On Party Buses, and Natures Solution to North Korea

A brightly pink bus came to a stop directly in front of me following my daily afternoon walk from school, the words 'VIP' vying my attentions.  I was leaned up against a plane of glass, my stance and demeanor as casual as the aging box which serves as our bus stop.  I looked every bit of my American heritage, my ease in life plied in my pink tinge, the beginnings of a sunburn, and my clothes of a mis-mashed fashion; so much so, as only arises from a mind which has had much too much time in which to be absent from itself.

But here is where things get peculiar within wonderful exception.   The amount of bass reverberating from the bus belied the youthful presence I would think to perceive were I in America.  I am, however, in the far-reaches or northern rural Korea, and in Korea, only the elderly celebrate as shamelessly as they do freely.  To see the bus shaking in strain as the amount of elderly jumping and dancing with the bus aisles reached a crescendo was magnetic to my attentions.  What few elderly remained in their seats seemed to cower as the spaces in between went wild.   And then, that thing happened which one always expects in the depths of the sub-conscious, a face pressed itself against the glass portal which separated our two worlds, and then another, and another, and another.   They gave me soju cheers, peace signs, and emphatic waves, and I managed to return a peace sign and wave in a still cool manner beginning to waver.  All of this in a few seconds.  

Yet when two worlds collide, temporary mental impressions carry forth not only within individuals, but as ripples melding the fabric of society.   This is the magic of the generational gap in Korea; never in history has the gap been this large, and dividing such a short span of time.  It does and will absorb my writing.

This bus will follow a riddled and harrowing path through a countryside which lingers in a slightly plastic-ed harmony.   That is, the same path which tanks would follow was North Korea to invade.   The secret of a war-trained country.   Deeply dropping rice fields grace the transitions of 80% mountain terrain, to little more than wooden poles, dirty black plastic, and innumerable hot peppers; all this, slowly modernizing itself along a concrete highway path.  Were North Korea to invade, those same submerged rice fields which provide the daily substance of life would become the deepening pits in which tanks would slowly churn mud, forming their own hapless graves.  There is indeed a reason no one road leads directly to Seoul.  Farther back still, massive concrete pillars sit upon hourglass-like blocks strapped with explosives forming the potential to close these few roads in seconds.  Only the frozen ground of a dilatory nature, still left to its existence in the focused modernization of Seoul, will yet yield a path to cogs in a machine.

Speaking of, the non-verbal

While within psychology studies you often hear delightfully fitful datums.  The statistical statements which jar the familiar patterns of your mind, making momentary moments in which things are dew; thoughts which are condensed from the atmosphere, especially in darkness, and deposited in the form of small cyclical datums on minds which have cooled.

Case in point, this datum - 80-90% of human communication is non-verbal, and further, a mere 7% of communication is attributed to actual spoken word. 

With age ideals become less in their use.  And so, this datum was a particular piece which continually looped my imagination and fascination as I entered into a reality of relationships.  But still, this thought was less a true bloom till I arrived in Korea…  Till I lived in a foreign land shamelessly ignorant of the spoken language required by society.  Regardless, I was a student of culture continuing, endfully fascinated within the human differences which speak so soundly yet softly behind words perceived.       

In return, mornings have been, and are, kind.  They have led me so recently through many days wherein my habitually cooling mind has resurfaced within the surreal; in infamous dinner localities where I wake from 12 hour lifetimes to the inspiring understanding which had floated past and around me unbeknownst. 

Cue scene. "No, I don't understand what you said, but yes I understand what you're saying, and as well, this secret between us." 

Here, employees, bosses and grunts, often go for dinner and drinks together after work.  An event which rarely happens in the U.S., and which would make little cultural sense, did it in fact occur.  As so, these dinners can be especially uncomfortable for us foreigners. But this is not what I speak of.