by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:
Took this yesterday around noon while drinking beer on the roof of Kim Il Sung's former vacation home near Goseong, South Korea. The home was captured near the end of the war when South Korean troops waged a last-minute, all-in campaign to take as much land as possible before the armistace. As if happens, that campaign is the subject of Korea's summer mega-blockbuster, "The Front Line." See the trailer here.
Ben Birnbaum was recently in South Korea:
At the Hyundai Heavy Industries plant in Ulsan, I chatted with a 28-year-old employee, who asked that I not use her name. She told me that she once agreed with her parents on the matter. “When I was in school, like junior high or elementary school, I thought, ‘We have to have reunification, yeah!’” Upon entering the working world, though, she realized she had her own problems—and so did her country. South Korea already had too many destitute citizens who it couldn’t support. Why did it need 24 million more? “I feel sometimes guilty, because the people up there are suffering,” she said. “But they’re not really my family. Why should I care?” She laughed, then paused. “Am I too selfish?”
The Dish 