I spent the last week in Tumen, Jilin Province, where a trickle of a river separates China from North Korea. The occasion for my visit was the Tumen River Festival: seven days of theater, music, and visual arts. My friend Shira Milikowsky was there with a troupe of her theater students from Kookmin University, Seoul, performing a musical entitled Jesse's Diary about the Korean independence movement, and an adaptation of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle re-set in 1953 South Korea, just after the UN armistice that stopped (but never officially ended) the Korean War. The setting, the performances, and the people were all magnificent.