my k-drama era!! & was Anyone But You actually good??

Week in Links: Issue No. 15

When you get this letter, it will be Christmas Eve. My family is not Christian, but we celebrated Christmas anyway because that’s what you do here (and that’s on the U.S. not not being a Christian theocratic state). We didn’t do a lot, but when I was very young we’d set up a little plastic Christmas tree and a toy train that ran in a circular track around it. We’d see our family and stay up for hours. It was a joyous time.

This Christmas, I am thinking about the children of Palestine. I am thinking about their families. I am thinking about Palestinian Christians. I am thinking about Christmas cancelled in Bethlehem. I am thinking about every Palestinian for whom this holiday season is not a time of celebration at all.

And I am also thinking about the people in Congo, Sudan, all over the world in places destabilized and exploited by western imperialism while I sit here, in the belly of the beast.

So while the holiday season may offer comfort or distraction, I hope we can stay in this dissonance. To not become complacent or numb.

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🇵🇸 Keep talking about Palestine and keep calling and emailing your representatives. Find a protest near you here and learn about the Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement here.

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And now, this week’s roundup:

I watched…

• Crashing Landing on You — I have to say that the premise of this K-drama was too outlandish for me to ignore: A South Korean heiress crash lands (haha) into North Korea via paragliding accident, and meets a North Korean soldier who reluctantly helps her hide and plan her escape back home.
  
  The show has gotten both criticism and praise for its depiction of North Korea, with many North Korean defectors saying its portrayal of everyday life is accurate in many (but not all) aspects.
  
  I’m not Korean, so take this with a grain of salt, but to me the show seems to embody this deferred hope for reunification—the characters constantly joke about it as both an end goal and a pipe dream that likely will not occur in their lifetimes, if at all.