North Korea's at it again, making all kind of ominous threats about "thermo-nuclear warfare" and missile launches, offering to clear out embassy staff and warning foreigners in South Korea to find shelter or get out.
Normally this wouldn't concern me, because the North always pulls this stuff and it's not really going to do anything. The only reason I've become somewhat - I should emphasize the mildness of that "somewhat" - concerned is because this time other people seem concerned as well. Yes, the North normally makes all kinds of big-bark threats. But does the U.S. usually deploy warships to the coasts of South Korea and equip them with the means to shoot down missiles? I don't know. Maybe they do. I did read that it's standard procedure for the Japanese to roll out their anti-missile defense systems every time the North might launch a rocket of some sort, so even though the media's portraying that as a sign that World War III is imminent, it's just routine for them.
The Korean teachers that I work with are quite nonchalant about it. Most of them are convinced that nothing is going to come of the North's typical rants. Moreover, they aren't just not worried: they actually don't care. "They always do these kinds of things," they say. "It's nothing new. Why should I care?"
I'm more fascinated than I am concerned, so I've been following a lot of this in the news just because it's interesting to me, and I don't want to miss it if I have a front-row seat to something that makes history. But as someone mentioned in a news article, it's typical to see that the farther you get from the Korean peninsula, the more worried people are about the North.
So another thing that caused me to sit up and take notice this time was the fact that all my students have been talking about it with dire gravity.
Apparently there was a deeply-held belief that the North would launch a missile yesterday, on April 10th, and two of my classes came in and couldn't stop talking about it. One of them, a class of second-graders, said, "Teacher, North Korea will throw a missile to South Korea and we will die today."
Whenever new students come in and we have to say our names again, I make them say their name and what they want to be when they grow up. I always start off with my name and say, "and I want to be a superhero when I grow up."
Yesterday my second-graders asked me, "Teacher, will you go to North Korea and stop the missile?"
I asked them if they really, actually believed that they would die, and they kept saying, "Teacher, it was on the news!" I'm sure the part about North Korea potentially launching a rocket was what was on the news. I doubt the news said everyone would die.
One of them said, "Teacher, we are only nine years old, and should we die?" Even at nine, Korean age, they feel a great sense of injustice that they might die so young because of something so unecessary and so out of their control.
Another student asked me quite seriously, "Teacher, do you think North Korea will fire the missile to Gunsan?" I said I didn't think so.
I haven't been sleeping well for a while now, and it turns out I am pretty sick (thank you, kindergarteners!), so I am in a strange mental state to begin with due to my exhaustion. It doesn't help that I've been reading news on North Korea nearly obsessively - again, not because I'm worried so much as because I don't want to miss if anything goes down.
My students said the missile launch was supposed to happen at 11 p.m. last night, and that's exactly when I went to bed. I had trouble sleeping since I'm sick, but I was drifting off with all the sensationalist Western news swirling in my head and my ears peeled to every little sound in case something crazy happened.
Then, after midnight, my incredibly jarring doorbell woke me up with such a start that my heart was racing and I was shaky as I went to the door. I couldn't see who it was in the dark but my coworker lives down the hall from me and she'd been really nervous about all the stuff with North Korea, so I thought in my mind, "Maybe something big went down and she came by to let me know."
I opened the door and it was her, but not because anything had happened with the North. "I just came to say goodbye," she said, and I didn't understand. "I'm leaving," she said. I asked if she was joking. "No, I'm serious," she said. "I'm flying to America tomorrow morning."
She was leaving because everything about the North had gotten to her and she was scared of staying here.
I asked if she'd told our boss; she said she had and our boss had been okay with it and understanding. She seemed surprised that I didn't know she was leaving and said she thought the news would have gotten to me already. I thought maybe that made sense because I've been super busy and tired lately and haven't done much socializing. I thought, "Yeah, maybe she mentioned it to everybody else and I just wasn't there."
I wished her well and went back to bed. I didn't fall asleep again until after 1:30 sometime. Then at 3:30 a.m. the same jarring doorbell threw me out of bed. There's something really disorienting about only getting a couple hours or less of sleep. It's like being in high school all over again. Yuck.
Anyway. So I was kind of dizzy and shaky and had that pounding heart again and I went to the door. I didn't know who it could be since my coworker had already said goodbye, but I didn't know who else it'd be, so I answered it, and it was her again. She gave me her apartment key to pass on to our boss, and that was that.
So today was very interesting at work. I asked my coworkers if they'd known that she was leaving, and none of them found out earlier than the middle of the night last night. So I guess she decided yesterday. But all day long the schedule kept changing. I'm already so busy at work that there isn't really room for me to get much busier, but everybody else is absorbing all her classes. When she left last night she said, "I'm sorry for you guys," because we'd have to pick up the slack. But I just shrugged and said, "Ha, that's how it always is. It won't be anything unusual." Which is true. There's always something going on. I think knowing that that's how it is makes me appreciate my free time more, because in general I expect to be swamped at work, so the rare moment when I'm not is all the more delicious.
Throughout the day I think we got four different schedules as classes and teachers kept getting shuffled around to fill the gaps. And on top of that, one of my kindergarten students quit! I'm a little sad. She was definitely way behind the other kids, but she was making progress anyway, and I'll admit I really liked her. So there's a lot happening at work this week.
And it was nice to go back to my classes in the afternoon and say, "Ah, what do you know? We didn't die!"
Anything could happen still, but I'm not worried. I'm interested in seeing what will happen, and I'm looking forward to the challenges the future brings.
