running riot

Feeling an itch to write tonight. It's been awhile, and I have been contemplating what I want to share. With the recent craziness in Vancouver (over hockey, no less), I thought I'd write about my own experiences with rioting.

As I've mentioned many times, my father was an Army officer so we moved every two years or so throughout my childhood. During my seventh and eighth grade years, my family was stationed in Taegu, South Korea. We had not lived in a foreign country previous to this, so everything seemed new and unfamiliar. However, we lived on an Army base (actually three which were connected by short bus rides) which had a K-12 school, a small grocery store called a commissary, a Walmart type store called the PX, a bowling alley, a movie theater in an old airplane hangar, and a Burger King. Many of my friends had family who lived off-base, but for all intents and purposes the Army base was my entire world. It wasn't until my mother volunteered me to visit orphanages (another blog for another day) that I began to see glimpses of a wider world. And still, I remained relatively unaware of the political unrest simmering throughout the country until two shocking events occurred.

The first event arose from a family road trip to the the capital of Seoul. We had piled into our conversion van, which had been generously shipped over courtesy of the US Army, to do some black market shopping and eat at the only Pizza Hut in the country (think toppings like squid and kimchi). Somewhere along the four hour drive, though, we were flagged over by a Korean policeman who asked my father to take a different route. Heeding this advice, my dad took the detour. My brothers dug their noses back into their books, but I kept my eyes peeled on the landscape. All I could see on either side of the road, besides the enormous freeway on the right, were endless steps of rice paddies. I began to notice fewer and fewer cars on the highway, as the sun was beginning to set. There was an eerie, golden glow as I witnessed a mass of people gathering along the south end of the highway, seemingly black shadows rising up and moving like ocean waves. To the north, I saw police in full riot gear marching toward the crowd. Rocks began to fly into the air, and my father punched on the gas as one rock flew off and hit the side of our van. My brothers looked up and we all silently watched the two crowds clash and begin a passionate struggle. My last glimpse as we drove away was of a woman being violently struck by a policeman's club, causing her to fall to the ground unconscious.

Following this event, my brothers and I flooded our parents, teachers, and friends with questions about the political unrest in South Korea. Due to our ages we were given various responses, which we pooled together to form a better understanding. We became aware that some Korean people did not like having us in their country, and protested our presence there regularly. We also learned that some South Koreans were sad about being separated from their family and friends in the North, and wanted to reunite. This was a very strange idea to us, as we'd been taught that the US troops were there because North Korea was a terrible place from which we defended South Korea. This made us children nervous about going off the base- even for our favorite treats of anime stickers, Korean potstickers (mandu), or ice cream- and we resisted taking the bus between the bases on our own.

The second event came about because I was recruited to play JV basketball- more due to my unnatural height than any kind of grace or agility! Our team of girls traveled to embassy and DoD (Department of Defense) schools all over the country on most weekends throughout the fall. On one of our trips home, our bus full of girls found itself stuck in traffic as we entered the city of Taegu. The bus driver commented that this was an unusual time of day for such congestion. A teammate exclaimed and pointed and when we all looked to the right, we saw a huge mass of young people marching down the street- toward us. To our left, we could see riot police in full gear running at full speed- also toward us. We were the meeting point. Inside the bus, I heard Korean being shouted and I felt hands pushing me to the ground. My friend Diana translated that all the Korean girls were planning to sit up by the windows and wanted the white girls to the crouch down on the floor, all in an effort to convince rioters to pass us by. I couldn't see anything, but I heard Diana narrate as the police collected in front of our cruiser-style bus and begin pushing back the students, who were throwing rocks and burning wood. I could hear people all around me crying and whispering furtive little prayers. Then shouts went up and the girls screamed "Tear gas! Cover your eyes and nose!" My eyes seared with excruciating pain, uncontrollable tears rolled down my cheeks, and I felt for a time that my lungs would explode. It seemed endless, that time sitting in a ball on the floor of the bus, but at some point the rioting crowd turned away with the police in hot pursuit. In my hazy memory, I recall a couple of US Army trucks arriving to escort our bus back to the base. I also vividly remember my eyes being red and sore for days, but it was the memory of those students' faces- their anger and FURY- as they marched toward us that will remain etched into my brain forever.

Sometimes I think about that experience and I wonder how it has shaped who I am today. I fully recognize that a percentage of people on this earth have experienced this type of rioting on a regular basis, or may even participate in them, while I was only a witness to them. Yet, I think it stirred up a passion within me, an understanding that people can and will fight hard for what they believe in. It is overwhelming, chaotic, ugly. And yet sometimes riots have caused others to stop and think, and in effect those acts have changed the world. In my own small way I, too, want to run riot: in school counseling, in mentoring, in the act of loving others... I want to change a little piece of the world. Is it too much to hope?