Friday fiction: North Korean balloons filled with money and porn
North Korean balloons have caused fires, traffic accidents and bad smells but what's really in them?
It was the end of summer and the roads were still hot and soft, and returned heat from the day back into the evening. Ernst walked slowly up the hill and felt his age in every step. He stretched out his hands and felt waves of rising warmth as he stepped over recently repaired potholes with their darker tar, then felt the same waves on his face, and his eyes watered in reaction to the heat. It was a Monday, the one day many bars in Seoul closed, but there was no rest for those on the hill.
The hill was known locally as Hooker Hill. Once a seedy enclave for expatriates, it had started to transform. The juicy bars where scantily clad hostesses once served American soldiers had steadily transformed to trendy hipster hangouts, leaving only the top of the hill unchanged. There, coddled together, were a swathe of outdated juicy bars, hostess bars, dive bars, and an assortment of ramshackle doorways that led to dens of iniquity best left to the imagination.
Ernst continued past Peach Fuzz Bar and the Rose Petal Palace. Every now and again a working girl appeared in a doorway. She or he, or rather they, opened the door just enough to show cleavage but not enough to let out the air conditioned cool, before returning to their CCTV and their soap opera dreams to await the next passerby. Few bothered opening the door to entice Ernst. He was old, sober, and looked like he knew where he was going.
Ernst reached the top of the hill and felt his pace quicken. For more than twenty years he’d climbed Hooker Hill to reach his rooftop studio apartment and the only bar at which he cared to drink: The Black Cat. It had taken many forms over the years, and was currently for the second time run by a Nigerian lady who sat on a stool at the door and chain smoked cinnamon cigarettes. It was an Irish Bar to the regulars because it was the first bar in Seoul to serve Guinness on tap and still sold it at an affordable price. Why a Nigerian lady who chain smoked cinnamon cigarettes ran an Irish Bar is another story that needs not be answered here. For Ernst, it mattered only that he was there, and it was there that he escaped life. Nobody really knew him, nobody cared what he did, and those that thought they did, knew him only as a North Korea watcher whose life led him to a rooftop studio atop a sometimes noisy Irish bar in the seediest part of Seoul.
“Professor!” The bar server called out as he entered.
She shuffled past and smiled. Her stronger leg was firm and filled her tight jeans perfectly. Her weaker leg was skinny and turned inwards. Ernst smiled back and watched her swaying, twisting walk as her legs contorted and accentuated curves that danced in moments of hypnotic seductiveness. She knew he was watching, turned to defensively call him out. “Heyyyyy…”. It was a tease and instead of anger she smiled. It was poetry to Ernst. It started cynically in a corner of her mouth, teasingly detached from her lips to create sharp dimples in her cheeks, then darted to engulf her eyes. Finally, and only occasionally, the smile struck magically in Ernst’s soul. Neither her walk nor her smile conformed to Seoul’s modes of aesthetic conformity but both stood in statue-still perfection to Ernst.
She called out as she headed back to the bar. “Professor! A Guinness for you?”
Ernst nodded and attempted to smile. He felt awkward and hastened to his usual table.
Smiling came easier after the first drink. Ernst sat down, opened his book, and pretended to read but in a seedy, sticky-floored bar like the Black Cat, no one really came to read. The book was a prop, and would not be required much longer.
“Hey Prof!” The stool creaked as Barry Crump, another regular, turned around. He revealed large patches of sweat on his cargo vest where his large tattooed forearms showing a long-ended military life, sat on his belly.
“Have you seen the news Prof? There’s more of those North Korean balloons headed this way.”
Ernst’s first reaction was to look up as if a trash laden weather balloon were falling from the sky. He caught himself as the server approached with his Guinness. His second reaction was to smile meekly. His third was to respond to both Barry and the server, in the hope that she’d stay just a little bit longer.
“So? They’re just trash, they say. What’s the harm?”
She put the Guinness on the table and Ernst felt her hand cross his shoulder to his back. A spark ran through his body as he heard her speak. “Yeah, I mean, they’re just ramen packets and ice cream wrappers? So what?”
As the server walked back to the bar, she spoke again. “You know 226 of them were launched towards Seoul just tonight. We’re sure to see one sooner or later.”
Barry’s bulbous body now sweated from standing up too long. “I can sit here, right Prof?”
Ernst nodded and moved back fearing Barry’s sweaty arms. For an instant Ernst wondered why he feared Barry’s sweat. There was no harm that could come from it — it was illogical. Maybe it was biological? Maybe his dislike was conditioned by evolution? These thoughts passed as Barry’s sweaty, hairy, tattooed arms took their place on the table and Ernst was a safe distance away.
Barry put on a pair of reading glasses that seemed miniscule on his large head, then opened his phone and read.
“‘The contents of the balloon were tested and found to contain E.Coli.’ That’s fucked up.” He looked up from his phone, peered over his reading glasses, and straightened his cargo vest, then puffed up his chest, and looked straight at Ernst, and continued.
“That’s not just trash. If E.Coli gets into the food or water supply, that’s an attack! That’s bio-logic fuck-ing war-fare Ernest. They’re evil, those folk up North.”
Ernst disliked the way Barry mispronounced his name by adding an unnecessary “e”, but knew that it was senseless trying to say anything. Ernst drank half of his Guinness. He knew that after a few more gulps, he’d even enjoy Barry’s company.
Barry started again, this time louder to let the other early starters hear him.
“Fucking evil! We need to end that regime and concentrate on where all this comes from — the Commies!” Barry slammed his fist on the table. “Fucking commies and their bio-logic fuck-ing war-fare!”
News reports on North Korea’s trash balloons started about six months ago. When first reported commentators were dumbfounded. North and South Korea always had an acrimonious relationship since the divorce, but why on earth would a country send trash in weather balloons over the border?
At first, it was reported to be a response to South Korean NGOs floating balloons northwards. The NGO balloons sought to weaken support for the regime and included propaganda, food, radios, and even US currency and instructions on how to establish contact. It was reported North Korea was simply returning trash for trash, like ramen packets, and ice cream wrappers. Maybe old newspapers, tissues, and wet wipes. Everyday trash. It was an almost prosaic pop art response worthy of Warhol, and sure beat artillery or machine gun fire in Ernst’s view.
Then the reports started suggesting something more sinister was at hand. GPS tracking devices on the balloons were making maps of city wind currents for use in a future scenario. North Korea was collecting information for future operations where they’d send balloons with chemical, biological or even radiological dispersants. Then the reports became even more sinister.
North Korea was actually sending biological materials. Food waste, vegetable materials and manure, and soiled tissues and nappies. There were reports of fires starting, people getting hurt and sick, and traffic accidents. News reports were filled with images of police warning citizens to keep back and soldiers wearing hazmat gear poking through trash piles. What started as reports discrediting the patheticness of a decrepit regime had changed to reports highlighting its sinister intentions, and an ever-increasing risk and danger coming from the sky.
Barry stood up again and raised his voice to reach a man half his size across the bar.
“Hey, Dong-sok! Dong-sok! You said they found suspicious money and porn in one balloon, right?” Saliva gathered around Barry’s mouth. Saliva around the mouth on top of a more widespread layer of sweat across his reddened face. Ernst called for another Guinness.
Dong-sok was a small Korean man who wore large gold rings and was a pastor who prayed for the souls of Hooker Hill in a small church between a juicy bar and a dive bar. He always wore a suit, regardless of the temperature, and had never sweated. Not once. He was a regular at The Black Cat and could always be located by his habit of clanking his heavy gold rings on the table where he sat and talked about vengeance, wrath, and sometimes compassion.
“Yes. Yes Barry. It’s true. The North Koreans are sending money and porn.”
At this Ernst could not help but respond. “Money and porn from a balloon in the sky??? It sounds like a dream come true.” He smiled broadly and his eyes caught the server doing the same.
Barry saw them both and took offense.
“Really? Really Ern-est?” He started. “Imagine children finding that filth! Imagine someone using that counterfeit currency, it weakens our economy and makes our money less valu-able.”
Dong-sok’s gold rings clinked the table more rapidly, then he also chimed in. “It’s unChristian. Unholy and Satanic. Devaluing our currency is an abomination!”
“C’mon Ernest!” It’s no joke.” The saliva around Barry’s mouth now formed small bubbles. Not the rabid foam of a mangy dog, but the small, slimy, sticky bubbles of croaking toad. “Imagine a kid finding that porn — and imagine that kid then getting sick from the bio-logical material on that porn. Fucking Norks.”
“Un-holy!” Dong-sok added from across the bar. His rings clanked firmly with each syllable. “North Koreans need the word of God!”
Ernst leaned back and drank his Guinness. His eyes met the server and they exchanged smiles again. He was on his second Guinness and with that smile, not much mattered anymore.
Much later, he kept that smile in his mind once he went upstairs, and even awoke to that smile with the sun’s first rays. Later, alone in his studio apartment, he smiled to himself when the idea hit him. He dressed, took his bags and some books to read, and went to the rooftop. There he eagerly awaited a balloon of money and porn.
…
Sometimes fiction is speculative, sometimes it reflects reality from a different perspective. Either way, sorting fact with fiction helps build the creativity needed in strategic analysis.