Recently, my kids gleefully mocked me when I popped my head up from a post-dinner scroll through social media to shout “Guess what? Blogging is IN!” Apparently some young influencer I chanced upon, declared that due to X replacing Twitter and being less of a thing, intellectual social media is on the rise and by that, she meant blogging. But really, I’m alright being ahead of my time (or maybe just blissfully behind the times) and my love for this old war-horse-medium persists. That said, I’m adding this weekly feature to push myself to write more often. I’m not sure I can really write every week but my goal is to include three parts: Asians in the News (my discussion of news affecting Asians), Watch/Listen Now (my reviews of pop culture) and Copy This (Asian trends that I like). This will supplement the other, more sporadic posts that, as you know, are hard to define. Enjoy!

Asians in the News: I can’t stop thinking about the deceivingly childish games that have recently consumed North and South Korea–moves that could lead to actual military conflict. You likely already know of the mounting tension between the two Koreas that surround North Korea’s fetish for nuclear proliferation. But have you heard about the role of balloons in their latest dance of provocation? South Korean activists sent balloons that were filled with propaganda leaflets across the border to North Korea, which caused North Korea to send more than 1,000 balloons filled with trash and manure to the South. South Korea’s response: throwing loud sound relays of K-pop etc to demoralize the North Koreans at the border.

“South Korean authorities discovered about 1,000 balloons that were tied to vinyl bags containing manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth, waste batteries and waste paper.” From the photos above, it appears that latex balloons were involved–the kind you buy for kids’ parties, fill with shaving cream or water and toss around on hot summer days. How dare the North Koreans besmirch these symbols of innocence and childhood!

Let’s dwell a moment on the contents of North Korea’s trash balloons. (A peculiar hodge-podge, indeed.) I am imagining there was an uninspired Pyongyang military committee tasked with balloon stuffing. Perhaps these North Koreans–soused on soju–went to unwind after hours at some large rodeo-themed bar with live bucking broncos (if they have that kind of thing in North Korea), and at the end of the night looked at the sawdust floor with its horse manure and cigarette stubs, shrugged and swept it all into garbage bags to show their supervisors the next day. (I couldn’t fit the old batteries and fabric scraps into this story. Can you?)

This is the well-known problem with bureaucrats living in a dictatorship:They lack imagination! What about including some North Korean propaganda? Sure, South Korea is flourishing but it’s not a perfect place. The committee could have jammed the balloons with flyers that shared comparative statistics on the abutting countries’ respective birth rates (North Korea’s 14.35 births/1,000 population compared to South Korea’s 6.89 births/1,000 population. That would have driven Seoul mad! Also why not throw more nastiness into the mix, e.g, add the solid waxy gelatin that forms on kalbi when it sits too long in the fridge, moldy potatoes that grow creepy limbs when they stay too long on your counter, finger nail clippings and used Q- tips? Though it’s probably true that shit from the sky is pretty damn vile on its own. This all reminds me of the following particularly foul tale from my childhood:

Once, when I was maybe in the Third or Fourth Grade, I invited a new friend Laurie* over for a playdate. At the time, mom and I lived in a small 1.5 bedroom apartment on the 29th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. Mom was a child therapist who had an office in our apartment, which meant that sometimes when I had a playdate she’d close my bedroom door and ask us to be quiet and not emerge from our room until she came to get us. Normally, this was not problematic.

As I recall, Laurie was a lil’ sprout of a thing— dark-haired, disheveled and perpetually clad in denim overalls. She had a reputation for being a tad misbehaved but to me, she was admirably fearless–the kind who’d be the first in a group to guzzle down a nauseating concoction of fridge leftovers, (see the Roy family’s Meal fit for a King game in Succession for a modern day example.) or who would do back flips–not caring if the boys saw her underpants. She probably intrigued me as an only child with a quiet, rule-abiding persona.

On this day, Laurie, like some Pavlovian mutt, got restless as soon as mom closed my bedroom door. She tore through the toys and games that were littered throughout the confines of my room–positively churlish. At some point she excused herself to go to my bathroom and when she emerged, she was holding a plastic bucket–the kind my mom would sometimes fill with suds and dip her mop into. I looked at Laurie, a bit confused for she was grinning wildly. When she stepped forward and extended the bucket in my direction, I looked down and froze: She’d poo-ed inside.

I was a particularly squeamish nine-year-old so this may have bristled me to the core. I recall begging her to flush her turd down the toilet and find a way to clean the bucket before mom was done with her therapy session. I didn’t want to smell her waste so I pointed her back to the bathroom, also hoping not to have to oversee her efforts. (This shows my young, careless mind. Imagine allowing the same girl who shat in a bucket to clean it without any supervision. Eww.)

Instead of obliging, this she-devil raised her brows, smirked and did the unthinkable: at an alarming clip, she beelined to the partially-opened window in my bedroom–the bucket in hand. I remember rushing behind her, yelling no, no, because I (understandably) must have foreseen her twisted plan but I was outpaced. Yelling stop Laurie stop, I watched her swing that poor bucket against the metal bars of my window guard with such force, it only took one bang to empty. One (most likely) hard poo and an ignoble twenty-nine-floor descent. In my memory, she laughed maniacally. Even snorted.

In my memory, mom came running out of her office and bust into my room–understandably flummoxed. Need I say: I never again invited Laurie over.

Today I looked her up online to see her trajectory; as she has a common name, I’m unsure if the librarian I found online who authored a published article about being a witch, is her but if so, cool! I can (maybe) forgive her for her past indecency. Perhaps her poo throwing was a Wiccan ritual!

Clearly fixated on these waste-filled balloons, I have questions that suggest I am someone interested in mechanics and Physics but I’m not, e.g, how do these nations project the balloons into enemy territory? I am imagining their soldiers winding their arms like professional pitchers and throwing the balloons (and their attached bag of waste) from the deck of their imperial ships, only to watch them drift sadly into the water. Or do they shove it all into a cannon? See my drawing of Kim Jong Un the clown loading a cannon with poo balloons. (To make it easier for me to draw, I drew the poo inside the balloon instead of the bag attached to the balloon but I think you probably didn’t notice this discrepancy!) It turns out (shucks!) none of the above ridiculous methods were used; North Korea used planes to drop the balloons onto the South Korean side of the border.

It surprised me to learn that these trash balloons lack any internal mechanisms to guide/propel them so a gust of breeze can derail them. It amuses me that adults would use these basic schoolyard tactics to escalate existing political conflicts. Why bother using a plane to drop these balloons if they end up floating in all directions anyway? Indeed, I read that a large number of these trash balloons went off course and never landed on South Korean soil.(Who knows, one of them may be headed your way!) Note: I just saw that someone on TikTok alleged these balloons have GPS inside but not sure if that’s a reliable source!

If you are like me, you also want to understand the South Korean tactic of responding to shit balloons with sound relays. Apparently, sound relays consist of South Korea placing loudspeakers at the North/South Korean border to loudly broadcast international news and Kpop, with the goal of decreasing the morale of North Koreans, e.g, the North Korean military, who live near the border. (For context, North Korea has banned the playing of Kpop, no doubt worried that the contagious music/dance moves combined with the visuals of the performers will spur young North Koreans to defect either physically or metaphysically.) As someone married to a proud audiophile, I am wondering what decibel is reached by these loudspeakers. I wonder if the broadcasts are louder than the music my husband blasts from two casket-sized speakers that shake the foundations of his beloved music room and rattle my innards (especially when he plays base-heavy tunes)? If so, I sympathize!

The above photos of the landed trash balloons, left me wondering how South Koreans are impacted if all they see are these neatly wrapped bags of trash. (I mean, just step around them!) I learned that some of North Korea’s trash balloons have timers inside that cause them to burst open –spreading their unsavory contents everywhere. Ew.

This has me thinking, I wish the young man who recently attempted to assassinate Trump had directed a round of exploding poo balloons Trump’s way instead of using a rifle; then no lives would have been lost; additionally, the image of Trump with poo on his ear would have been much less messianic and galvanizing then the sight of a bleeding, defiant Trump under the American flag (an image ready-made for shirts and mugs).

Apparently, balloons have been used by many countries as full-fledged weapons. I just learned that during WWII, Japan weaponized large balloons (the size of hot air balloons). These balloons were made with washi paper that was stitched together by thousands of Japanese schoolgirls and each one contained fire bombs and sand bags so that they would drop and set fire to American forests–thereby, expending US military resources on domestic issues. (I understand war is war but it’s sad to think that the kids’ cute crafting projects were in the service of fire bomb devastation).

I’ll never look at balloons the same way again. If you ever catch me looking askance at those advertising blimps that sometimes float by (or even a simple latex party balloon in my line of vision), you’ll know why.

Update: North Koreans responded to the South’s sound relays by sending off more trash balloons that burst open on the South Korean President’s compound. What’s South Korea’s next move? Let’s hope it stays in the realm of child’s play, e.g., sending the North balloons filled with collagen supplements, face masks and other coveted South Korean skin care products. Stay tuned.

WATCH/LISTEN NOW:

This Korean reality game show University War also known as Elite League that consists of a Season One and a soon-to-be Season Two, piques my interest. I would like this show transferred to the U.S. and modified to reflect my selfish interests.

From what I can gage from YouTube snippets (as it’s not available to us on mainstream streaming sites), this game show consists of roughly six teams of contestants who are students from Korea’s top Universities who are competing to be the smartest University. In each episode, they compete to solve dizzying geometric puzzles, math problems so complex I had no ability to even recognize what genre of math is involved, and some challenges that are like an Escape Room created by a psycho sadist, e.g., each team member memorizing ten four-digit locker codes and then attempting to open ten lockers before the opponent team.(As someone who refuses to even lock my gym locker in fear of forgetting one 4-digit code, this Blows My Mind!)

In another competition, contestants memorize ten six-digit birthdates and then pair the birthdate with the right teammate. (This part of the competition seems antithetical to team morale. I would be pissy if a teammate guessed my birthdate very wrong–particular if they added on years.)

Watching the competitors huddle together to try to work on a math problem–the gossip, sexual tension and hysteria that is part and parcel of any reality show, here replaced by murmuring, nodding and an occasional high five–make me wonder if South Koreans have longer attention spans than Americans (or at least this American). Watching even snippets of this show made me feel like I did when I was in the audience for a Tom Stoppard play called The Invention of Love; (I didn’t get any of the witticisms in this play, which made it unbearable to listen to the rest of the audience rearing with laughter). I couldn’t seem to do any of the problems the teams whipped through–a short-fall that made me blush and question my education! But you somehow need to check the show out. At the very least for some invigorating self-evaluation/self-criticism!

Despite my negative comments above, as a parent of a high schooler about to dive into college applications, I would even pay to see a USA version of this show with a wide range of college teams that would allow me to make satisfyingly sweeping generalizations about these schools that reinforce my long held beliefs, e.g., M.I.T. kids with their time-warp memorization skills would open the most lockers fast; RISD kids would be the best at spotting a pattern(see the first photo above for the pattern finding challenge) and you get the drift. If anyone reading this produces TV shows, consider the base audience for this type of show: every anxious parent of a teenager, teenagers applying to college who want to check out what college has the cutest contestants, math and logic dorks and anyone else obsessed with elitism, school rankings and status. I’d expand the areas of competition to the language arts, e.g., competing with A.I. and contestants to write the best cover letter for that unpaid internship that awaits you after college. Why not add a real life skills portion, e.g., addressing an envelope (because most young people have no idea how) or learning how to budget finances while living in an expensive American city–balancing the need for savings with the need to live. Would you watch this?

COPY THIS: I am going to try this with my 9-year old daughter but this South Korean TikTok trend https://www.tiktok.com/@korea.on/video/7363599466634513685?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7334555844560291370 can be for any duo who wants a cute way to greet each other that goes beyond handshakes, kisses and hugs. (I’m not absolutely sure this is a South Korean trend actually. It’s possibly the unique content of one South Korean creator.) Take a marker (the less toxic the better) and draw two simple dot eyes on the top of your pointer finger. Next draw a mouth on the top of your partner’s pointer finger so when the twain shall meet, you get a smiley face! Get creative with different expressions. You are welcome!

* a fake name to protect the real person involved

See you next week! xoxo