The Marmot’s Hole

Adam Morris recently posted some rather thought-provoking commentary on the six-way talks over at Brainy Smurf, and I think it’s worthwhile jotting down some thoughts of my own. Originally, I was going to turn this into a policy discussion, but Adam makes it a point to avoid an in-depth foreign policy polemic to concentrate on other issues. For now, let’s say that Adam is disappointed in American diplomacy towards North Korea, I’m not, and leave the policy debate for another time. Anyway, let me reprint below what I consider the salient part of Adam’s post (but you should read all of it at his site):

All I know is that my proximity sharpens the edge on all of this. I do not like the idea of a nuclear weapons test occurring just to my north-east. Maybe most Americans can rest easy knowing that not even the strongest wind will carry the rays to their front porch, but it seems to me that this should have made a bigger splash than it has. I can’t help remark that this is like when I was a youngster and I watched Bush Sr. declare war on Iraq the first time. I went to school thinking, There is a war going on now there is a war going on now. Since the US is being stubborn it is unlikely the talks will result in any fruit. So will I wake up on Sept. 10th, the day before the second anniversary of witnessing the worst display of violence in my memory, thinking that another rogue nation has just developed their atomic program and could conceivably reach me? Sure, N. Korea won’t attack, but the Iraqi war never reached me either, and the sudden abruptness in worldview is the same.

War isn’t pretty, but it’s far worse to witness a war that isn’t getting any attention. I can’t come to any conclusion about who should I be criticizing more, America or my insane neighbor, but I can deduce the area is becoming all the more unstable with each blared statement by both countries, e.g.: We will not budge. N. Korea is blackmailing us. or from the other side, You must give us what we want. We will test nukes. It is a shame that I have to name my home country as among those quoted.

This is a rather interesting response, because it’s quite a contrast with how many of us feel here on the Peninsula. Before I continue, a caveat - I in no way, shape, or form wish to diminish the seriousness of the situation. It is, after all, a crisis - and a major one at that. That being said, since the Korean War, South Koreans have had to deal with what seems to be an endless procession of crises. Frankly, many Koreans (and expats living in Korea) are sick of hearing about them - we have become insensitized to the threat of war, a threat that has continued non-stop since the Armistice Agreement was signed in 1953. Seoul has lived in the crosshairs of North Korea’s artillery and rocket forces for decades - it has become an inescapable part of everyday life, and we have simply accustomed ourselves to it. And the same goes for the many ironies and contradiction of living in a country divided. I resided in the Uijeongbu area (north of Seoul) for about three years. I remember sitting in the Uijeongbu Central Market once, eating ddokboggi (spicy fried rice cakes), when it suddenly occured to me that here I was, surrounded by more food than God knows what to do with, and only a 40-minute drive away was the North Korean city of Kaesong, stuck in the middle of one of the 20th century’s worse famines. But the strange thing is, that’s the only time I can recall ever contemplating it, and it was only for a second before I went back to work on my ddokboggi. I look out my window every morning and see idyllic rice paddies and peaceful green mountains - only the sound of F-5s taking off from nearby Kwangju AB give any indication of the political situation. Even at the DMZ, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more tranquil landscape - last Chusok, I visited the “Punchbowl” basin in Yanggu, Kangwon Province, now home to a quiet and prosperous farming community that differs little from others in Korea; only the exhibits at the local museum testify to the savage fighting there 50 years ago between American and South Korean Marines and North Korean forces.

Again, this is not to say that the situation is not serious - from what I’ve heard from both South Korean and American servicemen who have done their duty along the DMZ, the tensions are indeed quite real, and incidents occur all the time. But as a civilian, it’s a reality that seems quite detached. North Korea misbehaves all the time; a week doesn’t go by without the Norks doing something provocative. I don’t mean to write a definitive list here, but during the last 50-odd years since the end of the war, South Koreans (and the Americans who serve here) have had to deal with repeated North Korean incursions into South Korean territory (and several high-profile attempts to assassinate South Korean heads of state), a number of flagrant acts of terrorism (including the bombing of South Korean passenger planes), kidnappings, several incidents of violent provocation against American forces based around the Peninsula (including the ‘68 seizure of the USS Pueblo in international waters, the ‘69 shooting down of an American spy plane over the Sea of Japan, and the ‘76 “Axe Handle Murders” in the DMZ), and a nuclear crisis that has continued unabated since the early 90s. North and South Korea are still technically at war, as are the North Koreans and the Americans. And that’s just the “real” stuff - I haven’t included all the “bullshit” incidents either set up by or manipulated by successive South Korean governments looking to play the “North Korean card” at home (and I’m sure you can imagine the kind of cynicism that breeds). Domestically, we’ve had coups, constitutional crises, assassinations, violent student and labor demonstrations, and social turmoil resulting from 40 years of breakneck industrialization. Yet, all these crises passed without “hot war” breaking out (although we came damn close in ‘94). Heck, it was only last year when we had a full-scale naval exchange in the West Sea - an act of war for most countries. But here, it’s just the North Koreans being the North Koreans. Did the North Koreans threaten to test a nuclear device two days ago? Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn’t. Who the hell knows what they said (and what they meant when they said it). But as the White House correctly pointed out, the Norks say off-the-wall crap all the time. They are ALWAYS threatening war, a war that everyone knows they can’t win and are unlikely to start (barring a tragic miscalculation of Biblical proportions). I can’t feel a sudden “abruptness in worldview” - it’s like this 24/7 around here, and when I wake up in the morning, my chief concern is not whether or not the Norks are going to test a nuclear device, but whether or not the local 7-11 has my favorite triangle kimbap.

Being somewhat of a foreign policy buff, I do follow closely the ongoing crisis with the North, and it makes for great blog material. Yet I’m not panicking. Yes, these are going to be ugly negotiations - most of the time, I wonder why we’re even having them. Today, I read on Yahoo! News that the North Koreans are rejecting further talks. Perhaps that might concern some readers, but for me, it’s just the Norks being the Norks. Washington said positive things about the talks, the North Koreans read that as meaning the Americans want to talk, so now they pretend that they don’t want to in order to force the Americans to offer concessions just to get them back to the table. Standard operating procedure in Pyongyang. Again, I don’t want to play down the seriousness of the situation - this could, conceivably, blow up into a very nasty conflagration in which the Marmot’s ass stands a strong chance of getting nuked. But that being said, I’m way too used to this kind of shit to really care any more. It’s just another day in the Republic of Korea.