Life is Like a Comic Book ( 7 April)

With the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the threat of radiation poisoning and contamination is ever present in our lives in Korea.  I have been told by numerous people (teachers, friends and students) to make sure that I do “not get rained on” and their advice if I should be so unlucky as to be rained on is to “take a shower as soon as [I] get wet”.  The logic in these warnings is that the radiation, leaking from Japan’s towers that were hit by the tsunami, is being carried across the Eastern Sea and headed straight for Korea.  Similarly, the contaminated water that was used to cool these towers and later pumped back into the Sea is making a beeline for Korea’s coasts – specifically Incheon and the Han River which runs through Seoul.  Consequently, Koreans are rather cautious at the moment and many friends are limiting the amount of time they currently spend outdoors “just in case”.

Catfish described life in Korea as something from a comic book: Radioactive Rains will give us superpowers; Our enemy is to the North andYellow Dust from the Gobi Desert is blowing in from the East.  It seems that only the South is currently safe – except for that pesky radioactive water heading from Japan’s East Coast to Korea’s West Coast….