Dear Friends and Family,

Ok, so I was joking earlier about the necessity of you calling the US Embassy on my behalf to entreat for a shower and some sleep. But I was not joking about the actual scheduled visit and one afternoon last week, a first generation Korean-American and the current US Assistant Ambassador to Korea, arrived at Taegu Foreign Language High School to speak to and with our 176 juniors.

The students trooped into the auditorium clutching copies of two NPR "This I Believe” essays, one was written by Colin Powell and the other by Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh. I hadn’t read the essays but ever-susceptible to NPR, immediately decided that the speaker was an American after my own heart. As the students seated themselves throughout the darkened auditorium, my British co-teacher and I settled ourselves towards the back while our Korean teachers handed out photocopied signs that said “Agree” on one side and “Disagree” on the other. The signs incited chatter and there was a fair bit of goofing off with the signs in my row, the goofing being particular to my seat and the one occupied by the Brit next to me.

When the Assistant Ambassador assumed the podium, the audience respectfully quieted. He started slowly and spoke English, indicating that our talk was two firsts for him: it was his first time speaking to a high school audience (he usually speaks to universities, I think) and it was his first time speaking directly to a group in English, usually he must pause for a translator to convey his words. He began by presenting statements on PowerPoint slides and he asked students to raise their agree/disagree signs in order to voice their opinions. The students liked this. Actually, so did I. But he then turned the topic to the ideas in the “This I Believe Essays,” using words like freedom and democracy in a well-meant attempt to demonstrate how Korea & the US share similar values. I am sure that he sincerely wanted to engage the students but the concepts and his delivery were a bit too abstract to be comprehensible, for myself and for our students.

Happily, after his speech, the Assistant Ambassador opened the floor for questions and things became a bit more lively. As the students were pondering the usual “do you have any questions?,” I raised my hand and said into the quiet: "I have a question." This resulted in a collective "ooooh" from the students but I concentrated on the podium and asked the assistant ambassador to define "freedom" - which he had used pretty liberally throughout his talk. His response was vague (so to would be mine if I hadn’t thought this out ahead of time) and I cannot say that I was impressed. And nor were the students. Then the students began to raise their hands, were called on and stood to ask questions. Some students were able to ask the questions off the top of their heads while other students wrote their questions on their agree/disagree signs and then read their questions to the speaker. And no one of the questions that followed mine appeared easy to answer. Students asked "why attack Iraq?," "what does he think about Korean peninsula reunification?," “what is it like living in Korea as a Korean-American?,” “does he regret not being raised in Korea?,” and "doesn't North Korea have the right to defend itself, including with nuclear weapons, just as the US does?" He was clearly unprepared to answer such questions – and it was rather amusing to watch him flounder. He had been forbidden to talk about North Korea but did his other replies were quiet and sincere. I was touched by how hard he tried and better understood his dilemma when he later told me that in the year that he's been in Korea, he's never had such difficult questions. And in that year he’s been in Korea, he’s never been asked about Iraq.

My favorite part of the talk, by far, was observing the incisiveness of the questions and surmising the thinking behind them.

Since the US Assistant Ambassador to Korea’s visit, I’ve opened my junior classes by congratulating my students on their questions and by sharing with them how impressed the Assistant Ambassador was with them. I then ask if they have any questions that they’d like to run by me. One class let me talk for a few minutes before informing me, gently, that they really didn’t care. I grimaced and laughed and changed the subject. Another class was completely quiet and then one brave young man raised his head and said quietly: “North Korea?” That was all. But I – we all – knew what he was asking. And I did my best to answer the question, without prejudice, and including my understanding so far derived from living in Korea. Chances are that it wasn’t a definitive answer, but I am fairly certain that I and my fellow citizen from the Embassy got points for effort.

Hey, why don’t YOU all chew on the notion that North Korea has a right to self-defense???? In the meantime, I think I’ll see about that long ago-promised sleep and shower.

Good luck. --Laura

PS: "This I Believe" essays are fantastic - and I'm not just saying that because I'm NPR deprived. You can find them on the web at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138.