Escalation

Today, in a dramatic escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, kids armed with toy small arms appeared for the first time in my courtyard.  All seemed normal as I headed out my backdoor during midafternoon.  A narrow steppingstone walkway runs along the building for a ways, then rounds the corner of the ground floor apartments, and heads toward the exit to the street.

I had to slow my pace for an elderly gentleman ahead of me who had, what I assumed to be, his grandchild clinging to his chest in a sternum hugging, papoose bearing type contraption.  The afternoon was sunny and warm with little hint of breeze.  The path widened enough to allow my passage, and as I slipped by, Grandpa was tugging a stocking cap down on the baby's head so as to cover the little ears.  Don't want to catch a sniffle.  Call it the universality of grandparenthood.

My amusement was short-lived as I turned the building's corner and stumbled upon five armed lads, maybe seven years old or so.  Only two were toting weapons.  One sat on a brick wall with a plastic, imitation military assault rifle across his lap.  It had a large orange fluorescent plastic knob on the end of the barrel which immediately put me at ease.  Another youngster gripped a midsize automatic pistol.  Again, the reassuring orange knob.

As I approached the small band of boys, the rifle bearer fidgeted which caused small, round, hard candy balls to dislodge from the gun's magazine and roll out of the end of its barrel onto the sidewalk.  The other boys scrambled after the ammo, gathering it up and stuffing it into their mouths as they chomped gleefully.

These were the first guns, real or otherwise, that I've seen on the streets of Seoul since my arrival.  I don't know if there's talk of possible hostilities at Korean supper tables, but I envisioned these boys, having heard recent news, taking up arms as defenders of our courtyard.

If the regime in Pyongyang catches wind of all this, I'm sure it will issue a rambling rant through the North Korean state news agency that'll translate along these lines:

"We formally inform the scumsucking rancid U.S. imperialists and their conservative warmongering nincompoop ninny puppets in Seoul that the putrid provocative antagonistic mean-spirited act of toy arming children soldiers in the courtyards of residential apartment complex buildings high-rise disloyal to the true and honorable state buildings will be regarded not disregarded as a reckless hostilely hostile act against the DPRK by the venomous swish of skirt and her Washington overlord puppeteers controlling puppet strings will all be smashed to smithereens by the strong-willed deterministic determination of all the united service personnel and well-fed people."

The Pyongyang regime, as well as being a master of terror, has proved itself repeatedly to be a master of the thoroughly redundant, somewhat incomprehensible, run-on sentence.

As I exited to the street, parting ways with the boy citizen soldiers in the courtyard, I couldn't help but notice three foreign war correspondents and their camera crews rushing pellmell toward the boys, in hot pursuit of a breaking news story.  Watch for it, leading off tomorrow's nightly news broadcasts.