Careerists and warriors
By Michael Bergmann
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Are you envious of those who might be called "global players"? Personally, I couldn't be less envious, but frankly, I'm getting scared. Though my indignation is still stronger than my fear.
I'm talking about politicians, journalists, strategists and academics who, the more "global" their range the more likely they are to "play" with the "possibility of war".
If you have built a local existence, maybe one or two houses, with money earned in a humble profession, it doesn't matter if you call yourself a progressive, a conservative or a liberal, you won't like playing with bombs. The bombs can fall on your house _ and that's exactly why war is an impossibility to you!
So if you like playing poker, then do it with your money, not with my life! If you think the threat has to be "credible" enough to win a power game, imagine how it feels to be "realistically" threatened!
"Me _ The Last Evacuee Before the Bombs Fell" _ wouldn't that be an interesting title for your future writing career? The threat to the U.S. is abstract enough, and the entertainment value of far-away conflicts there great enough for American "Korea experts" to look into a secure future.
I am no Korea expert, I just have settled here without a plan B for my future. I want to be left in peace to continue my life with my family and my students. We don't want to live in bunkers, as one of you recently advised on these pages. Pursuit of happiness is not just an American right. If you, my fellow expats, consider war an interesting scenario, enroll in the army and not on your embassy's evacuation list!
I identify with novelist Han Kang's words on the issue. I just want to add that there are a few non-Koreans in Korea as well for whom this country is not a playground. We have grown some roots here and we have no alternative to hope and work and live in peace.
Freedom of opinion is everyone's sacred right. Words must not be restricted by social conventions or to avoid mere feelings of offense, as the British philosopher John Stuart Mill brilliantly clarified _ unless they have a realistic potential to incite violence. But whether or not your president is bluffing, war preparations on the opinion front, legitimizing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of human rights for example, clearly have this dangerous potential. Or do you want to say, you global players, that your words just don't mean anything?
Calling war "the military option," you global players reveal your thinking in terms of "career options." We humble locals here, including myself, have no other option, to say it again, but to hope and work and live in peace.
President Moon has given his trustworthy guarantee against the unthinkable. Diplomacy is a necessity, unification an ultimate possibility. War will destroy all our options and is therefore an absolute impossibility.
Michael Bergmann (bergmann2473@yahoo.de) is a teacher in Seoul.