Chaos Revisited

Turns out, I have strong circumstantial evidence that North Korean officials read my blog. Before I get started, thank you for reading. As you may recall, I stated previously that North Korea is part Dr. Evil, part Wille E. Coyote; that is, possessing desires for world domination, and matched with an inability to do anything about them. And just last night I wrote:

…there is that crazy little bastard of a neighbor up north, who, at any given moment could decide to provoke a war.

Better yet, I listed it as a positive for South Korea. A little bit of unpredictability to spice up your life! So, it seems that the North Korean brass read my post, and thought, “Yeah, we’ll show this little smart ass” (though it was probably the Korean equivalent), and they went ahead and did this:

OK, North Korea, you have my attention. This was, more or less, the largest exchange of firepower between the two countries since the signing of the armistice agreement in 1953. North Korea fired over 200 artillery shells at the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong while South Korean and US troops were performing military exercises. Two soldiers (both South Korean) died in the attack, which leads me to believe that North Koreans have terrible aim. I shouldn’t make light of any soldier’s death, but seriously, two hundred shells for two lives and fewer than twenty injuries? That’s the best you can do? I guess artillery is not included with horseshoes and hand grenades in objects where being close counts.

There has been a lot of speculation as to the meaning of these attacks. First of all, it is only about 6 months after the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, that cost about 40 sailors their lives. Secondly, it has only been six weeks since Kim Jong Il named his son as his successor. Is this the last hurrah of a dying despot? Or the emergence of a new breed of crazy in his son? Most experts are leaning toward the former, but the escalation in activity this year begs many questions.

South Korea, for their part, are more or less stuck between a rock and hard place. Any escalation with North Korea could get out of control very quickly, cause the won to quickly drop in value, and be extremely costly to their long-term economic growth. Oh, and the North Koreans have nukes. That said, they can’t just sit back and wait for North Korea to attack again on a whim.

The locals don’t seem terribly concerned about it, and well, when in Seoul, do as the Seoulites do. The subway ride home was almost surreal, a war nearly broke out less than 150 miles away, and everyone was on their cell phones, playing video games and relaxing after a long day of work. TVs were on in every restaurant I passed, but they were not tuned to the news networks, they were watching the South Korea-UAE soccer match.

I think there’s a lesson here for Americans, who, it must be noted, often panic over much smaller threats than nuclear annihilation. As such, I will stand by my original assessment of why a little chaos does a country good. Real threats make small, every day annoyances and concerns appear to be precisely that: small. In a strange way, today was the best day I’ve had in awhile.