The one I forgot about

Last week I wrote about my fear that my 8th grade units are always accompanied by disaster - the hurricane/earthquake units that lined up with hurricanes and earthquakes, and this year's corruption unit, finished just yesterday, that was concurrent with both the President Roh investigation and Roh's suicide. I joked that I hoped that nobody would try to stick me with teacher bribery, since that was another part of our unit.

Well, we've jumped from grade 8 to grade 9. 9th grade just finished the unit on the Korean War, with vocabulary words like armistice and truce, which are evidently not so relevant anymore. Yes, on the 27th, North Korea declared their rejection of the armistice, opening the door for potential military confrontations. The media has produced speculation from the levelheaded (Above, "But analysts played down the likelihood of a full-scale conflict between North and South Korea but said clashes near the sea border were possible.") to the WHARRGARBL EVERYBODY PANIC ("...if the North were to strike South Korea today, it would probably first try to savage Seoul with the men and missiles of its huge conventional army").

Clearly I'm no expert on North Korea - I'm barely a dilettante on South Korea - so I don't have any predictions of any kind here. (And, after writing my senior thesis on the fall of Nanjing, I don't want to go there and jinx anything). I can tell you that everybody is going about their business and no South Koreans seem particularly stressed. They have a seen-it-before attitude with North Korean saber rattling - they've done it so many times in the past. Most people think that this may be posturing to drum up domestic support in North Korea for a transition from Kim to one of his sons.

So what can I say to parents who are freaking out? Other Korea bloggers offer this:

The Marmot's Hole: "[a journalist] is taking North Korean threats a bit too seriously — North Korea is ALWAYS threatening to do something scary."

GI Korea: "I have been reading today about all the people concerned about war on the peninsula because of North Korea withdrawing from the armistice agreement. What these people fail to realize is that the North Koreans never followed the armistice agreement to begin with... So this threat to not respect the Armistice Agreement is nothing new and being used by North Korea to legitimize any response to any South Korean attempt to board and inspect North Korean ships. As I have stated before joining and actually enforcing the PSI are two different things and North Korea is letting it be known that there will be consequences if the PSI is enforced."

Generally not worried, then. We're registered with the Embassy, we'll wire our U.S. dollar money home soon, and I took a page from Japan's playbook which I learned about at the Emergency Preparedness Center: all Japanese people keep emergency backpacks at home by the door in the event of an earthquake. So I've filled a little pack with a first-aid kit, our passports, hats and sunscreen, some food, and U.S. dollars, in case we need to move quickly. I don't expect (with a giant knock on wood here) that we'll need it, and I hope very much to feel stupid when I unpack this for heading home in a few weeks. But it gives me some peace of mind to have it.

Send peaceful vibes!