And then that happened...

I went to school this morning, taught the 3rd graders, spent the afternoon editing photos in my office, stopped at Pizza School on my way home (too lazy to cook dinner: check) and came home to discover that while I was editing power lines out of the background of picture of a temple in Daegu, North Korea was firing a barrage of artillery shells at one of the inhabited South Korean islands off the west coast, only 80 miles from where I live. I might have bemoaned my dull afternoon, but it beats being evacuated due to attacking North Koreans.

My first thought was, "Well, that happened. Several thoughts later, the closest I've gotten to concern was contemplating the reaction if this had happened during the G20. (South Korea: North Korea, stop it! You're embarrassing me in front of the international community!) This is only meriting a blog post because it's NaBloPoMo and I'm desperate for topics.

When North Korea launched a missile into the Pacific last April, the first overt military action from North Korea since I had arrived on the peninsula, I spent the afternoon glued to the TV, obsessively refreshing new sites and generally freaking out over impending death and destruction by North Koreans. However, by the time all the drama happened late that May, I had adopted a more Korean attitude towards the Norks and spent a lot of time rolling my eyes over the frantic emails I got from friends back home asking if I was okay and when I was evacuating. Today, classes continued without interruption and there were no announcements or sirens. The TV in the pizza place was tuned to a rerun of Kdrama, not the news. If I hadn't checked the news when I got home, I would have no idea something had happened.  And that's life, or at least that's life here.

This is the second North Korean military attack this YEAR that has resulted in the loss of lives, the military is on the highest peacetime alert, this country is technically under attack right now, but outside of Yeonpueong, life is going on as normal in the Land of the Morning Calm.