Rocket and Mt. Everest

By Kim Heung-sook

It's always difficult to choose what to write about, as there are too many things going on around the globe. This time, it was a choice between North Korea's launch of a rocket on April 5 and the subsequent ado, and the great Sherpa guide, Apa, who has just begun his 19th attempt at the 8,848-meter Mt. Everest.

Perhaps because I am not very well-educated about the grave danger involved in a rocket carrying a satellite, the fuss at home and abroad, particularly from our jittery neighbor, Japan, felt like a joke, particularly after I heard that the space vehicle plunged into the Pacific about 15 minutes after it was launched.

Still, I could sympathize with Tokyo's overblown reaction. The incumbent yet unpopular government needs something to muster public energy or anxiety about to tide over the current situation. On the other hand, right wing nationalists in Japan have yet to stop exaggerating foreign threats as a way to enhance the idea of rearmament and scrap the nation's ``Peace Constitution," which it adopted after losing World War II.

Therefore, it was understandable that the largest-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun called the north's launch ``reckless and dangerous provocation" that threatened world peace and stability. It was also quite natural for the conservative Sankei Shimbun to call for the promotion of missile defense to make interception possible.

Hard to comprehend was the South Korean media, which devoted most of its news time and space to the launch. A giggle turned into a burst of laughter when the so-called experts talked about why the rocket had failed to enter into orbit. It was North Korea's failure and scientists there will dig into it even if their dear leader Kim Jong-il praised the launch as playing ``a vanguard role" in the drive to become ``a great, prosperous and powerful nation." So, why should they bother to do their homework instead?

The money players in Seoul knew better, as they bought stocks nonchalantly on Monday. The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) went up 14.1 points to 1,297.85 and the Korean won recorded a three-month high against the U.S. dollar.

The latest launch will unquestionably serve as an energizer of diplomatic discussion and negotiation for some time, but there are other things that require much keener concern for a greater duration, such as the one highlighted by Apa's 19th journey toward the top of the world.

``My object is to highlight the environmental degradation of the mountain and draw attention to the issue of global warming," he was quoted as saying to AFP before leaving for Mt. Everest on Monday. Since first reaching the summit in 1990, he said he has experienced less snow each time he went there and the beauty of it was deteriorating as climbers left their garbage on the mountain noting he would bring back down as much rubbish as he can carry as the leader of the 40-member Eco Everest expedition.

Also melting away fast is the Arctic Sea ice, as the AP reported recently. More than 90 percent of the sea ice is one or two years old, meaning it's ``thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades," according to a report in The Korea Times on Wednesday.

The amount of thick sea ice hit ``a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles" this year, down 43 percent from last year. "That thick ice really traps ocean heat; it keeps the planet in its current state of balance," the report quoted from Waleed Abdalati, NASA's former chief ice scientist and now director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado.

I am one of those people who believe the melting of snow on Everest and Arctic ice needs more media coverage than the north's rocket launch, and it's good to know that we have Apa and the journalists who focus on environmental problems in this time of distracting news. It's equally encouraging that President Lee Myung-bak made his best-ever statement Sunday: ``North Korea is launching a rocket but we plant trees." The day was Arbor Day and he planted pine trees on the precincts of his official residence shortly before the rocket was fired.

kimsook@hotmail.com

[출처 : 코리아타임스]