The Drill

Today I was reminded that I currently reside in a country that technically is yet at war. While teaching the first class after lunch, the speaker system suddenly interrupted my explanation of the dialogue. Immediately a teacher began an announcement in Korean, greeted by cheers from my students. One girl, particularly good at English and attentive to my unaware state, explained that at 2:00 we would begin a practice response for a North Korean attack.

"An attack?"

A loud wailing siren answered, confirming her explanation. An announcer began explanations that, though I understand little Korean, spoke loudly of crisis and alarm. The continuous crackling and echoey distance painted the touches of reality, similar in my mind to the tense World War Two radio broadcasts in London during the German blitzkrieg; a low flying plane at that moment added to the intensity.

Yet all the students sat laughing and talking in their seats, glad for the break from class.

How familiar this is to them. Children who have grown up in a warring country without ever having been touched by the effects or trauma of the war. They are inured to the war drills, as I was accustomed to lining up with a sturdy book for a tornado drill as a child. Yet I walked dazed from class, knowing that in what I esteem to be the safest country I have known, there is the extant threat from the other Korea to the North.