Thu 8 Feb 2007
Blog Post from the past,
While cleaning out my blog folders I cam across this unfinished post I started writing back in the fall as a response to the North Korean missile test threats. Having become so attached to Korea these new set of threats seemed more poignant than the ones I carelessly shrugged off in the past. I used to say, “I just watch the South Korean’s reactions. When they start to freak out, then I’ll freak out.” But this time around, I got the chills. The message sent was clearer, more tangible, and something to really consider: a loud cry for help from Pyongyang. While I prepare a dramatic narrative on the highlights and lowlights of julienne, brounois, and fluting, let this tide you over.
Mary
2006 has been the most active for the North Korean’s missile tests.
In March of this year they fired two missiles, in July seven missiles plunged into the Sea of Japan, and just two weeks ago, they tested a nuclear bomb in an underground location.
I moved to Korea moments after American president Gorge Bush declared North Korea one of the three countries in the Axis of Evil. At the time I didn’t pay attention to the implications or severity of this new propaganda phrase. I tossed the statement aside, regarding it as another Bushism. Like fuzzy math, here was fuzzy geography.
However these words struck resonance with BBC reporter Ben Anderson, who took Bush’s challenge head on and traveled to these countries in the BBC documentary, Holidays in the Axis of Evil.
Seeing North Korea for the first time, this way, was heart breaking. The people so thin, the reporters, constantly skeptical, their official guides reciting mind numbing praises of the dear leader.
I have kept this image of the North in my brain, along with Polish Director Andrzej Fidyk’s Documentary, The Parade, and a recent documentary shown in the US on PBS’s Independent Lens, Seoul Train .
With these past missile tests, I grow more concerned for the welfare of the North Koreans, and while ESL boards are buzzing with teachers whose primary concern is what their embassy will do for them if an emergency situation presents itself, Land of the Morning Calm bloggers endlessy type up summaries of articles that don’t appear in the English dailies, I, however, eat.
I explore this in the only way that makes sense to me, food, hoping that if I can become attached to a cuisine, or a dish, I will become attached to its origins.
Thursday afternoon I spent my lunch in Insadong at Gung, savoring Kaesong Mandu, a specialty of the kaesong province in North Korea. The capital of Korea during the Koryo Dynasty, is a small province close to the DMZ. Large, and rustically charming, these mandu (dumplings) come filled with pork, green onion, and cellophane noodles. It may be as close as I ever get to knowing North Korea”s stories, people and culinary traditions.
