By the lights of some 45-story condos, finished in 2007, I watched two jet fighters practicing maneuvers at elven in the evening. I can't help but salivating like the dogs of war that might be forthcoming.

Everyday now for the past week more air patrols, more missile tests, atomic tests, diplomatic strangleholds and trade embargoes. It wasn't the ballistic test in April that piqued my curiosity. It wasn't the captured journalists or the anti-aircraft tests. Not even the nuclear test pushed me up to the line. It was the Quesong Industrial Complex that raised my eyebrow. It is my stated opinion that there cannot be war until trade relations break down.

Maybe I sound like a broken record of cliches, but the state acts solely out of self interest and the blood of a nation is found in trade. This is how economies expand and contract, imports and exports, tariffs these are the keys which open the door of friendship. South Korea and Israel offer strategic advantages near resources and benefit from the fruits of American labors, Chad and Mali have nothing so they are devastated by civil war and lack consistent access to medicine.

...to be continued.

And then

there's that day when you realize "my god. I am actually in Korea."

These are the doldrums, 208 days remaining

And so it was determined that contract would be honored above all else. There would be no early return home. There would be no warm summer in Lincoln. There would be seven more months on the other side of the planet. The subtle longings for home would have to be dealt with. The isolation would have to be dealt with. The time would have to be filled.

Now the rules have changed. The five month mark has produced unforeseen difficulties. Looking down the barrel of seven more months causes one to draw new conclusions. The first, the novelty has worn off. The thing that made the first third of this adventure fly by was the newness of a fresh environment. The constant new information was refreshing and exciting but the strength of routine is back and now information has a cognitive schema to fit into.

The second, I am not quite halfway finished. Close enough that I can consider my next move after Korea but far enough that attempts at gathering information are met with a polite we-don't-know-our-situation-yet form email. Stuck in the zone of a closing semester and a tantalizingly close downhill slide leads to conclusion three.

I am stuck on the peninsula now. There is no other option for the following two hundred and eight days. While all my friends enjoy the fruits of a traditional Nebraska summer I have a duty to perform and it will be discharged. Sometimes it fun. Sometimes I genuinely enjoy doing this work, connecting with kids and transferring knowledge can be very rewarding. Other times the constant yelling, touching and running around lead to panic attacks and crippling loneliness. The nights where three a.m. walks to Russ's and a cup of coffee at midnight become sacred moments in a past life.

With new resolve and hopeful optimism I prepare for the change that is always going to come.

October 21, 2008

There won't be another one of her for a long time.

The Tragedies of Northeast Asia Tour

Ever say to yourself "I'd love to relive some of the blinding atrocities of imperial expansion, but I just don't have the time" well come to picturesque Northeast Asia and in one glorious week you can relive the past hundred years of Kafkaesque brutality in the comfort of your own shoes.

First you will be whisked away to the fabulous Demilitarized Zone where you can feel superior to the people just ten miles away gouging desperately to carve out a living under the cockeyed glare of the world's most insane head of state. Be thrilled as soldiers march, endlessly guarding a border that allows goods to go across it daily to one of two North Korean free trade zones. But fear not! Capitalist brainwashing can't infiltrate THIS workers' paradise thanks to the one-size-solves-all-problems wall surrounding it!

And just when you thought it was over you're off to Tienanmen Square where you can lie on the ground under a statue of a tank. It's so much fun you'll wish your government was violently cracking down on the right to assemble.

The fun doesn't stop until you visit beautiful Nagasaki where the haunting ghosts of the thousands of flash-dead still haunt the McDonald's, Starbucks and Radio Shack that gently surround a memorial like a string of delicate pearls. And what's that? Is it graffiti? No! It's the last remnants of a child walking down the street one day seventy years ago.

And like all things, this has to end. Your final destination will be Dokdo Island where you can sip margarita's safe in the knowledge that this island's sovereignty and fertile fishing waters were paid for with Korean blood so that their Japanese masters could remain satisfied and rested while they plotted a brutal genocide of Koreans on yet another ill-conceived expedition to the Chinese mainland.

All for the low price of 3,000,000 won or $200 you can be thrilled by the abject horror of three nations eternally locked in a competition for honor through mass-murder. Don't forget to sample the local food of fermented (rotting) cabbage called kimchi, soup featuring fish heads and beef proudly cut from cattle strung out like a bay area junkie.