[In recent weeks, the heavily armed North’s cherub-faced young
leader, Kim Jong-un, has threatened South Korea and the United States with
nuclear attack, declaring that a “state of war” exists on the Korean Peninsula.
Refusing to be cowed, South Korea’s newly elected president, Park Geun-hye, the
democratic nation’s first female leader, responded by ordering her
generals to strike back if provoked.]
 |
Korean Central News Agency
Kim Jong-un met with military leaders in Pyongyang. Some of the photos of military preparedness released by Korea appear to be digitally manipulated. |
MUNSAN, South Korea — As Lee Jae-eun retrieved her
squirming twins from day care and loaded them into a two-seat stroller, she
barely glanced up at the olive green Blackhawk helicopter that swept overhead,
just above the high-rise apartment buildings.
Even in peaceful times, low-flying military aircraft are a common
sight in this residential community near the heavily fortified border that
separates capitalist South Korea from the communist North. But these are not
placid times, and the roaring helicopters are one more reminder of rising
tensions wrought by North Korea’s recent barrage of war threats.
Still, said Ms. Lee, a 34-year-old homemaker, residents have
resigned themselves to living with the constant risk, and occasional tantrums,
from their bellicose northern neighbor.
“Sure, our radar is up to new danger,” she said, holding one of
her year-old daughters and surrounded by other mothers picking up their
children. “But living here makes you used to it. It’s not such a big deal.”
In recent weeks, the heavily armed North’s cherub-faced young
leader, Kim Jong-un, has threatened South Korea and the United States with
nuclear attack, declaring that a “state of war” exists on the Korean Peninsula.
Refusing to be cowed, South Korea’s newly elected president, Park Geun-hye, the
democratic nation’s first female leader, responded by ordering her
generals to strike back if provoked.
Despite the steady drum beat of war talk, life seems to go on as
usual in most of South Korea, the industrial powerhouse that lifted itself from
the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War to become one of Asia’s economic success
stories. Nowhere is the determination to hold on to the South’s hard-won
middle-class living standards more apparent than in Munsan, a distant suburb of
the South Korean capital of Seoul that sits on the edge of the tense border:
the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, which lies where the fighting stopped 60 years
ago.
Once a collection of farming villages known for their local
delicacy of tasty eel, Munsan was transformed into a fast-growing suburb of
tall white apartment buildings and neon-lighted shops a decade ago during an
era of political rapprochement with the North and soaring property prices in
the fast-growing South. More recently, development has slowed after the global
financial crisis hurt the South’s export-driven economy and new tensions with
the North have scared away some prospective buyers.
Some of the 47,000 residents who live here now say they have
learned to accept the helicopters’ near-constant rattling of their windows, and
the columns of tanks that sometimes block roads during training exercises,
making their children late for school. They say they have also learned how to
ignore the rows of concrete bunkers and guard towers along the highway they use
every morning to commute to Seoul, 35 miles to the south.
They just tune out the dangers and focus on enjoying their daily
lives.
“Korea is the most dangerous place in the world, but we are numb
to it,” said Song Hyun-young, an employee in the real estate department of Paju
city hall, which has jurisdiction over the town of Munsan. “If something
happens, we will all die together, so I don’t really think about it.”
When pressed, many residents admit to feeling anxiety about the
intensity of the North’s most recent threats, and the fact that its new nuclear
arsenal is controlled by an untested, unpredictable leader. Some also partly
blame their own country for imposing sanctions on the North, a closed and
impoverished country.
“To be honest, the talk of nuclear attack is much scarier this
time,” said Ms. Lee, the mother of the twins. “I think North Korea is cornered,
and anyone who is cornered will strike back.”
Responding to such concerns, Paju city employees held an
evacuation drill last week with the police, firefighters and the army. In the
event of an attack, residents would be led to one of nine new underground bomb
shelters, which were built by the city after the North’s last violent
provocation, the artillery bombardment of a South Korean island three years ago
that killed two civilians. The shelters have been freshly stocked with
flashlights, medicine, gas masks and first-aid kits, officials said.
But most residents have not taken similar precautions. None of the
more than half-dozen residents interviewed said they were stockpiling food or
supplies. Many said they were optimistic that such preparations were
unnecessary. They were confident, they said, that the bonds of shared ethnicity
between the two Koreas would prevail over political differences, and prevent
the North from following through on its apocalyptic threats.
“The world thinks we are on the brink of war, but we are fine,”
said Gong Soon-hee, 55, a real estate agent whose small office was filled with
wall-size maps showing a checkerboard of privately owned plots that abruptly
end at the edge of the DMZ, just a few miles away. “Koreans are good people,
kind people, not stupid people who would just start a war suddenly.”
Despite the tensions, Ms. Gong said, new homebuyers continue to
trickle in, lured by prices that have dropped to less than one-tenth of those
in central Seoul. Most give no sign of noticing a formation of helicopters
flying overhead as they check out apartment units, she said.
“I guess we could hide in an underground parking garage if the
shells start falling,” she said, “but we don’t bother with escape plans.”
Others said the current standoff cast a spotlight on the fact that
in the face of the North’s threats, the South was in the weaker position
because it has so much more to lose. Some said South Korea’s biggest
vulnerability was its unwillingness to sacrifice its much higher living
standards to essentially buy off the North.
“If this is just going to continue until we give aid, then let’s
just give them some aid,” Park Soon-yi, a 44-year-old homemaker, said with a
laugh. But she was only half-joking, as she shopped in the upmarket Hillstate
high-rise condominium and retail complex. “Then they’ll be quiet, and leave us
in peace.”
Su
Hyun Lee contributed reporting.