Sweet Dreams and Nightmares on the Korean Peninsula

A ghastly pandemic and global politics have combined to deny people the opportunity to reunite with loved ones in China. Previously available and affordable non-stop commercial flights between the US and China have not resumed; and alternative routes are both circuitous and costly. So, having not seen our son and his wife since late in 2019 and having never met in person their now 19-month-old son, we took advantage of slightly relaxed travel policies to rendezvous with them in Seoul, South Korea where, as good fortune would have it, the Korean woman we had hosted for her four college years was delivering her first child. It was a spectacular week for which I will always give thanks.

But enough for now about the Asian branch of our family tree.

One of the things I savor most about international travel is at least perusing and usually devouring  international editions of newspapers. These print editions are nothing like those sold in the USA; they are much broader in both format and content.  

These international newspapers, which are available in many hotel lobbies and at most public newsstands of major cities around the globe, appear in yester-year’s much more substantial 6-column, 14-inch-wide format. They make the trim, modern national and local newspapers of the USA look like 1960s-era elementary school “Weekly Readers.” When you hold one of these “throw-back” international editions in your hands, it feels like you’re holding something that took time to prepare and was not rushed into circulation to compete with the tyranny of cable television’s 24-hour-a-day “breaking news” cycle and the internet’s unvetted, unedited false rumor factory of social media. 

And as for content, how revealing it is to sample these editions for international reactions to the big stories in the US and to read detailed accounts of foreign news that was abridged or altogether overlooked by local and national print and broadcast news outlets in the US. For example (a small sampling)…

While in Seoul, we read that South Koreans were less impressed with the singing of “American Pie” by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol than were people in the US; and some commentators and many citizens believe that just as soon as Yoon is voted out of office, his incessant wardrobe-changing wife – former businesswoman Kim Keon-hee – will land in jail for her stock manipulation schemes and other corrupt business practices prior to her husband’s election. South Koreans are more than a little mystified about how long it takes to jail a certain corrupt businessperson turned politician in the US.

International editions provided circumspect coverage of the failure of a few US banks, and of the crypto-currency collapse, and the fact that Elon Musk has sent Twitter aflutter. But in the same editions one could read of the Chinese crackdown on individuals whom the central government holds responsible for recent failing banks and businesses in China. I couldn’t avoid the suspicion that while many readers in other parts of the world might be critical of some autocracies’ rush to judgements and the crushing consequences, they might also view the US judicial system as at least somewhat slow and sloppy. 

While North Korea’s portly Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un often is the subject of caricature and cartoons in newspapers and the brunt of late-night television jokes in the US, he’s no laughing matter in South Korea which still maintains barbed wire borders along the Han River a mere half-hour drive from the center of Seoul, its capital city of 10 million people.  South Koreans did not fail to take note of former US President Donald Trump’s “friendship” with North Korea’s delusional dictator, like two peas in a pyromaniacal pod. 

I have the sense that South Koreans harbor nearly equal fear that two catastrophic mistakes will be made in the not-too-distant future. One, that a North Korean launched missile will go awry and return to impact the Korean peninsula. And, two, that American voters will return an equally unpredictable and dangerous loose cannon to the White House. 

JER