Writer's Blog: The Korean Reunification (Patreon)

I’m still working on Glitch and Kenzie’s scenes. I wanted to get them edited and up tonight, but instead went down a creative rabbit trail for Chapter 13 and wrote an entire scene involving Santa, a drone, and a pigeon. (Sometimes, creating new stuff comes easier than editing and then I look at the clock and realize whoops it’s 9pm.)

(Speaking of new stuff, if anyone knows of any interesting ways to break into a house, feel free to share in the comments! I have around eight so far, but could always use more. Said scene is designed similar to Chapter 2’s assignment, so the more options the better.)

(And no, I’m not planning an actual heist. No matter what my Google search history may indicate, or the fact that my web browser ads are now almost exclusively for online lockpicking courses.)

Anyways . .

With Rosy’s scene being posted, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Korean Reunification.

I’ve lived in both Seoul and Dublin (where Delivery for the Damned will take place!). Although my personal experience an expat was that the two cultures felt extremely different (despite the many newspaper op-eds that claim otherwise), Ireland and Korea do share the fact that they’re both geographically small countries that were historically unified but then split in the 1900s. I couldn’t help but wonder and imagine what would happen if either of the two countries ever rejoined. 

Discussing the possibilities with friends who actually grew up in these countries, I realized that any rejoining wouldn’t be quite a simple as my high school history class made it seem with that two-minute clip of the Berlin Wall being torn down. (That being said, much of the Korean Reunification aftermath that I imagine comes from reading about German post-division . . . and Germany was only split for 28 years as opposed to Korea’s 70+.)

Eventually, I decided to set Unity’s founding among a theoretical Korean Unification (instead of Ireland) because:

1) The high tensions between North Korea, South Korea, and the USA when I lived in Seoul (2017-18, a period which I personally felt was super intense but that none of my Korean coworkers or friends seemed all that frazzled by),

2) The fact that the Korean Peninsula has in the past been a place where outside countries interfered, meaning that the UN’s interference had some precedent, and

3) North Korea’s government makes for a pretty straightforward “bad guy”. (I’m not a fan of dynastic dictatorships outside of fairy tales where dragons can also exist.)

Of course, Mind Blind is an alternate history given the existence of Ments and this war that never happened. In order to make the UN’s interference seem more believable, and thus lay the groundwork for founding Unity, it made sense for me to give North Korean leadership secret psychic powers. This amplified the global community’s perception of its threat (especially in a world that already viewed Ments to be bogeymen-like figures). Granted, Mind Blind’s United Nations is very different than the real-world organization. But still.

The Korean Reunification in Mind Blind wasn’t just a war over rejoining two halves of a country—it was a fight against Ment criminals who were literally brainwashing armies . . . thus making a counter-Ment task force comprised of Ments, aka Proto-UCRT, necessary to win. 

There will eventually be a longer passage on the Korean Reunification in the Aeon Student guide, and it’ll also be brought up in-game (both in later scenes, and an earlier scene where I plan to loredump a little more). But the angle of North Korean Ment leadership isn’t something that I’ve directly addressed much, despite its relevance to Unity’s founding. (It’s referenced briefly in the Meatloaf Day short story, but I think that’s it?)

There’s been an uptick of questions about the Korean Reunification lately in my tumblr inbox (which I really need to get to answering again), but I hope this post clarifies at least a little of the background lore and its original inspiration.