Woo Seung-yep carries a camouflage backpack containing bottled water, canned food and a gas mask. He keeps it ready at all times—just in case war suddenly breaks out.
I’ve lived in Seoul for 11 years and have never met anyone who thought a North Korean attack was imminent, until I met Woo. He says with the way things are going, he wouldn’t be surprised if fighting starts this year.
Seoul is just 56km south of the demilitarised zone, the border between North and South Korea, and that puts it well within range of Pyongyang’s artillery, nuclear weapons included.
But when Kim Jong-un threatens to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” or otherwise annihilate what it calls the “puppet state” of the US imperialists, most South Koreans ignore it and get on with their lives. After decades of hostility most southerners see the North as a paper tiger.
Woo sees things differently. He is a safety consultant who goes on television to show viewers how they can pack bags like his own and he reckons his fellow countryman are in denial.
Which is understandable, because in Seoul, you never get the sense that you’re living on the frontline of the Third World War. People overseas are surprised to hear that there’s no panic in the streets and that supermarket shelves haven’t been emptied by frenzied stockpilers. It’s just bluster, we tell them… or perhaps this is just what we tell ourselves.
Maybe we should be a little more concerned—there are unhappy precedents. Two deadly incidents in 2010—the sinking of the South Korean Cheonan naval corvette and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island—showed that North Korea is capable of lashing out against it’s enemies.
In hopes of appeasing North Korea during the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the South Korean government did all it could to get its isolated neighbour to participate in the games. The two countries marched together during the opening ceremony and athletes from both sides of the border competed together on a women’s ice hockey team.
But the biggest concession was the decision by the South to postpone its annual military exercises with American forces. Pyongyang denounces these yearly spring drills as a rehearsal for invasion.
These gestures have helped to calm the battles that have been fought, mostly over social media between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Throughout 2017, the two leaders traded insults in an unedifying contest over who had the bigger missile.
While most South Koreans are accustomed to bellicosity from the North, hearing it from Washington is a worrying, new experience. Long-buried anxieties about a looming war are beginning to rise to the surface among southerners.
Kim Hyun-chung, a psychiatrist in Seoul, told me that many South Koreans “feel helpless” as the US and North Korea exchange threats over their heads. That’s why so many people try their best to ignore the situation.
“If we’re so sensitive to all the dangers that lurk here, you can’t live here,” she said, adding that now might be the right time for her family to think about evacuation plans.
Seoul and Washington have already said that once all the foreign athletes have gone home and the luge track is dismantled, the delayed war game exercises will begin. Pyongyang will almost certainly have a response.
And with reports indicating that the Trump administration is gearing up to give Kim a “bloody nose,” the thought of bombs falling on Seoul seems a real possibility—to me at least. Perhaps it’s time to pack that escape bag.
