Reflections on Cheonan

This photo of a crying mother, hugging her late-son's photo struck me as I was reading an article on Cheonan. Sporting the sterotypical 아줌마 (Ajumma) hairstyle, she represents the remaining 45 moms who similarly, had lost their sons in the incident. I can feel her pain as her wrinkled hands stroked the photo frame...

I'd written on the subject of peace before and once again, life is teaching me yet another important lesson on peace.

Majoring a Security Studies, I'd always said that chaos is good because it provides jobs for people like me. I take it all back now. When I first read about the sinking of Cheonan on 26 March, the immediate thought that came to my mind was, "The two Koreas CANNOT and MUST NOT go to war for this." I thought about the deep underground stations of Seoul's subway system, how they were built as shelters for the civilians and the scene of them being packed with families who'd fled their home for safety. I thought about the soldiers I'd seen at DMZ (demilitarized zone) near the 38th parallel. Most importantly, I thought about Hyeyoung's family.

I visited the DMZ 2 years ago in 2008 as a tourist, thinking how cool it is to visit a place which may no longer exist in the future but in retrospective, I was foolish to go with such a mindset. The DMZ is, if I may, perhaps one important element that's upholding peace in the Korean peninsular. Hyeyoung was amazed when Kaiming drove her across the causeway to have supper. When she related her experience to her dad, he was even more amazed at it. Needless to say, driving across an international boundry to wash your car, fill it up with petrol and have supper is not something Koreans do.

Here in Singapore, we always say that we train to fight a war that will never come and as such, we take peace for granted. Apart from some of our grandparents who'd been through the Japanese Occupation, most of us never knew what it was like to worry about any form of natural disaster, much less an imminent war. I don't claim to be like John Lennon and advocate for peace but I just hope we don't take it for granted. And it's not just about inter-nation peace but even inter-personal peace as well. (I prefer to term the latter as love but for the purpose of this entry, let's just stick to it.)

Yet simultaneously, as a realist, I believe in retaliation as well. (No, I'm not contradicting myself. If I said revenge, then I'd be, but not retaliation.) For the 46 lives lost in the sinking of Cheonan, South Korea must of course respond. War or any form of armed response is definitely not an option, given that tens of million of lives are at stake and that it should always, always, be the final option. As an advocate of Bellum iustum, this is what I truly believe. I hope the Blue House will find an appropriate response to this incident and for the sake of the millions in the Korean Penisular (South and North alike), I pray that peace will prevail.