The Flag

June 19, 2023

We parked and headed for the entrance to massive Riverside High School, then to the cafeteria. The grandsons ran ahead, looking forward to the cereal and fruit juice.

The county school system offers free breakfast and lunch for students at the high school even through summer break. My grandsons like going for the fun stuff. The hot-food lines were crammed with sausages and biscuits and other things that kids don’t want. But the place was nearly empty. Before we left I saw one other adult, one other child. An excess of good intentions? Maybe the crowd gets there later. If not, all that food would have to be thrown out.

After eating we strolled down the school’s main corridors. We looked in wonder at a twelve-foot-high trophy case crammed with silver cups and plaques celebrating sports championships going back years. The three-story-high ceiling is highlighted by the Stars and Stripes and the flags of many nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa suspended from rafters. I blinked. In the first row hangs the flag of North Korea.

North Korea?  The flags of Russia and China also were displayed, along with a few others of politically repressive states, Cuba, Turkey, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. Russia and China I could get, they’re major powers. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are non-democracies, but important players in world affairs. Again, I wondered: why North Korea?

We all know about North Korea: Kim Jong Un, political paranoia and isolation, summary executions, massive prison camps and armed forces, regional bullying, nuclear saber-rattling.

The BBC reported last week that North Korea’s chronic food shortage now may be the worst since the famine of the late 1990s. The country sealed its borders in January 2020 at the start of the pandemic, stopped importing grain from China, and halted purchases of fertilizer and farm machinery. Food markets are nearly empty. Starvation is becoming common.

Meanwhile the regime test-launched 63 ballistic missiles last year, at an estimated cost of $500 million, BBC says, enough to make up for the country’s annual grain shortfall.

The Brits say the intelligence on North Korea’s current internal conditions is provided by a South Korean organization, Daily NK, which maintains a network of anonymous sources, ordinary North Koreans who are brave enough to be interviewed. Their answers are relayed in multiple installments to avoid detection. Responses that could reveal identities are not published.

The sources report, among other things, that the government has passed a law against using words associated with the South Korean dialect.

The logic of the Riverside flag selection escaped me. A United Nations-like potpourri of color to spruce up the hallway? A testimonial to the breadth of the social-studies curriculum?

I sent an email to the school principal, writing, “North Korea is a totalitarian Communist dictatorship that forbids all freedom of expression, prevents its citizens from leaving the country, imprisons thousands of its citizens under brutal conditions. The North Korean government has threatened to use nuclear weapons to attack its neighbors and the United States.

“Displaying the North Korean flag creates the impression that North Korea, like other nations whose flags are shown, is just another member of the ‘world community.’ That is tragically untrue. I urge you to direct your staff to remove the North Korean flag from the hallway display.”

Within hours, she wrote back: “Thank you for reaching out. The flags that are hanging in our school represent a country where a student is from. We have students attending Riverside from all over the world. We have a few flags hanging where those nations restrict freedoms and are anti-American but its where our students are from and we want our students to feel welcome at RHS.”

Am I just being a grump? Is my complaining about the North Korean flag hanging in the main corridor of the local high school like an old guy yelling “Get off my lawn” at neighborhood kids? I don’t have kids in the school. Is this none of my business? While the principal was polite, she probably thought exactly that.

Parsing the rough phrasing of her email, I guessed she dashed it off in thirty seconds and didn’t look back. It’s summer break, but a principal of a large, prestigious high school is busy year-round. She didn’t need the extra chore of responding to, or even reading, a cranky email from me.

But then. We can be sure that if the North Korean students at Riverside High are refugees or escapees, they would have reason to fear for their lives if they returned to their native land.

The flag (any flag) symbolizes the political traditions and ideals of the nation, not individuals who happen to be natives. Americans raise the Stars and Stripes on Independence Day to express love and support for their country, not to identify themselves as Americans (even non-Americans wave the U.S. flag).

 Does the North Korean flag hanging from the rafters at Riverside help North Korean students and their families feel welcome? More likely it inspires fear.

I didn’t respond to the principal’s email. The flags in the school hallway may mean different things to different observers. Some may see “diversity” without political overtones. Nothing wrong with that. And then, we’re all tired of politics, in this era of Republican attacks on school officials. But the flag of North Korea as a beacon of diversity? I get a different message.