S. Koreans Take North’s Missiles in Relative Stride

It was 4:59 a.m., midway through the semifinal World Cup match between Italy and Germany, when the first bulletin crawled along the bottom of the television screen reporting that North Korea was launching missiles.

“The same old story!” groaned Bae Min-su, a 41-year-old restaurateur who had woken up early on July 5 to watch the match.

The same collective shrug was expressed by millions of other South Koreans. Though the United States and Japan quickly elevated the missile launches to the status of crisis, for South Korea it was just another predictable annoyance among many from a bothersome neighbor.

None of the television stations here broke away from the soccer match. The first full reports on the missile launches weren’t broadcast until nearly 6 a.m., during a break in the game.

On the surface, it would seem that South Koreans should be more attuned to the developments in North Korea than anyone else. They are the ones who live in the shadow of the demilitarized zone, where North Korea has enough artillery dug into bunkers to rain 25,000 shells on Seoul in an hour.

Bae’s in-laws fled the communists during the Korean War, and many customers at the family’s restaurant, specializing in Pyongyang-style cold noodles, have relatives in North Korea.

“You’d be surprised, but nobody is really talking about North Korea and the missiles,” Bae said. “They don’t care. They’re more worried about Japan than North Korea.”

In fact, the big concern in recent days has been a war of words with Japan over a South Korean ship that conducted an oceanic survey of a disputed cluster of rocks known here as Dokdo, off the east coast. And the big summer blockbuster film here is expected to be “Hanbando” (“Korean Peninsula”), opening next weekend. Its futuristic plot pits the two Koreas against Japanese forces who are trying to stop their reunification.

At Bae’s restaurant, customer Kwon Jeong-eon said that North Korea’s missile tests would help the two Koreas defend themselves.

“I’d like to see the North Koreans become stronger, especially for when we are united,” said Kwon, a homemaker in her 40s who had just polished off a bowl of the slippery buckwheat noodles known as nengmyeon. In the event of a war between North Korea and the United States or Japan, she said, “we would of course be on the same side as the North Koreans.”

Among student groups, the views were more extreme.

“North Korea’s missiles are the last fortress of peace to deter a U.S. invasion. We should celebrate,” a group called the Citizens Movement for the Withdrawal of U.S. Forces in Korea proclaimed on its website.

Nonetheless, there is consternation here. Having no warning, a South Korean airliner en route from Chicago to Incheon International Airport here crossed the path of the missile 10 minutes before the launch.

There is a competitive factor as well: The Taepodong 2 missile that North Korea test-fired last week, albeit unsuccessfully, is believed to have a range of thousands of miles and the ability to send a satellite into space. South Korea’s longest-range missile can travel 180 miles, and Seoul is not scheduled to do its first satellite launch until later this year.

North Korea’s provocation puts Seoul in a familiar position of being caught between its estranged brothers to the north and its most important ally, the United States.

South Korea has responded with somewhat contradictory moves. On one hand, it is proceeding with a previously scheduled economic cooperation meeting beginning Tuesday in Busan and with a shipment of donated fertilizer for the North that left port Saturday. But Seoul also has said that further requests for humanitarian aid will be put on hold.

After meeting with South Korean officials in Seoul, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he was satisfied with what they were doing.

“We have a pretty good understanding that we can’t have business as usual,” Hill said Saturday. “What we are not going to do is to allow missile launches to divide us.”

But strains are inevitable whenever there is trouble with North Korea.

South Koreans tend to look at the North Koreans as embarrassing relatives, but family nonetheless. Although they gripe plenty among themselves about the North, they often bristle when the criticism comes from outside.

“We are the same people, after all,” restaurateur Bae said.

North Korea’s testing of long- and medium-range missiles doesn’t really change the security perspective of South Koreans, who have lived for so long within range of the North’s short-range Scud missiles.

“This missile launch was really directed against the Americans and Japanese, not us. There is no reason for us to be so noisy and sensational about it,” said Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea specialist at South Korea’s Sejong Institute, which has close ties to the South Korean government.

The nightmare scenario here is not that North Korea will attack South Korea. Rather, it is that United States would attempt a preemptive strike on North Korea, triggering a war in which South Korea would be caught in the middle.

“What is scary to us is that the Bush administration will start something and then the North Koreans, figuring they have nothing to lose, will attack us,” said Park Kyong-ah, a 36-year-old social worker who describes herself as a conservative.

Many conservatives believe, however, that South Koreans have become too laid-back about North Korea and the threat it poses.

“There cannot be another nation in the world where the government and people are so indifferent to the nation’s security,” Chosun Ilbo, the most conservative of South Korea’s mainstream newspapers, railed in an editorial published Thursday. “We are getting slack. Something has to be done.”