Tensions

I'm sure everyone back home knows about the shenanigans that North Korea has been pulling of late. Lots of people have been asking, "So, is everyone there freaking out?"

Amazingly, no. Aside from a couple of air-raid siren tests and some jets flying practice drills overhead last week, the mood is pretty much unchanged in the "Land of the rising sun".

Talking to teachers in Mokpo, they are realatively unphased by the test. They feel that the North is just stuck in a game of brinksmanship and that the South has really nothing to fear. The North will hope for a juicy aid package from the States (which the American's won't let happen) or they will just go on their merry way trying to get the bomb down from the size of a house to missile size. At this point, reports say the test was between 1/30th and 1/2 the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima so many years ago. Our teachers were shocked to hear that many of the ESL teachers had registered with the Canadian Embassy to be kept informed if things should escalate... obviously they didn't think it was that big a deal.

People do say that the elderly are more fearful, but that is because they are the of the few who still remember the atrocities of the war and the 2.5 million plus Koreans from both sides who were killed. Japan, it is felt, is the one most at risk, in this story, simply because their relationship in the region is still strained.

At the end of the day, the common feeling is that this test will only result in North Korea becoming more isolated (Sanctions/ship inspections will be more for show and probably won't be strictly enforced), will only serve to scare Japan and South Korea into further arming, and will drop the curtain on any hopes of a reunion between the South and North; something both have yearned for since the war.