North Korea Telephone Game

I have heard some other crazy things lately about the US. I think I mentioned before how everyone has been talking about swine flu. They are telling me America is not doing enough about it and the situation in the US is very severe right now. And they attribute the problem to the American economy collapsing and a lack of a stable health care system. That sounds like a bit of a stretch to me.

Lately I am intrigued by what I am hearing about North Korea. On a bus the other day, a guy was saying that the US and North Korea had begun fighting a war. I could have turned around and told him (and his surrounding audience) the truth, but I did not want to cause a scene.

Later that afternoon I was on a return bus when a guy sitting behind me started taking to the guy sitting next to me about the Russian girl next to him. I turned around and politely informed him I am American, not Russian to let him know I can understand what he says. Talk about starting a scene! I had no idea, but the guy was drunk or crazy. In a loud, confrontational voice, he started asking questions about the US. He asserted that China is not afraid of Obama and it can do whatever it wants but it will not be able to defeat China.

Today I was visiting some friends in a rice store. A customer came in, saw me, and asked who I was. My friends told him I was an American graduate student who wants to understand rice. He asked me what I study and I said geography. He told me geography is good, its a peaceful thing to study. 'What', I asked, 'does a peaceful major mean'? His response was that unlike international politics or economics, geography is a good thing to study because there is no conflict. Well I could argue with that, but instead I asked for some examples. North Korea, he told me, is an example of a country with good relations to China but not to the rest of the world. So now China is caught in the middle because China also has good relations with the rest of the world, so there is conflict. International politics have to look at this problem and figure out a solution.

I think he, like many people I meet, do not have a solid understanding of geography. I know plenty of geographers who study conflict. But again, there was North Korea at the center of his thinking. I guess we are close to North Korea here (468 miles from Harbin to Pyongyang) so when the US gets concerned about nuclear testing or American journalists sentenced to prison, it will be big news here. But its sometimes like a game a telephone where you whisper a word into someone's ear and by the time you get to the end of the circle, the message is completely different.

Sometimes I try to explain the reality of the US to people (like, no we really all do not keep guns in our homes), but other times I am amused by their perceptions. I like to just listen to people talk. I know I should be more of a so-called cultural ambassador, but I am fascinated by how skewed the stories they get are. Its sad, really, but I guess misperceptions happen everywhere (though the state-run media here does a good job at making it happen often here).