There are two Koreas, North and South. However, there is also more than one South Korea, with the nation split into camps with polar opposite views on the danger posed by their nuclear-armed neighbor to the north.
This division in South Korean sentiment has lasted through a tumultuous history of war, dictatorship, poverty and, in recent decades, head-spinning though unevenly distributed economic growth. Differing views on North Korea are now sharper than ever, influenced — or not — by Pyongyang’s repeated vows to attack South Korea and its buildup of nuclear-capable weapons.
Spend some time in South Korea and you would see reminders everywhere of North Korea’s potential nuclear menace — and the contrasting ways residents read Pyongyang’s actions.
Photo: AP
Older people and conservatives often have more unease about North Korea than liberals and younger people, but a sweeping generalization is not possible. Many young people are also afraid, and some older people who have spent their lives hearing angry warnings from North Korea feel no fear at all.
Many in South Korea discount the nuclear peril as hollow because of a simple truth: Aside from occasional deadly skirmishes, the North has not backed up its vows to use its weapons in a full-scale attack on the South.
Still, for South Koreans paying attention to the whiplash speed of North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, there is plenty of distress.
The Associated Press interviewed dozens of South Koreans to explain this unique, fragmented perception of the nation’s biggest rival, North Korea.
“Kim Jong-un might really use a nuke,” said Kim Jae-hyun, a 22-year-old undergraduate law student. “North Korea could really attack us out of the blue.”
He stockpiles a bulletproof vest and other military gear in the event of a war. While many South Koreans his age know little about national defense policies, Kim Jae-hyun attends North Korea security seminars and reads articles on war scenarios.
Kim Jae-hyun links his worries, in part, to the day in 2022 when, while serving as an infantryman along the border, he heard that Pyongyang had flown a drone into South Korean territory, breaking an inter-Korean military agreement.
“There needs to be at least one person like me who can raise how dangerous” North Korea is, Kim Jae-hyun said.
“People just take the looming threats too lightly. It’s like they see the knife coming closer to them but never think the knife could stab them,” he said.
That’s not the case for Shin Na-ri, who can quickly quantify her worry about nuclear war.
“Number-wise, from one to 10, I would say eight... I take it very seriously,” said Shin, 34, a master’s student at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
A war could happen anytime, she said. “In a few seconds, we could just blow up here.”
Shin’s bookshelves are filled with North Korea-related topics, and her goal is to work for her country as a policymaker. She has a small stockpile of bottled water and canned goods in case of a nuclear attack.
“It makes me satisfied that I could live at least 14 days, maybe a month,” she said.
“If a fish lives in water, it doesn’t think about the water,” said Reverand Chung Joon-hee, a pastor at Youngnak Presbyterian Church in Seoul, one of South Korea’s biggest and most influential churches, explaining why many South Koreans pay little attention to North Korea.
Most people, Chung said, see tensions with North Korea as “just a given.”
A vivid reminder that South Korea — for all its modern, high-tech veneer — is a country at war could be seen recently when hundreds of young men gathered at a military base in Pohang to begin 18 months of mandatory military service.
“I feel worried and hope he won’t get injured,” said Yeon Soo-lee, 55, a kitchenware business owner from Gangneung whose son is becoming a third-generation marine. “But I have no concern that he will be involved in a possible war that North Korea has been implying will happen these days.”
However, even the unworried know worriers.
Some feel that North Korea is working from a tried-and-true playbook where it repeatedly raises tensions with weapons demonstrations and belligerent rhetoric to lay the groundwork for negotiations meant to win concessions.
Others have an abiding faith in Washington’s rhetoric about its “ironclad alliance” with Seoul, but there is a great deal of apprehension, too.
A telephone survey last year of 1,001 adults in South Korea showed that 45 percent worried about North Korea’s nuclear program while 30 percent said they did not, according to polling commissioned by the state-funded Korea Institute for National Unification.
After North Korea launched a satellite into orbit in November last year — which Seoul and Washington viewed as a disguised test of long-range missile technology — and the Seoul city government sent out evacuation alerts erroneously, Jung Myung-ja made a big decision: “It would be such a relief to have a place nearby for my family members to hide.”
So the 73-year-old hired a company to dig a bunker, about the size of a medium-sized walk-in closet, below the courtyard of her house on the outskirts of Seoul.
Her son-in-law, Park Seung-tae, a 45-year-old office worker, said the bunker could protect the family for a week or two “if a nuke is ever dropped here.”
The company that built the bunker has secured three other such contracts and just started construction on one in eastern Seoul. Similar bunkers take about a month to build and cost up to 40 million won (US$29,822), the company says.
“You never know what the future holds,” Jung said.
“These days you get local news and [expert] opinions that say there is likely going to be another war in this country. I personally think that can really happen again,” she added.
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