Overload, pt. 1

Where to begin? The past two weeks have been strange and fun and emotional for a million different reasons, but I'll try to start from the top and work through them. Bear with me.

North Korea: scary, fascinating, indecipherable. I didn't know much about the country going in, and I feel like I left it knowing even less. It was a one-day tour to the town of Kaesong, North Korea, with a population of 350,000 people, apparently. I want to stress the ostensible nature of the population count because, to my inexpert eyes, the town was considerably smaller than North Bay, Ontario, which has an estimated population of 70,000 people. Even if we assume every residence in Kaesong is crammed to the brim with occupants (not an unreasonable assumption, perhaps), it still seems unlikely to get anywhere near the stated total.

I'm focusing on the population figures here, not because they're necessarily all that important in and of themselves, but because they show one of the problems inherent in visiting "The Last Stalinist Regime" in order to learn about it: you have no idea what's true and what's not. In addition to Kaesong, we also visited a small Buddhist temple, at which we saw a Buddhist monk. Since I was under the impression that all religion is banned in the country (Kim Jong-Il and his father, Kim Il-Sung, are the only worshippable entities), however, I asked my (South) Korean tour guide about it, and he confirmed my suspicions, saying that the "monk" was actually an actor there to give the appearance of freedom of religion. Interesting, no?

It's difficult to infer too much from one day, but here are some other observations/speculations:
-all the North Koreans we saw were very thin, likely a consequence of the famine of the late 1990s, early 2000s, in which hundreds of thousands- if not millions- of people are said to have died.
-other than our tour buses, the government cars escorting them, and a few army vehicles, we saw almost no motorized transport at all. A few people had bicycles, but the vast majority of North Koreans seem to get around exclusively on foot, not that there would often be much cause for them to travel distances that require anything more than that.
-due, no doubt, to the scarcity of motor vehicles, the air was crisp and clean.
-we saw very few businesses at all. A movie theatre, a department store (with two or three articles of clothing in the display window) and a barber shop are all that come to mind right now. It's most definitely not a country operating on an open capitalist model, not that that should really surprise anyone.
-It's a scary place, not that that should really surprise anyone either. At the border, returning to South Korea, the guards checked everyone's digital cameras to ensure nobody had taken photos of things they shouldn't. I had taken a couple of pictures of a traffic cop and some of private residences- these were deleted from my camera. By not even the wildest flights of imagination could these have been construed as security risks or containing sensitive information, yet the guards acted as though I had taken compromising picture of Kim Jong-Il himself.

Recommended reading: The Aquariums of Pyongyang. Chol-Hwan Kang spent 10 years in a North Korean prison camp before being released. He later escaped to South Korea, then wrote a book about his experiences. Check it out.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth

As my time here in South Korea starts to wind down, I've begun a list of things to do before I leave.

Some of them are relatively simple, such as certain dishes I have yet to try (live octopus), or mountains that are only a daytrip away, while others require a bit more work. You may or may not remember a poll in the fall asking whether I should go to North Korea- I'm going on May 31st. This intrigues me, but I'm still uncertain that it's for the best. We shall see.

I've also started a list of things to do after I leave. These, again, range from the fairly elaborate (temples in Cambodia, snorkeling in Thailand, jungling in Malasyia), to the more-mundane-but-no-less-anticipated (shopping at a North American supermarket, going to an English-language library).

I've started and stopped writing this post several times now, for the simple reason that I'm not sure what my point is, or even if I have one. I think I'm just happy to have options. I went with Robert Frost for my opening, but I could just have easily gone with Ecclesiastes:
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.

And soon there'll be a new Ask The Waeguk.

The Poll is Closed...

... and the results have been tabulated.

On the North Korea Question, the people have spoken as follows:

Yes: 25%
Don't Know: 33%
No: 25%
Do What You Want: 17%

All in all, not the most conclusive of surveys, but that may be fitting. I probably won't be going to North Korea any time soon, but I'm not entirely ruling it out, either.

I've switched to a three-column blog; my hope is that this template will be the one that lasts for a while, but we'll see. The additional column should make for a less cluttered look, so that benefits everybody. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and I went to Japan last week. We left on Wednesday, came back on Thursday. From the little I saw of it, Fukuoka's a nice town, but not particularly exciting. It's cleaner than Busan, which is good, but there are fewer Korean restaurants, the value of which really corresponds to your opinion of Korean food.

Although I had a good 48 hours, I was surprised at the relief I felt upon returning to Korea, where even the modicum of Korean I speak far surpasses the amount of my Japanese. It's still a pretty pathetic amount, though. If anybody knows a KSL teacher, please give them my contact info.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 3

Since watching a soccer game in which the North Korean team was misidentified with the South Korean flag, Monti from Oakville wonders if South Koreans are offended if called North Koreans, and vice versa.

The Waeguk Responds

Up to now, Monti, I have not met a North Korean, nor have I made the mistake of mixing up North and South, so what I can offer you is only idle speculation.

At school (the site of the majority of my conversational interactions with bona fide citizens of the Republic of Korea), the topic of politics rarely comes up, and North Korea is mentioned even less frequently.

With very, very few exceptions, North Koreans stay in North Korea. It is not a country with anything even close to open borders. By and large, South Koreans are not allowed into the North, and citizens of other countries who wish to do so must go through China, such is the nature of the DMZ, the "world's most heavily fortified border," as countless websites and guidebooks are quick to tell us, breathlessly noting the 2 million soldiers who line its sides.

Given this, and the fact that the Korean peninsula was only one country until the end of the Second World War, one would think that the "rogue state" to the north would be frequent watercooler fare. From what I've seen, however, it isn't. It may be that the situation, although scary, has remained the same for long enough that there really isn't much to talk about on a day-by-day basis. It may be that it's not a topic one would choose to broach with colleagues as part of casual office chatter, particularly if those colleagues are Westerners and the topic is one with considerable emotional weight.

In terms of your question, Monti, my best guess is that South Koreans would be largely bemused if someone were to mix up the North and South, especially if that someone happened to be living in South Korea. Although they share four thousand years of heritage, the countries' paths since 1945 have been so radically different that to confuse the two would be akin to being unable to distinguish between the USA and the USSR, circa 1980.

Maybe I'll try flipping the names this week, just to test my hypothesis. But probably not.

Bright and shiny toy, shady and troublesome question

The more perspicacious and faithful of my readers may have already noticed the poll button to the right-hand side of the page. While this does, first and foremost, give you another way to focus your attention on me, it also gives me a way of getting feedback on my ponderables.

Currently, as the initial poll would suggest, the topic of North Korea is on my mind. It's a country I'm curious about for a number of reasons, from the apparent physical beauty of the landscape to the complete and utter power held by Kim Jong-Il. From everything I've heard and read, his is a dictatorship which wields power so thoroughly there's no chance to even contemplate any sort of dissent, let alone act on it. Death camps, repression, economic devastation and famine...

If I visit North Korea, my tourist dollars are, either implicitly or explicitly, going to finance and therefore support the regime. This is not a good thing. On the other hand, if tourism can encourage more dialogue with the rest of the world, it may in some tiny, minuscule way lead to a slight loosening of the fist, which can't be a bad thing.

Of course, by posting this entry I may find myself banned from entering it even if I do choose to do so.

Anyway, all you poli-sci, international studies, or generally opinionated people, let me know what you think.