19 Million (+2) Kims in Korea: A Work Trip

We've had a busy week! It's been so much fun spending time with Michelle. I was actually away for three days this week, on a work trip to Yeonpyeong Island arranged by my Korean Navy counterparts. Yeonpyeong Do, or YP-Do as the Americans at work call it, is the island that was shelled by the North Koreans around Thanksgiving last year. For our visit though, all was quiet. It's actually a really beautiful place, though the concertina wire, anti-landing stakes, and covered tanks were prominent reminders that North Korea is only a few miles to the north. It's a fact not lost on the Korean soldiers, sailors, and marines who serve on the island. Each serviceman who briefed us ended his brief with a statement about defending the Northwest Islands, of which YP-Do is part, and the Northern Limit Line, which South Korea recognizes as the maritime boundary between North and South, with his life.

It was such a great experience for me and the five other Americans who went--not only seeing the area where so much of our attention is focused but also spending time with our Korean co-workers and hosts. I already really liked the Korean Navy officers that I work with, and it was so much fun to get to know them better. I felt so grateful to them for putting the trip together and arranging our visits to the different sites and military organizations. I also got to spend time with the Korean translator (who went to college at Emory), some of the senior Korean analysts, and the C2--the top Korean general in my branch of the Combined Forces Command. They were interested in why my name was Kim, and then in my husband--I happened to have a picture of him in one of his tanks with the Korean Joint Chief of Staff which I proudly passed around. I got to practice my (still embarrassingly bad) Korean, and get to know a little more about their work. We also enjoyed some really good food. One of the Sergeants who went had only had Korean food once or twice--by the end of the trip he had eaten kimchi stew, raw fish, dried anchovies, spicy seafood stew with whole crabs, and funky soybean stew, and loved every bite. In fact at our last meal he ate a total of seven bowls of Korean beef stew and more than one helping of side dishes.

After a day on YP-Do (and a banquet with not a little soju) we visited a radar site on the island, then left for the mainland, where we toured the Incheon landing memorial. We stayed in Incheon that night, after a great Chinese meal at the restaurant where jajang myeon--noodles in a think soybean sauce--was invented. The next day we drove down to Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, where the Korean Navy's 2nd Fleet is headquartered. We visited the Cheonan memorial, as well as memorials for the first and second YP-Do maritime battles in 1999 and 2002 and the Daecheong Maritime Battle of 2009. One of the patrol craft that was damaged in the 2002 battle is on display at the memorial, with red paint around all of the bullet holes. It was a sobering reminder of the lives that have been lost defending South Korea's territory in the area; still, I found myself thinking that I was glad that instead of painting the damage red and putting up a monument when the USS Cole was hit by Yemeni terrorists in 1999, the U.S. Navy repaired her and sent her back into the fight.