The Channel I Almost Changed

Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort
Honolulu, Hawaii
March 6, 2018 | 10am

I came back to my room to get out of the Hawaiian sun for a while.

The beach below my balcony was busy. The Pacific was calm. I turned on the television and found the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), a South Korean news channel.

Before heading back outside, I recorded a few minutes of what I was watching.

I didn’t have a reason. I just thought it might be interesting to remember.

Like many hotel afternoons, I flipped through the channels. There was Hawaii Tourism programming, Japanese game shows, a soap opera, and eventually a South Korean news broadcast covering North Korea, denuclearization, missile launches, and diplomatic meetings between North and South Korea.

Two months earlier, Hawaii had experienced the false ballistic missile alert that briefly convinced residents and visitors that a missile was inbound. By the time I arrived, Waikiki had returned to its familiar rhythm, but the memory of that morning in January still lingered.

Outside my oceanfront room, families relaxed beneath yellow umbrellas along Waikiki Beach. Waves rolled gently onto the shore. Flights continued arriving from the mainland, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere across Asia. Life had largely returned to normal.

Inside, the television reminded me why Hawaii had recently been in headlines around the world.

At the time, I didn’t think much of the recording. It was simply a few minutes of what happened to be on television while I took a break from the beach.

Eight years later, I see something different. The video preserves more than my vacation. It preserves a moment in history.

Not because it captures a famous landmark or an extraordinary event, but because it quietly records what the world looked like from one hotel room in March 2018.

Only weeks after Hawaii’s false missile alert. During a period when the Korean Peninsula dominated international headlines.

The most interesting part isn’t the news itself.

It’s that I almost didn’t record it.

We often think memories are preserved by the biggest moments. Looking back, I’ve found the opposite is often true. Sometimes it’s the ordinary moments—the ones that seem too small to matter—that become the most meaningful with time.

A few minutes in a hotel room. A television I almost ignored. A view of the Pacific outside the window. Years later, it became one of the clearest memories I brought home.