Joseph Juhn’s parents remained calm when North Korea bombed an island 60 miles off the coast of South Korea, even though they live in South Korea’s capital, Seoul. When Juhn called them, they said they felt safe.

‘I consider North Korea as a troubled kid, a next-door neighbor,’ said Juhn, a second-year law student who was raised in South Korea. ‘Typically when these things happen, people outside of Korea tend to freak out more.’

After the Nov. 23 attacks on Yeonpyeong Island, which killed two South Korean soldiers and wounded 15 soldiers and three civilians, U.S. media depicted a tense East Asia. But Syracuse University students who hail from South Korea said they are not worried about the escalating situation overseas and think the media overreacted.

SU has 334 international students from South Korea, according to the November census update from the Lillian and Emanuel Slutzker Center for International Services. This places South Korea as the third largest home country for international students at SU after China and India.

To Jay Lee, the faculty adviser for Korean Students in America at SU, the news of the attack was concerning but not too worrisome, he said. 

‘North Korea has behaved like this many times in the past,’ he said in an e-mail.

This is not the first time the North Korean military has struck the South. In March, 42 South Korean sailors were killed by a torpedo striking and then sinking their vessel, the Cheonan, in an attack from North Korea not far from Yeonpyeong Island.

South Korean naval exercises near the border between North and South Korea are thought to have provoked the latest attack, said Jongwoo Han, a professor of political science specializing in Korea. Another reason for the attack may be North Korea’s attempt to show its strength to its southern neighbor, Han said. 

‘North Korea right now is in the process of succession of leadership from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un,’ he said.

Youngseek Kim, a graduate student in the School of Information Studies from South Korea, said he thinks the coverage of the attacks he saw on American news outlets, such as CNN, overdramatized the situation. One CNN report posed the question ‘Could this lead to war?’

When Kim called his family members after the attacks, they were relatively calm compared to some of his American friends, he said. The United States’ concern about the issue has been inflated, he said.

‘Many times the U.S. media and the U.S. government make North Korea as a kind of symbol of evil,’ Kim said. ‘This kind of exaggeration makes the U.S. more worried.’

Additionally, small incidents between the two countries that show the tensions often go unreported in American media, Kim said.

But issues on the Korean peninsula attracted the attention of students on campus before the attacks. The Slutzker Center offered programs on North Korea during International Education Week from Nov. 15 to Nov. 19, in which 50 students were present.

On Monday, Liberty in North Korea, a group that advocates for rights for North Korea dissents, screened the film ‘Hiding’ to an audience of more than 60 students. The film documented the struggle of North Koreans who escaped through an underground network of safe houses to seek asylum in Southeast Asia and South Korea. If captured, the North Korean refugees could be killed for treason or put into labor camps, according to the documentary. The film included footage of an execution in North Korea of one refugee who was discovered in China.

Ariana Yuen, who is in the process of co-founding the SU chapter of LiNK, said she was glad to see increased coverage of North Korea.

‘I think it’s a good thing North Korea is appearing in the news,’ Yuen said. ‘Hopefully this will shed some light on what’s happening.’

ajswab@syr.edu

Published on November 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm