Life Below the Wire: A Lesson in Survival

These days my inbox is overflowing with urgent emails.  “Are you okay?  Do you need to come home? I have a couch you can use if you need it.”  From their implicit tones of worry, you’d think I had lost my job or been diagnosed with cancer.  In reality, it is simply because I live in South Korea.  Each note I return with just a few words: “Everything is fine.  Don’t worry. Carry on.” Why the nonchalance? Simply put, there is nothing new under the Korean sun.

As Western journalists clamber towards the new shiny thing on display in the Far East, it is easy for media-drenched Americans to forget that North-South discord in the Koreas is not new, and that in fact the Korean War of the 1950s never actually ended.  Because my family lives here with the U.S. Army, we are never allowed to forget the fact.  The city of Seoul, where I live, regularly conducts civil defense drills.  The subways we use every single day are lined with gas masks.  The basement parking areas of every city high-rise serve a second purpose as an underground shelter.  Once a year I drag my toddler son and rescue mutt along with our emergency gear through a full evacuation drill.  Preparedness is simply a way of life in South Korea, but 60 years of vigilance has not prevented the locals from living full, productive lives.  In fact, the phenomenon of accelerated cultural and economic growth that characterizes the recent history of South Korea is nothing short of amazing and nearly impossible to duplicate elsewhere.  It is as if the people have collectively decided to give the Kim Dynasty of the North the huge metaphorical middle finger by being healthier, happier, and more prosperous than should be possible given their impoverished starting point a mere six decades ago during the height of military conflict.  

After days of tuning out news broadcasts of impending doom here in Asia, an image of spattered blood on the news stopped me dead in my tracks.  In an instant, the news of massacre in Boston registered, and I was overwhelmed with a strange intense mixture of grief and inappropriate relief.  I was in the waiting room of a military hospital exactly as I had been 12 years ago when I saw those first images of planes careening into the Twin Towers.  I felt exactly the same, but with an unusual feeling of security that I could only experience by not being in the United States.  The irony did not escape me.  I live a stone’s throw from the border of an unpredictable and dangerous military regime, and yet I am safer than if I was living my carefree and unburdened life in my home country.  

What the newsreels fail to capture is the truth of modern unconventional conflict:  It is intentionally unpredictable.  When a 30-something dictatorial tyrant says that he’s about to blow your city to smithereens, he probably won’t.  And when you think the coast is clear, it probably isn’t.  But we can’t stop living.  We can prepare and brace ourselves for the worst as have these amazing people, but in the end the only way to win the global war on tyrants and terrorists is to thrive just as the South Koreans have.

So carry on bravely, my friends.  My heart and prayers are with you.