North Korea Themed Fear

It's hard to know exactly what's going on in the North. Some American teachers have broken their contracts with their schools and come home to the States because of the recent panic, ESL teachers from other parts of the English speaking world seem remarkably unconcerned. Some, amazingly, didn't even realize or know about the current North Korean situation.

After reading some frightening articles about their recent declaration of war on the South , I left my computer at work in search of my co-teacher, assuming she would be able to paint a more accurate picture of what was actually going on. Scarlett laughed off my fears and told me that the running joke among South Koreans is that North starts throwing fits every time it's people are starving and it needs economic aid. She said, "Picture a small child throwing a fit in the corner, screaming for supper. That's North Korea."

While I appreciate Scarlett and respect her perspective I could not really help but wonder if that perspective is bit naive. Shortly after this conversation my school had a "Tornado drill". Now I'm not an expert on twisters but I am fairly sure that when a "tornado" hits, the correct response if rarely to go outside-but that's what we practiced.... I went to a baseball game last night with some ESL teachers and we discovered that all of our schools have had "earthquake", "tornado", or "moonsoon" drills this past week. Clearly these are bomb drills aimed at getting the children outside the building as quickly as possible. So even if my co-teacher and other South Koreans I meet aren't frightened or scared by North Korea it seems like our school board is at least a little worried.

Yesterday I was sent a letter from the Canadian embassy outlining the different ways I could reach an evacuation point should one be called for. I called the embassy from my school to try and get a better sense of what's going on. They basically told me not to worry but to be ready and prepared to move quickly. They reccomended having an evucation pack handy. For all their reccomendations and suggestions, the Canadian embassy couldn't really offer any insights into the current situation.

Anyway my point is that I have no idea what's really happening over here and I'm a little worried.