In the spring of 1994, a crisis erupted when a North Korean official declared, during a meeting with his South Korean counterpart at Panmunjeom, “Seoul is not far from here. If there is a war, it will become a sea of fire.” Ah, diplomacy. Always so subtle. It was a chilling statement, especially for those of us living just 35 miles south of the DMZ, going about our daily lives with more concern for lesson plans and lunch menus than worrying about North Korea. For me, the remark barely registered at first. If ignorance is bliss, I must have been somewhere between blissfully unaware and just plain uninformed about the threat posed by North Korea. North Korea had, for the most part, been off my radar. Aside from the night I arrived in Seoul in 1990 and witnessed armed soldiers patrolling the airport, the North Korean threat only crossed my mind during military checkpoints for visits to Ganghwa Island and Mount Seorak and during the monthly civil defense drills. If I had been more informed about modern Korean history, I might have been surprised at the extent of the threat posed by Nort
