Distractions, of the 200 round variety

I'm not sure if or when this will make it into the US news cycle, but North Korea fired on South Korea today, a few hours ago now. It's making it difficult for me to concentrate on my work. They fired on an island off the western coast, an area long contested between the two countries. North Korea fired 200 rounds of artillery at the island and its surrounding waters, and South Korea fired back 80 rounds and sent a couple of jets up. 14 military personnel and two civilians have been reported injured, two of the military guys critically so.

I don't know anyone on the island, but I do know people in Seoul, which is frighteningly close to the border. One of my best friends in this country is in the U.S. military, stationed in Seoul, and another friend is in the Korean military (C, of C-is-a-soldier fame). I do not even know how much I should worry right now, but knowing how much not to rarely helps anyway. This news comes hard on the heels of reading articles all about uranium enrichment capabilities being higher than expected in the North. Oddly, I do not feel the confluence of these two news issues is terribly calming, nor helpful to me in getting a working memo on the winter intensive courses completed. The other teachers, however, are just going about their days, laughing at things, planning classes, acting normal. It is the foreign teachers who are all clicking over to CNN every few minutes, checking the CIA world factbook to find out how many troops North Korea actually has, and if we would know if they mobilized, talking about whether China will really get into this hardcore, or if they'll just maintain a kind of lend-lease agreement with the North. Maybe we are just alarmists. I hope we are just alarmists.

In the interests of full disclosure, part of me just wondered if I will be able to get home in less than a month. The airport from which I am scheduled to fly is right up to the west of Seoul. I kind of miss the built-in geographic security of having oceans between me and potential-or-declared-enemy powers, and I really don't want an active warzone to get between me and that security in the next twenty-eight days.

So hi, Internet. These are my thoughts. Now I'm going to go talk about team-building exercises for students.