The world is 'close'

I leave for Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, and I can’t help but feel that even though Korea is halfway across the world, it’s somehow not so distant. Thomas Friedman said the world is flat. I say the world is close, a 17-hour plane flight close.

If we have the resources and the will, then the only things separating us from the other end of the world are two layovers and 17 hours.

Part of me wishes that, while flying, there were some way to feel all of the ground beneath you so that you could understand just how many people and cultures you were hopping over, how much history and difference you were sidestepping on your
non-stop from Indy to Japan. I almost wish that it were a little harder– crossing the world, I mean. I wish that when you stepped off a plane you could be grateful that you were there because you had monitored every wave and counted every sunset.

There is something too convenient about having the world at our disposal. It means that we can’t appreciate just how wide and deep and round the globe is.

Granted, when I am half a day in the air on my way to Seoul and my neck pillow just isn’t cutting it, I’ll wish the trip were shorter.

But there is still something lost by having a world that is only 17 hours wide. It means that we can’t fully appreciate the years that it has actually taken to get us here.

My grandfather remembers MacArthur invading Inchon in the Korean War. Now, nearly 59 years later, his granddaughter will be flying into the large modern airport there.

Two generations ago, South Korea was an agricultural country about to be invaded by northern communist aggressors, and today it is one of the most industrialized countries in the world.

It took years of development on the part of the Koreans – and of peeling away bigotry and bias on the part of Americans – for a group of IU students to travel to a premier Korean university in order to learn about globalization from their perspective.

Whether the world that made all of this possible was post-industrial or globalized doesn’t interest me.

What does, is that while Western arrogance was breaking down, former colonies were rising up, and now we can meet each other in between. I’m not sure that I think that the world is flat. But I do think that the world has become closer, obviously through airline technology, but also through a growth of international understanding.

When I told my grandfather that I would be going to South Korea this summer, he asked, “Why would you want to go there?” The fact that after only 59 years since MacArthur’s landing at Inchon I can be only 17 hours away from my landing, is the answer.

The world has become incredibly close.