SOUTH KOREANS INURED TO THREAT OF ATTACK FROM THE NORTH

A nuclear attack on Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 10 million people, could start and finish in three minutes. But South Koreans have become inured to the threat of North Korea — because they’ve lived in a state of war for more than six decades. Millions of South Koreans went about their normal days Thursday. The trains ran and the planes flew, the president talked about health-care reform and the news agencies sent out alerts about the corruption case against Samsung’s heir apparent. Store workers and bus drivers laughed when asked if they were ready for war. The current “crisis” feels pretty mundane. If anything, the risks comes from the unpredictable Donald Trump, not the relatively predictable (if tempestuous) Kim Jong Un. It’s more complicated than being jaded, writes Haeryun Kang, the managing editor of the Korea Expose website. South Koreans must reconcile two contradictory narratives, she writes. One says that North Korea poses a “dangerous, existential threat” to the South, amplified by the “red scares” and a broad willingness to see any interest in or understanding of North Korea as a sign of communist sympathies. The other narrative says North Koreans are South Koreans’ estranged brothers and that the country will one day be reunified and returned to its natural order.