Vignettes of the World
The last stop before Jordan River was St. Peter’s home, and we also saw the ruins of a synagogue adjacent to it. The statue of Apostle Peter holds a key and a live fish swims at his feet. The key symbolizes St. Peter’s office as …
Due to the historic influence by the Romans and the Greeks in this area, my Latin learning in Ovid has prepared me for this trip in unexpected ways. The Temple of Pan was one such example. Like other ruins, the Temple of Pan (Banias as …
“Shalom!”
I witnessed my father’s first act in Israel, and it was brilliant.
We entered Israel via a land route from Jordan. As we crossed the border over to Israel, two Israeli soldiers came on board to check the bus. The two men carried a rifle each, along with a chilled silence.
Meaning “peace be with you,” shalom is a standard greeting in Hebrew, just like “how are you” in English. A simple courtesy in Hebrew eased the tension on the coach immediately. The young soldier turned around to face my father with a smile, “shalom!” Everybody on the tour relaxed, smiling to each other. My father, who was serving as the attending pastor on this tour, then explained the meaning of the phrase as the first course on Jewish culture. There could not have been a better opportunity to do so.
I learned that if the Israeli stamp was found in one’s passport, the neighboring Arab countries (including the UAE) would deny entry. To get around that problem, the Israeli immigration issued a little slip of VISA for entry and exit purposes. This was just one of the many ways in which the hostilities between the Jewish people and their Arab neighbors manifested. In Israel, the animosity was not confined to the four corners of the TV, but lived and breathed in every aspect of life.
We wasted no time in sightseeing on our way. The first site was Zacchaeus’ sycamore tree (Luke 19:1-10). This would be the tree that Zacchaeus eagerly climbed up just to get a glimpse of Jesus, who was entering the city of Jericho. He rejoiced in Jesus spending the evening at his home and his house was redeemed. This tree seemed more convincing as a historical fact than Moses’ rock. After all, the New Testament occurred at a much later time.
At Bet She’an (lit. home of the God She’an, a Greek god), we saw the ruins that spanned the Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek Roman and the Byzantine reigns before its decline under the Arab rule. In its heyday, the city was known as Scythopolis, but along with its decline the name was slowly forgotten. Because of its long history, the city has experienced many rounds of construction. There was the original city and the many additions that subsequent rulers built. The archaeologists were able to identify which parts of the remains were constructed in what period. The theatre was a Greek construction because the seats had the mount on their back, and that was an exclusively Greek feature.
In terms of Biblical significance, the Philistines held King Saul’s remains in contemptuous display after his defeat in the quest for the city (1 Samuel 31:7-11). King David, however, seized this ancient city and it was the seat of government under King Soloman’s reign.
When touring these ancient sites I heard a comment commonly made thus, “the ancients were not necessarily less developed or sophisticated than we are.” At Bet She’an this was spoken about the public latrine, its remains being well excavated, preserved and explained. Apparently in this Roman invention there was no separate provisions for the two genders. Slim stone tablets acted as the seats and water flowed underneath as flushing facility. I learned that only the wealthy could afford private toilets.
We had a distant view of the Mount of Temptation in Jericho, but we did not have a chance to do the cable car ride. That was our tour in Jericho, to my disappointment. The glorious story of Joshua’s battle of Jericho (Joshua 6) welled in my heart as we departed the oldest city in the world with 9,000 to 10,000 years behind it.
In the evening we checked into Emily’s at Tiberia. It was a really nice, modern and well-kept hotel. The Galilee was in view, calm and content in the night’s cool breeze.
“Most of the events in the Old Testament took place in Jordan,” our Jordanian tour guide said. At dinner on my first night in Jordan I fell in love with the creamy, nutty flavored hummus and helped myself with two, three servings. By then, I knew …
I have never seen so much sand in my life. The wonderful aerial views of the United Arab Emirates greeted me in a variety of forms: first a coastline, then what seemed like ranges of barren hills. Finally it was all sands in vast …
By Paul French
“Even the Albanians described North Korea as an ‘unbelievably closed society.’”[i]
Famine, credit default, constant blackouts, economic collapse, failed piecemeal reforms, nuclear weapons, repression – the indicators of a failed state are no longer hidden from the world now, despite North Korea’s persistent isolation. Yet what intrigued me was the fact that the North Korean communist regime has survived despite its acute inability to provide even basic necessities for its people. In this book I found answers and explanations.
Insightful and lucid, North Korea: State of Paranoia provides facts, history, analysis and explanations on North Korea’s economic policies, and how and why the regime has failed to give food to its people but at the same time was able to intimidate the world with nuclear weapons. It is the author’s view that a sound understanding of its economic failure is the vital lens through which any outsider learn about North Korea as a whole.
The book opened with a description of the common people’s lives in North Korea and that was surprisingly effective as an introduction. What I came to know on the first chapter was the human face of North Korea. The reality as depicted reminded me of China in the 1960s, when the whole society, and every detail of daily life, was driven by Mao Zedong’s cult of personality. What was happening more than half a century ago in China is very much alive in North Korea today. In the author’s words, North Korea is “clearly an anachronism in the modern world, adhering rigidly to principles that is former allies have either jettisoned or sought to reform.”[ii]
The discussion of Juche as a founding ideology of the North Korean regime was one of the major learning I took from this book. It was Kim Il-sung’s spin on communism, combining the principles of Marxist-Leninism command economy, Confucian social order, self-reliance and elements of Maoism. It is the fundamental thought that justifies repression, frames state propaganda, writes its own history and even drives the “military first” policy that eventually led to the development of nuclear missiles. The pervasiveness and exclusivity with which the state imposed Juche in North Korea was part of Paul French’s explanation for why the regime remains in power. There simply was no alternative thinking to Juche in North Korea. If not Juche, the North Koreans would not know what else to believe.[iii]
There are certainly other aspects of the North Korean society that has enabled the communist party to maintain its grip on power. The author has noted an irony, that while it was wholly the fault of the command economy that brought about the famine, the prolonged famine has actually kept the North Koreans docile—they were simply too preoccupied with basic survival to think of anti-government organization. “From the start the population was asked to sacrifice economic growth and access to services and goods in the name of national independence and self-reliance.”[iv] For the North Koreans, it was either to struggle at home, or to risk one’s life and defect.
Paul French has made it possible for readers to learn about the “most opaque of opaque countries.”[v] This book was well-researched with critical perspectives on the West (primarily the United States)’s share of responsibility in the sufferings of the North Koreans. As Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump play yo-yo in their denuclearization agreement, little seems to have been done to bring forth hope, or even basic survival, to the North Korean people.
[i] Paul French, North Korea: State of Paranoia (2014) at 47.
[ii] Id. at 410.
[iii] Whereas in Poland, for example, there was the Catholic Church and Solidarity, Id. at 399-400.
[iv] Id. at 413.
[v] Foreword, Id. at xvi.
By Han Kang Ah, what a surprise. I thought this would be a lighthearted and fun book about a Korean woman who decided to turn vegetarian in a culture where meat is consumed as much as air is breathed. As it turned out, not only …
On my last full day in South Korea, I booked a 1st class room at a hotel in Incheon, as I was hoping to see the MacArthur Landing. Once I checked in the hotel, however, I realized that I would be going backward on my …
We arrived at the infiltration tunnels as our last stop on the tour. There was to be no cameras on this part of thetour.
We watched a film about the specific history of the infiltration tunnels. All was good and well, and I enjoyed the explanation of the history of the war and some of the more current developments in the two countries’ relationship.
Apparently, there were talks of reunification in the 1990s, and since then South Korea has been the main sponsor of humanitarian aid to the North.[1] We did see the highways leading to North Korea on which food and supplies were shipped. There were also power lines, but the North Koreans rejected that as they would not pay for it. A factory type of structure served the purpose of disabling any radio communication from the West. It took one whole building to dismantle the possibility of capitalist influences.
Back at the infiltration tunnel museum I enjoyed the film until the very end, when the narration seemed to depict in present tense a peace that would not, in all likelihood, come anytime soon. “Today the DMZ is an area of peace and natural beauty…” There were images of beautiful wildlife that thrived at the DMZ because there was no human habitation there. “The two Koreas live in peaceful coexistence.” We just went through zones of tension where photography was strictly prohibited, where North Korean soldiers could intimidate by merely peeping in through the windows. I could taste the tension with every breath that I took. Any portrayal of peace at the DMZ seemed like wishful thinking to me.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the South Koreans discovered four infiltration tunnels. I could certainly imagine how fearful it was for the South Koreans to find those tunnels. Seoul was only about 70-100km away from the border. These tunnels together would allow one million soldiers to reach Seoul in over one hour’s time.
The north claimed that they were abandoned coal mines, or that South Korea built them. The museum exhibits explained the angle of the elevation and the origin could only be from the North. There was also no coal in that area. One caption said, “thus showing the dubiousness of the North Koreans.” Also discovered were arrows drawn in yellow paint inside the 3rd tunnel, all pointing toward Seoul.
We walked a very long corridor declining at a 45 degree angle to reach the entrance of the tunnel, then further to the first blockade, and tourists were not permitted beyond the yellow arrows. The corridor itself was 173 meters long, and one could only imagine how deep the tunnel was. It was believed that there were a total of more than 20 tunnels dug by the North as the South Koreans continued to search through the 241-km long demarcation line to find them.
These tunnels showed the plans and actions taken by the North to invade the South, and that certainly unsettled the South Koreans. Yet postmodern warfare would no longer take place at the border. Someone asked Officer Pearson, “what was the last event that happened here?” His answer was, “that we were on this tour now.” There might be some skirmishes at the demarcation line, and needless to say, spying never stopped, but the intimidation of the North was taking on a new form known as nuclearization, and it clearly preoccupied the South Koreans and had enormous implications for the world.
When I thought of the two Koreas, I imagined a couple that were married for years and after a fight they split up, each backed by supportive neighbors, but they were stuck living in their original house. The glamorous wife enjoyed her parties and she entertained her western guests in the beautifully decorated living room. The stubborn old man decided to stay in an unheated shed at the backyard and spent all day intimidating his wife and her western friends. Many years passed and the old man was looking to a more comfortable life now, for even his own friends have chosen the way of his wife. The neighbors stepped in again, wanting to negotiate for a peaceful resolution. The future was yet unknown, but I surely hoped that the couple would reconcile one day, so that the children in the backyard would never have to starve again.
Writer’s note:
This series on the DMZ was written in 2009, two days after my visit to the DMZ. The situation in the two Koreas have since taken on surprising turns, especially in 2017 and 2018 when North Korea began actively testing its long-range missiles. I have followed developments of the denuclearization plan that has been agreed upon between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the current administration of the United States in 2018. These entries on the DMZ were mostly preserved with minimal additional research in order to convey the situation as I learned it at the time of writing.
[1] I read on the newspapers later that South Korea has stopped its humanitarian aid program in the past few years due to strained relationships.
This is part of a series on the Demilitarized Zone at the 38th Parallel separating North and South Koreas. Please visit the other entries in this series below:
South Korea – The DMZ and the Bollinger Hall.
Military subsistence at the DMZ was supported by the Panmunjom Village. Villagers did not pay any taxes to the Korean government as it did not come under its administration. They grew food in their fields, and one important crop was ginseng. The area being off-bounds …