*This reminds me of the same sillyness of crawling under my desk as a tot in preparation for Russian nuclear attacks that never came.
SEOUL, South Korea — The fourth graders sitting on a row of benches in central Seoul wore yellow rubber hoods, and they looked like the cast of a school musical with an adorable chorus of Minions.
In fact, they were learning how to don gas masks in the event of chemical or biological attacks from North Korea. Several giggled as they wrenched off the masks, while others gasped for air.
This is what schoolchildren sometimes do on field trips to the War Memorial of Korea, built as a reminder of the costs of warfare on the Korean Peninsula. Lately, talk of war is in the news again, but people here in Seoul are mostly responding with shrugs and nervous giggles rather than emergency drills.
They’ve been through this before.
SEOUL, South Korea — The fourth graders sitting on a row of benches in central Seoul wore yellow rubber hoods, and they looked like the cast of a school musical with an adorable chorus of Minions.
In fact, they were learning how to don gas masks in the event of chemical or biological attacks from North Korea. Several giggled as they wrenched off the masks, while others gasped for air.
This is what schoolchildren sometimes do on field trips to the War Memorial of Korea, built as a reminder of the costs of warfare on the Korean Peninsula. Lately, talk of war is in the news again, but people here in Seoul are mostly responding with shrugs and nervous giggles rather than emergency drills.
They’ve been through this before.
For about 25 million people in South Korea who live within 50 miles of the North Korean border — including residents of Seoul, the capital — it has long been a sobering reality that they are the most vulnerable to attack by the government in Pyongyang, with which South Korea has technically been at war for decades.
That perennial threat has intensified in recent weeks, with the Trump administration warning that it would consider all options, including military strikes, to thwart North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea, meanwhile, has conducted missile tests and huge live-fire artillery drills, and analysts say it is prepared to conduct its sixth test of a nuclear weapon.
