[MORNING CALM TALES] I love the smell of tear gas in the afternoon

I got my first real whiff of tear gas on my way to my buddy Ken’s wedding in April 1991. Actually, it was more than a whiff — I thought I was going to die. We had a mini-break at school, and I’d just returned from a few days exploring Incheon’s Ganghwa Island. I arrived by bus back at Sinchon in western Seoul on Saturday. From there, it was a 10-minute walk to the subway station for the short ride downtown to Ken’s wedding near City Hall. Unbeknownst to me, I had just missed a massive demonstration in and around the Sinchon Rotary — a chaotic five-way intersection linking four major universities: Yonsei, Ewha, Sogang and Hongik. Riot police buses rimmed the rotary, their windows covered in steel mesh to block rocks and Molotov cocktails. Dozens of riot cops in gray-padded uniforms and samurai-style helmets manned key intersections and subway entrances. Still blissfully unaware, I descended into the subway station — right into an invisible wall of tear gas. The deeper I went, the worse it got. Within seconds, my eyes were burning, throat closing, brain screaming, “What is hap
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