Photo: Linh Dinh
Wild World! South Korea was hit hard by coronovirus, but never locked down. In Busan, there is a thin, yet steady, flow of people.
n Linh Dinh
Stumbling into a farce Sitting in a South Korean cafe, our writer reflects on life, death, coronavirus and the downfall of the American economic house of cards
A
ll our lives, our sadism is masterfully jerked by movies and newscasts, so we’re giddy at the sight of other people being blown up or swept away by giant waves, anything, really, as long as it’s not us being napalmed or nuked. This coronavirus crisis is so disappointing, however, for there’s not much to see. Coffins or body bags just aren’t kinetic enough, and completely empty streets are, like, whatever. Are we supposed to jizz up over literally nothing?! Where
are the zombies? Anticipating war, but elsewhere, of course, we casually say, “I’ll get the popcorn”, but the death count for this coronavirus jazz is simply too low. It’s just a bad flu season, many insist. Months into this pandemic, it still feels unreal. This is so boring. Maybe they can hire some of the millions suddenly unemployed to jiggle the coffins? Pop a few corpses out? I’m writing to you from South Korea, still. In Daegu, I entered Shinsegae, a pharaonic tem-
ple to ostentatious, brand-name consumption. What struck me was how hard everything looked, walls, stores, shoppers, with nothing blurry, mushy, messy or just incongruous allowed to seep from any unscripted crack or hole. There was no unzipped fly, metaphorically speaking. It was the opposite of a wet market. But that’s the whole thrust of this highfalutin modernism or postmodernism. No farts allowed! Not even the naturally aging ones. That’s why they must be quaran-
ColdType | Mid-April 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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