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North Korea just fired some artillery on a S. Korean island killing one soldier and injuring 15.
Usually when I hear of NK SK beef I think, oh here are Koreans being drama queens again. It always seems like they start something once a year for attention.
This time I am slightly worried being that this is happening right after NK already torpedoed one of our ships, a little too recent in the government's mind I feel.
Now I am getting text messages from friends reminding me where the embassy is and telling me to carry my pasport at all times. Times like this make me really happy that I am an American citizen. Not that Americans are immune from war (obviously we love to war out) but we prefer to fight on other people's turf.
I mean North Korea can't be so dumb as too attack Seoul right?! Because South Korea will, if I may put in historical terms, "fuck them up".
I feel like non Koreans have this perception that South Koreans would want to be one big happy family if North Korea wasn't under the rule of such a psychotic leader. Yes, I think South Koreans sympathize because North Koreans are our brethern and we are cut from the same cloth. But really, logistically it would be difficult to take on a country that is severly malnourished, under developed, and uneducated.
Not to say it can't happen. If Kim Jong Il's son was somehow benevolent and decided to un brainwash his people, maybe? I mean anyone who looks at Seoul now and thinks about how this city was in ruins 60 years ago will believe in the possibilty of anything. We went from 1.5-3 million (total) Koreans killed and a country in total ruins to becoming the world's 13th largest economy and the producer of everyone's LCD TVs. The North Koreans unfortunately have not been as lucky.
If you are interested in how North Koreans live, I highly recommend the documentary "A State of Mind" which follows the lives of North Korean girls preparing for the Mass Games. The Mass Games are sort of awesome and supremely creepy at the same time. That is a different post altogether.
The film is available on netflix instant watch. It really captures the extent of how brainwashed these people are and how dire their circumstances are without being preachy nor from the POV of South Koreans.
A family of 4 gets a ration of 2 chickens a month! I do realize there are people in this world that don't get to eat any chickens at all but to a foodie like me this is horrible. Especially when you see how South Koreans eat. I remember thinking North Koreans probably don't eat too much Samgyetang (stuffed whole cornish hen soup).
Besides the whole starvation, torture, work camps that exist there, the worst has got to be the brainwashing and the ignorance. There is a great a scene where the girl visits a NK mountain for the first time and thinks it's so beautiful (she may or may not have cried, I forget). Then the viewer sees this mountain, and yes the mountain is pretty but nothing mind boggling. She will never be told of Mount Everest, the Great Barrier reef, the ruins of Machu Picchu, the pyramids of Egypt, the Victoria falls. She will live and die and never know of the beauty outside her borders. The tragedy is overwhelming.
Anyways this post was way longer than I intended, I highly recommended.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456012/
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