Thursday, August 30, 2012

North Korea

I get questioned a lot about North Korea. Whats the situation over here? Do you feel scared so close to North Korea?

Truthfully... no. I don't feel any fear at all. It may be because i've always grown up in a safe place, but it could also be that the South Koreans aren't scared either.

Maybe not scared isn't the right way to put it... they are indifferent. They don't think about North Korea because it's too much to think about, so they ignore it. 

The fact of the matter is that if anything were to happen, whether good or bad, it would disturb South Korean life and they don't want that. Their economy is growing quickly and they don't want anyone to disturb their current lifestyle.

Some people call for a reunification of the Koreas. While this seems like a great idea at first (given that the NK government falls of course), their economies and lifestyles are too drastically different now.  It would end up costing South Korea incredibly large amounts of money.

Their mindsets are also very different.  NK citizens are grown up brainwashed (at least the older generations, the younger ones more or less realize the situation they are in I believe). Just by looking at the defectors from NK to SK we can see the differences. NKs who come to SK have an incredibly hard time adjusting to the new lifestyle.  Even though they have the same language, the SK version is drastically different now because it includes english. NK doesn't. The education systems are too different as well. NKs that come to SK often have to learn everything over again and need extensive tutoring in English. 

(FYI: it is very difficult for a NK to come to SK. We're talking extensive planning, money, and risk being caught over and over again. I'll write an entry on this subject later, it's too extensive)

With the recent US elections coming up, there is a joke going around with my crazier students. The joke is that we're all going to die in November. I figured out that it was because we currently have the support of Obama, but if he doesn't get re-elected, then we could possibly lose the support of the US and could face a bigger conflict with the North.

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