Colony: America

Military bases are a really bizarre thing. Their purpose is to hold an army, and all the things that army needs in case North Korea attacks. Only, North Korea hasn't attacked for a very long time. With no attacks going on, the soldiers need something to keep them occupied, and make them okay with staying a while. So the army brings over some of the soldier's wives and children. Now wives and children aren't as easy to take care of as soldiers. They need schools. They need good old American restaurants. They need a gym with ellipticals and yoga classes. They need the array of foods they're accustomed to, shipped across the world and lined up in grocery aisles where they belong. They need cars and pets and movies for rent. And most of all they need a giant store where they can get all the familiar American products they might ever want.

So the army builds a mini-America, all mixed up with all of that war stuff, walled up in a few square miles inside a Korean metropolis. An armed, uniformed soldier directs traffic at the crosswalk as the elementary school lets out. Walking to the grocery store, I pass a fenced parking lots full of HMMWVs and other tactical vehicles. I squeeze between lines of fully geared troops marching the other way on the sidewalk.

I wonder what the Koreans think of us, this self-contained American colony inside their capital city. Those of us who ever come out of our walled little world, that is.