

In 2017 my mom and I took a week long trip to Iceland. It was amazing, 10/10, will go again.
However, we went on this hike up into the mountains to find this hot spring river. About halfway there I see this outcropping from the trail that overlooks the gully below. I hand my mom my phone and tell her I’m going to walk out there and to snap a picture of me. So I head out there and its cool. Not narrow or seemingly dangerous in anyway.
As I’m standing out there, a wind kicks up out of nowhere. Picks me up off the trail, feet and all. Like, I was literally weightless. It was just for a few seconds, only a few cm off the ground, but I knew it would carry me over the edge and into the gully below, and I couldn’t do anything.
Instead, it set me back on my feet and was gone as soon as it came. I walked back to my mom and thanked her and said nothing about what just happened, I didn’t want to scare her. But I stuck to the main trail after that.
I can’t really explain how unnerving it is to be weightless like that on earth, where gravity is king. I became immediately helpless. If that wind had lasted longer, I could have easily been flung over the edge without being able to do anything about it.
Because China.
China sees NK as a buffer to the US, sort of a little brother that’s a bit too crazy so they have to tug on the leash to get them to chill every now and then.
We’ve already got bases in SK, but the Yellow sea separates us from China. NK is the land barrier.