Well, it’s looking like North Korea is going to be launching the missile this weekend. I finally got an email from the embassy about it. Not that every expat in Korea doesn’t already know about it, but I was really surprised that I had heard next to nothing from the American embassy about it. Anyway, for those interested, here’s the email I got yesterday:
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul is transmitting the following information through the Embassy’s warden system as a public service to all U.S. citizens in the Republic of Korea. Please disseminate this message to U.S. citizens in your organizations or to other Americans you know.
North Korea has announced that it will attempt a rocket launch between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on one of the days during April 4-8, 2009, from a site in northeast North Korea. This possible event has received much media attention. At this time, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul sees no potential danger to American citizens in South Korea as a result of the possible launch and does not believe that any special actions are warranted by American citizens other than to pay close attention to local news reports during this time period.
The Embassy is monitoring the situation very closely. We will apprise the American citizen community of any important information via this email system and the Embassy websites at http://seoul.usembassy.gov and www.asktheconsul.org.
At least we’ll finally know what’s going to happen! Those of us here in South Korea are kind of getting a little tired of all the buzz and hypothesizing. Just get it over with!
Here’s some articles I’ve recently collected about the whole thing:
Obama slams North Korea’s ‘provocative’ launch plans
North Korea Rocket Launch on Track
North Korea Perfects Its Game: Brinkmanship
Some other Korea-bloggers have made some good humorous predictions about what may or may not happen. Personally, I’m just going go sit here on my little island and go about my business as usual, but I’ll be listening for the air raid siren nonetheless.
