Dear Family and Friends,

Yesterday, I received an e-mail titled “A Bit of Bad Luck?” that was rather to the point:

Ok, now let me get this straight.
First you visit Thailand and then there is a Coup D'état.
Now you visit Korea and there is a nuclear explosion?
What's next???

My father, a man charming to the very tips of his typing fingers, eh?

Although I categorically refuse to admit that I am a jinx, after 29 years in a region whose major border dispute involved the taxation of softwood lumber, it does seem unfortunate that I have flown off to see the world and landed in not one but two regions that have recently felt the need to air their serious political problems to the world. And please, gentle reader, please do not think that I’m anything but appreciative to be getting plenty of bang out of this adventure.

Humor aside, as you may imagine, I’ve been keeping a keen eye on the news since reading reports that North Korea planned to test a bomb. I was amused that reports said that no official in South Korea was available for comment (Chuseok is a very serious holiday here) and I wondered whether North Korea had the capacity to carry through its threat. When the Monday morning news was heavy on menace, light on action, I was hopeful. Of course, at 11 am when reports surfaced on Google regarding a 3.5 quake centered in North Korea, my hope deflated. Oh, dear. I strolled by my British co-teacher’s desk and he looked a bit shaken while I was too casual. Together we confirmed the news, with undercurrents of “what happens next?” in our voices. But here’s the funny thing: as the day wore on, I didn’t spot a discernable reaction from the faculty or from the students. Granted, my school was very preoccupied with imminent midterms (in Korea only a local bomb blast could put hard-working students off test preparation); nonetheless, there was no visible upsurge in speculative talk, no televisions tuned into talking heads discussing the latest crisis. Initially I was puzzled although by day’s end, I found that teachers and students alike had taken notice. One student poignantly told me that he couldn’t understand why the world hadn’t visibly changed.

I sympathized.

That said, despite my Korean vantage, I cannot offer you collected insight at this time. But I’d like your indulgence to express an opinion:

I think it worth noting that although the US + China + South Korea + Japan are the “big powers” in this situation, as long as they cannot collectively work together, North Korea will control the situation.

Also, I do not believe, as others seem to, that Kim, Jong-Il can be simply written off as a lunatic. A megalomaniac, yes. Wily, perhaps. Evil. Dishonorable. No doubt. And his actions are unfathomable, especially to us Westerners, to be sure.

Yet what seems obvious to me is that North Korea thought it necessary to take a seriously strong stand against the United States. That North Korea believes that itself in sufficient danger to that it must risk almost all that it has going for it: vital relations with China, a cut off from essential food shipments from South Korea, additional financial pressures, and universal world condemnation. Although the US has repeatedly assured North Korea that the US has no plans to make war and neither does the US have a strategic interest in war on the Peninsula, the North Koreans seem skeptical. Why?

As we all recall with damning clarity, President Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union address that:

“Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.

Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror…

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

As we all know, the very moment “axis of evil” left our President’s lips, the words took on a life of their own both in the United States and abroad. No doubt, no doubt, these words and the danger behind them were especially noted by Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. Then, of course, the United States remained indifferent to North Korea and Iran in favor of attacking Iraq in March 2003. Years have gone by and here we are in late 2006. Even though we have yet to subdue the masses in Iraq, the two remaining “Axis of Evil” states have again and again defied the world community’s good opinion and have become either less secretive or more proactive, or both, regarding their supposed defensive development of nuclear weapons. On Sunday, Iran’s newly appointed Prime Ministry spokesman was busy reiterating to reporters that Iran “would not abandon uranium enrichment.” While Monday’s announcement from North Korea’s new agency stated that “… the Korean People’s Army and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability.” (North Korea doesn’t have a great number of native English speakers to vet is press releases). So United States’ problems with North Korea, with Iran, and even with Iraq continue to escalate and to me, our world seems less stable than it was after 2001.

My opinion is that that by calling North Korea evil then subsequently ignoring the country, then half-heartedly engaging in non-proliferation talks, then attacking Iraq, then using strong rhetoric adverse to North Korea, that these actions inspired North Korea to demonstrate its villainy. On some level, US foreign policy since 2002 has resulted in a situation where, as Sir Thomas Moore says “I pray you, what other thing do you, than make thieves and then punish them?”

I fear that in the end perhaps the paranoid North Koreans are right: the US shall make them into thieves and then we will punish them. A bit of bad luck indeed. –Laura