully unaware that there had been a 9.0 magnitude earthquake merely 700 miles away…

Luckily Korea, unlike Japan, lays tucked away from and not directly on top of 4 different tectonic plates (intersections of such plates being the direct cause of earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis). In this case, the Pacific plate subducted under the Okhotsk plate, and actually pushed Japan about 5 meters closer to Korea. This pushed water in all directions, but Japan shielded any of that water from reaching Korea. Moral of the story, Korea’s location is awesome.

My heart goes out to Japan, the record-magnitude earthquake combined with the smattering of tremors and a 10 meter tsunami that engulfed the eastern coast of the country in a matter of minutes is just unimaginable, or as my coworker Elly would say, "Unbelievable!" I keep picturing the flooding I saw in the bank, watching boats destroying trees and houses as they washed further and further inland. I just can't imagine! I wish there was something I could do, but given the instability of several nuclear reactors and the intentional leaking of radioactive materials into the air (to decrease the pressure in the chambers and prevent a Chernobyl-type explosion), I think it better for me to stay my whole 700 mile distance from the wounded nation for the time being.

So keep Japan in your thoughts. (And don't worry about me.)
-Christine-

Yeonpyeong

I had every intention of writing yesterday, reassuring you all that I was still doing fine in the ROK after the shelling attack on the island of Yeonpyeong 90 miles off the western coast of the country.

Here you go. I’m still fine.

From what I can gather, yesterday's attack was the culmination of a number of internal issues going on in North Korea currently. At the center of these issues you have the priming of Kim Jong Il's youngest son, Kim Jong Un, for the impeding regime change. Add to that the newfound presence of advanced uranium enrichment facilities over the weekend which suggest the North Koreans possess stronger nuclear capabilities than what we had previously thought. Then combine these recent developments with the long standing and increasing poverty within the nation, the general tensions between North Korea and the conservative policies of South Korea's president Lee Myung-Bak, and of course, the March sinking of the Cheonan, and you're bound to have conflict. Though the island of Yeonpyeong has been the target of North Korean hostilities before, both in 1999 and 2002 as a result of a disagreement about the UN drawn NLL, the current situation has truly raised tensions and made people nervous.

It’s a delicate situation, and I would be lying to say otherwise.

One of the coolest things about Koreans, however, is their resilience against the ongoing war. The two Koreas have technically been at war since the signing of the Armistice Agreement (read: not a formal peace treaty) in 1953, but you’d never know it walking around the streets of Seoul.

Today felt like any other day at work. My students still whined and moaned about the same things, pretending to have hiccups in a futile attempt to trick teacher into letting them get water, begging for a few extra minutes for the “picture game”, and the like. A few had devised elaborate plans for killing Kim Jong Il since yesterday, my personal favorite being sneaking a 1/1,000,000,000th sized bomb into his favorite food, but for the most part, they seemed calm about the whole situation. At one point in the day, however, one of my classes briefly deviated to the topic of war. Still struggling to understand the critical difference between “fun” and “funny” (Me: “Dan, what did you do this weekend?” Dan: “I played soccer. It was funny.”), one of my more outspoken students proclaimed suddenly “War is funny.”

War is anything but funny (or even fun, for that matter) especially on the Korean peninsula. South Korea has made incomprehensibly huge strides in the past sixty years, becoming one of the most thriving economies in Asia, if not the world. Looking back at pictures of Korea from before the war, South Korea’s development from the poorer and less industrial of the two Korea’s is nothing less than awesome. Where once lay rice fields and small villages now lay thriving cities and complexes of apartment buildings. The striking economic achievement, the rise of Korea to being one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world added to the rich historical and cultural environment here would be just devastated by war. To be sure, the same can be said of any nation plagued by war, but I suppose I feel particularly strongly about this country I’ve learned to call home and believe adamantly that we should do everything possible to avoid war with the North.

Like an adolescent lashing out against its parents, North Korea’s actions are a form of garnering attention from the international community. We need to resume talks, acknowledging the very legitimate problems going on in the rogue nation, and work to come to some kind of agreement. Does that sound wussy, less macho than going on the offensive and seeking revenge for the lives lost and billions of won spent on repairs from their lashing out over the years? Maybe, but in this case restraint is imperative in preventing the escalation of a potential war of an unimaginable magnitude on the continent. At present, no one is firing at anyone, and with a little restraint and a whole lot of talking, things will hopefully remain that way.

(In the meantime China needs to get off its ass and start talking some sense into it’s ally, like a Korean hagwon teacher who can just with words terrify a student in a way a foreign teacher like me simply cannot.)

In summary, I’m fine and hoping things here remain calm. I really like Korea, and I’m not ready to fly back to Ohio just yet. So no panicking, please :)

- Christine -

Chile

(This post has nothing to do with living in Korea.)

Over the past week I’ve found myself surprisingly touched emotionally by the rescue of the trapped Chilean mine workers. Before last Tuesday, I’d read about the situation in passing, recognized unconsciously that something was going on, but never really given it a second thought. To be honest, most of the news I encounter has to do with death, destruction, and negativity (train crashes, bomb threats, hurricanes, land slides, and toxic sludge), so I suppose I just filed the Chilean mine story in with all the other disaster stories I’m exposed to daily. It’s not like I’d never read about a mine disaster story before. Mine collapses, rescue attempts take place, and more often than not, the trapped miners end up not getting rescued. Maybe a couple days worth of follow-up articles on the terribly poor conditions mine workers have to endure around the world. Return to news as normal.

It was not until last week, when I’d heard that the first miners had been freed from their underground entrapment that I really started to look any further into the situation at all. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the Chilean mine situation, because as you’ve just read, I was only merely aware that such a Chilean mine situation existed until maybe six days ago. But for the past week, I’ve been doing my research, looking retrospectively into the entire situation, and I just can’t get over the incredible strength and ingenuity of the human spirit on so many levels.

Let’s review:

On August 5, a section of a mine shaft in the San Jose Copper-Gold Mine collapsed, trapping 33 miners about 2,257 feet below ground. Some of the miners were there completely by chance. One was on the eve of his retirement, another few were driving a truck on their way out of the mine when the shaft collapsed merely a few feet in front of them. Somehow, no one died on that first day and the 33 of them managed to convene in a 165 square foot shelter at the base of the mine. They were then able to survive for 17 days on nothing but a few cans of tuna, eating about a bottle cap sized portion a day each, before finding a way to attach a message to a drill probe piercing their shelter and send a message over 2000 feet up to the surface, where, the people who had not yet given up on rescuing them, found it.

I’ve had my doubts about humanity, but everything about the survival and rescue of these 33 men has culminated to renew my faith in human kind...

How amazing that, despite the frequency of mining disasters in the world, governments vowed together to get these particular 33 men out.

How amazing that rescue workers on the surface were able to mathematically pinpoint the exact location in which the 33 miners were trapped and send a probe into their shelter.

How amazing that humans have created a tool that can drill a hole over 2000 feet straight into the ground.

How amazing that experts from all different fields collaborated to help them survive physically, emotionally, and psychologically in their underground camp.

How amazing that the 33 men all brought together in this disaster found a way to maintain civility throughout the whole ordeal without regressing to human savagery (a la Lord of the Flies).

How amazing that these men somehow retained their personalities and livelihood throughout the 69 day ordeal. The second miner to come out passed out souvenir rocks to the crowd greeting him at the top… How amazing that he could maintain a sense of humor after 69 days living in such conditions!

And how incredibly amazing that not one of the 33 men trapped in the mine died.

I’ve heard people calling this a miracle, attributing their phenomenal rescue to the will of some higher power. As a humanist, however, I think their rescue is the perfect example of what human kind working together can accomplish. The determination, strength, and ingenuity of every person involved in the Chilean mine rescue is just so inspirational, and reifies my beliefs in the capability and goodness of the human race. I’ve never been more confident that the human spirit is alive and well, and I’ve never been more in awe of what humans together can accomplish.

Kompasu

I am having such a quintessentially Korean week...

#1 Monday we had cake to celebrate a person at work's last day (because we do cake for just about everything here! Have I ever mentioned I love Korea?). He gave a short going away speech, not a word of which I understood but I think he enjoyed my trying to be an engaged listener anyways. So after the speech they passed out the cake which we then proceeded to eat with chopsticks... that's right, chopsticks. You know you're in Korea when...

No, it actually worked surprisingly well. I would do it again... Heck I would do most things again if there was cake involved :)

#2 I got to experience my first typhoon this morning. For those of you non-weather-classification-experts out there (like me!), a typhoon is essentially the same thing as a hurricane, only in Asia. Awesome. This particular typhoon, Typhoon Kompasu first hit land over southeastern China yesterday morning, built up speed, and passed over Korea early this morning, the eye traveling over Seoul (and me) at the beautiful hour of 6 am. Obviously this woke me up, seeing as listening to 90+ mph winds through a giant pane of glass from an upper floor of a building at 6 am sounds like the world is just collapsing! Of course I had to watch. It was so weird, I swear it was so windy it was blowing the puddles around on the rooftop of the building next door. And one of my cabinets on the exterior wall of my apartment, which contains all my venting equipment and whatnot, kept blowing open and closed, which made it seem even more like the world was about to end. Luckily I survived and ended up getting my full 8 hours of sleep. I'm sure you were concerned...

I summary, I'm glad I've experienced a typhoon, but I'm ok with not repeating that experience. Cake on the other hand, I could go for another slice right now.

Here's to no more category 3 weather emergencies this week!

- Christine -

ps. Business card update -- (because I'm sure you're all interested)
Mary -- 1
Uzoma -- 1
Me -- 2
Ha.