Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
Still...(edit : umm, imagine a rising inflection here which would indicate my susceptability to the patriotism virus, even though yadda yadda....)
Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves -- and are unheard by anyone else -- that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth -- in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.
Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace -- a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.
Although in my experience, Koreans often seem to be skilled beyond measure at cheapening and vulgarizing just about anything to which they lay their hands, owing perhaps to the mercantilism-at-any-cost modernization of recent decades, Sorak San National Park, and the countryside around it, were a pleasant revelation to me.
Koreans seem to be better stewards of their forest resources than my fellow Canadians. I saw nothing that could compare with the vast, brutal areas of clearcut in British Columbia. In a tiny little country, with 49 million people crammed into it, there's more of what appears to be virgin forest in the 275 kilometres or so between there and the smoke-shrouded urban hell that is here than I had ever expected.
The entire coast in the region is lined with a three-metre fence, topped with razor-wire, a legacy of the latest upheaval 50 years ago. Sokcho and Sorak National park are disconcertingly close to the North Korean border. Soldiers patrol the beaches, along the inside of the fence. North Korean spies are kept out, but the people who live along the coast are kept in. It was surreal to see a gun emplacement, draped with camouflage netting, hidden in the rocks beneath the hermitage at the temple.
) is as beautiful as any place I've ever seen, although even in the shoulder season, it's mobbed by huge crowds. The day we spent there, bushwalking and generally wandering about, there were literally thousands of high school and middle school students, in enormous groups, repeatedly shouting "hello!" at me, which is always something I enjoy immensely, in much the same sense that I enjoy having my nipples sandpapered.
I just watched Mulholland Drive, and David Lynch has once again pleasantly nobbled my brain. Recently re-read David Foster Wallace's piece on Lynch from his anthology "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", which got me all het up about Lynch again. Eraserhead and Blue Velvet were big faves of that ol' gang of mine, back in my university days, but I still haven't seen Twin Peaks or Lost Highway.
A quarter-page ad on page 3 of today's Korea Herald. Because it's too hard to read in my scan, I note that the return address for the coupon is in Kent, England.
