the Yeonpyeong-do incident

Last week, on November 23, 2010, South Korea was attacked.

I was alone in Danggam-dong when I learned of the incident.  At one point, my attention was drawn to one of the many television sets that were on in the restaurant where I was eating.  Over and over again the same images were shown on the tv set.  A short video clip showing an island upon which fires were burning.  An animation showing the path of projectiles launched towards the island.  An image of a series of guns with their dimensions.  An image of the path of projectiles being launched from the island back towards the source of the original projectiles.  All of this, of course, was narrated in Korean.  I guessed that it was about some military event that occurred in the Koreas.  But I thought it must have been about a battle that happened years ago, during the Korean war.  It was the server at the restaurant who informed me that it had happened on that very day.

It felt surreal.  South Korea had been attacked, and I would later learn that two soldiers had died.  Two civilians had also been killed, and many homes had been destroyed.  And yet, it was business as usual in Busan.  Families were eating out in restaurants.  People were going about their business on the streets.  Buses, filled with passengers, rolled along their usual routes.  If not for the infinitely-looped images of the incident shown on a handful of Korean tv channels, you would think it was just another regular day.

The territory that was attacked is called Yeonpyeong island (연평도).  Yeonpyeong-do is located in the north-east of South Korea, approximately 100 km from the South Korean mainland, but only a few dozen kilometers from the coast of North Korea.  In comparison, Busan is located in the south-west of the country.  In essence, Busan is as far away from Yeonpyeong-do as one can get while still remaining in South Korea.

Over the week-end, things appeared to be calming down, but the incident has remained a major political issue for the Koreas, the USA, China and Japan.  The Yeonpyeong-do attack is, unfortunately, not the first such incident that has occurred since the end of the Korean war.  (By the way, there is a Canadian connection to one of these incidents.  To learn about it, zoom out of this map and find the yellow dot in the province of Saskatchewan.)  I also read somewhere (but I can't remember where) that the two Koreas are technically still at war, as they never signed a formal peace treaty after the Korean war.


I'm sure I'll have more to write about this later.