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          For a while in the mid-80s I moonlighted as the weekend general-assignments reporter for the Pacific Daily News on the island of Guam. I enjoyed it enormously. Being the hack covering for everyone else over the weekend meant that I got to report on whatever came in, whatever the beat the editor on duty would have otherwise assigned it. I’d do seven or eight of these stories a day, plus the police blotter and on Sunday the news of the week in review.

          One Saturday the duty editor notified me of a planned demonstration by Guam’s Korean community against North Korea’s plans to build a threatening dam or something on a river near the DMZ.

          Okay.

          I don’t recall thinking, on my way to the demonstration site, about the absurdity of raising hell against the North Korean regime in a parking lot on Marine Drive in Agana (now Hagåtña) Guam. It was just another assignment, like the Girl Scout picnic at the Air Force base or the rescue of some fishermen whose boat had developed some major problem at sea or a political rally supporting the losing candidate for governor.

          I parked in the shade. About two dozen or so Koreans wearing headbands bearing writing that I couldn’t read were milling about. As I recall, some of them had signs written on sheets attached to two poles denouncing Kim Il-sung and demanding an end to the dam project, in both Korean and English.

          I ferreted out their leaders and interviewed them, and also interviewed some random protestors. Much to my discredit, I decided not to ask how much influence they thought they’d have on Kim Il-sung’s decision making. Then they unfurled their banners and started chanting for a while, as demonstrators do.

          A big Ford pickup truck cruised by, then cruised by again slowly and stopped. A white guy – expat? off-duty serviceman from one of the bases? – leaned out of the driver’s-side window and hollered, in a rural, Southern, cow-flop accent, “Fucking demonstrators! Troublemakers! If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go home!” and suchlike.

          Then he revved his engine and screamed off northward on Marine Drive.

          The layers of irony and stupidity flabbergasted me.

          When I turned my notes into a news story that evening, I recall having to be particularly careful with the names. The standard journalistic style is to use the surname only after the first mention, but I had to get their given names straight for each mention because their surnames had all been ‘Park’.

          In retrospect I of course realise that they weren’t so stupid as to think that their demonstration would have even a butterfly wings’ effect on the goings-on along the DMZ. They did, however, all get together and have a hell of a good time getting something off their collective chests, not to mention get to piss off a random redneck. I don’t think I’d be too far off the mark if I’d imagine that their socialising carried on well into the boozy evening after they’d packed up and gone home.