I am asked repeatedly, "Why do you live and work in Korea?" When it seems as if the only sounds coming from expatriates' mouths are complaints, I understand the average Korean person's indignation. Korean students and acquaintances do not usually ask this question, because they want an answer, but more like, as to say, "Just leave!"

   Depending on the person, there are several variations on the answer, aside from the completely flippant reply for drunks in bars, "None of your damn business!" "Money!" is really not a responsible remark either. Paying off college loans, seeking an exotic hiatus from an otherwise boring or unsatisfying career (that's why I joined the Army, actually), or seeking some valuable on-the-job training for a future teaching career in a western country still does not touch the logic behind living as a guest worker in a foreign country, when a citizen has more civil rights. Actually, as a friend of mine (a defense contractor married to a wonderful Korean woman) said this weekend, "I don't have to worry about crime here!" But even that does not go far enough to the root of the question, and, of the problem. It goes beyond the discussion boards and the barstool chatter, because, if it did not, there would be no reason for an article. Just a motley crew of inebriated, self-righteous, apathetic losers slinging insults on websites, trying to justify their half-baked opinions with a cloak of free speech platitudes and moral-relativistic pseudo-slogans. Some day these lame utterances will be the meat of some sociologist's thesis, like the lewd graffiti on ancient Roman walls.

   I do feel sympathetic (in the correct sense of the word) towards Koreans, because Americans have already, and continue, to encounter the same problem. The world, shrinking as rapidly as it is now, was never just a stretch of land in each person's myopic vision, all tied together on a low-tech, paper map. When satellites beamed photographs of that tiny, fragile eggshell in space called Earth, many people had already figured out, that more than just weather whipped around the globe. The oil shocks of the 1970's acquainted Ma and Pa Kettle to the intricacies of geo-politics, although they might have recalled all that doom and gloom in the 50's about the encroaching shadow of Uncle Joe and his Communist hordes. America loves to hide behind its two beaches, the Atlantic and Pacific, only because every American dreams a delusion, that the world is evil, and America is safe and holy ground.

  Americans and Koreans, you see, are not that dissimilar. Only they choose different tactics: one offensive, the other defensive. As is so many other questions, Americans and Koreans are antithetical: language, culture, and globalization. Leaders in the United States, buttressed by some of the most talented wise men (Oppenheimer, Keynes, Einstein, et. al.) assembled in one time period in history and a corpulent fear of warring against another generation of Fascist dictators, set out to keep America safe by extending it's borders till they circled the globe. The fruits of the so-called pax americana can be debated, but the point is, that it was all a matter of domestic policy. Overnight, international became national; agriculture, manufacturing, defense, every budget item became a matter of moral importance. American leaders, and their European allies, fought the last war by eliminating the roots of the world wars.

  Koreans, on the other hand, prefer the defensive approach. Hide the foreigners on Jeju Island! Restrict those exit visas! No minority shareholder rights in "Korean" companies! Korea, as deluded as the United States in the opposite way, believes that there is an immutable idea called "korea", comprehensible only to an exclusive group called "koreans", and worthy of defending to the death (however pathetic and miserable that death may be). Americans believe everyone in the world is really an American dying to be freed of his/her nationalistic constraints; Koreans just want to die undefiled by the world.

  The problem is them. The outsiders, the not-like-my-mother people who smell funny. Satellites can click photos, using every kind of radiation known to science, till everyone can have a custom-made screensaver. Scientists can map the genome down to the last semi-animate particle, but there will forever be a stranger among us. Maybe, its because we have a skin. Bacteria and viruses are much more open-minded. Humans collect in tribes, and destroy the enemy. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, et. al., like to posit a brotherhood of global believers, only, not every religion can have a hundred-billion followers. Hatred is integral to the human animal, it makes us intelligent, loyal, caring, and all those other moral qualities. We are one, because there are so many others. 

So, why am I here?

  I am a virus, the carrier of a disease. I study my victim, I love my victim, and thrive in its warm, cosy innards. I love it so much, my host fashions weapons tailor-made to annihilate me. I reduce my victim to its lowest point of exhaustion, then I expire. But, not before, copies of me are placed in the arsenal, to instruct the warriors of a future war. I strengthen my victim. I give it new life. After the fever lifts, there is the joy of living. In one big, happy world.

  Actually, though, like Robert Holley said in a recent interview, I have to work here, so I might as well like it, too! Anything is better than working in a jail!  
 

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