by Martin Limon
He ordered his formation forward and, as the other troops tromped past me, every second or third soldier straight-armed me as their commander had, pushing me up against the dirty brick wall. When they passed, they turned right toward the Ministry of National Defense. After they departed, I straightened myself and had just started re-tucking my shirt into my pants when I heard footsteps. I glanced right. That’s when I froze.
It was her.
Doctor Yong In-ja reached out and touched my hand.
“I’ve been worried about you,” she said.
“And I’ve been worried about you.”
She laughed. “No need.” She let go of my hand and tapped the Soviet-made AK-47 strapped over her right shoulder. At the end of the alleyway, ready to move out in any of three different directions, stood a group of men similarly armed.
“Your infantry squad?” I asked.
“Party workers,” she said. “Free men. Something difficult to find on this peninsula.”
She’d told me before what her group, known as the South Cholla Workers Union, stood for: a third way. Not a military dictatorship like in South Korea, nor a massively brutal Communist tyranny like North Korea, but a free state. Ruled in a democratic way, sensitive to the autonomy of various regions of the country. Respecting differences that stretched back to the Middle Ages and before. Like those of South Cholla province, where she was from. They used a slightly unusual Korean dialect, had alternate customs and holidays, and, most conspicuously, harbored a fierce sense of independence, especially vis-à-vis the authoritarian rule that emanated from the capital city of Seoul.
“Why’d you come up here?” I asked. “You’re taking a big risk.”
The South Cholla Workers Union had long since been outlawed by the South Korean government, and as one of their leaders, she’d be arrested on sight.
“We’ve been monitoring General Bok,” she said.
“And me,” I replied, remembering the fleeting glimpse of someone I thought to be her that night near Samgakji.
“Maybe a little,” she replied. “To survive, we have to be ready for however this conflict turns out. Park Chung-hee will probably put down the insurrection. That’s what we expect, and if things turn out that way, he will become even more oppressive.”
“And you want to show him that you’re still here and still active.”
“Exactly.”
“But if Bok wins?”
“We want to show him that his new regime, backed by massive influxes of Japanese money, will not conquer us. It didn’t work before, and it won’t work now.”
She meant the Japanese colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. A dark period when the resilient people of South Cholla had never given up their struggle.
I also knew she didn’t want the North Korean communists to win in this perennial battle for the hearts and minds of the Korean people. The first thing they would do if they ever took over South Korea was eliminate all hint of opposition. Especially opposition that took the socialist positions of Doc Yong’s group. The Commies only pretended to be for the workers and for the people. The truth was that they were for themselves, and themselves alone.
The men at the end of the alley seemed to be getting impatient. Doc Yong noticed it, too.
“How’s Il-yong?” I asked.
“He’s healthy. Smart, like you.”
“No. Like you.”
“I show him your picture, remind him that he’s half American, and I teach him the best parts of America. The ideals. The quest for freedom.”
“When he’s older,” I said, “will you make sure he studies the Gettysburg Address?”
“Yes. I will.” She realized that I was struggling not to tear up.
“Why do they keep us apart?” I asked. “It’s just . . . torture.”
Someone hissed in urgency down at the end of the alley.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I know.”
The men were still watching, so instead of embracing, I squeezed her hand.
She smiled, turned, and ran toward them.
I sprinted back to the intersection where I’d left Katie, but she was gone. I kept running down another block and then another until someone whistled. A shrill, reedy sound, like some sort of desert bird. Command Sergeant Major Screech Owl Tapia emerged from the darkness. He motioned for me to follow.
I did.
-25-
Katie returned my .45 to me, and then the five of us commandeered another kimchi cab and made our way to what General Crabtree called Hanguk Bangsong. Korean Broadcasting. It was a radio station midway between Guanghua-mun and Seoul yok, the city’s train station.
When the ROK Army soldiers guarding the ground floor saw the stars on General Crabtree’s lapels and the stripes on Sergeant Major Screech Owl’s sleeves, they came to attention. A nervous lieutenant called upstairs and received permission to let us up. The elevator wasn’t working, and after five flights of stairs, we were all slightly winded.
She was waiting at the entrance to the studio. Estella, who bowed to General Crabtree and studied him carefully. He, in turn, couldn’t take his eyes off her.
We were ushered in. Crabtree’s guess had been right. General Bok was here, along with the old gentleman, Yi Il, the erstwhile crown prince, who no longer had his rocking chair but was sitting in a comfortable-looking leather chair in front of a large stainless steel microphone. Bok turned when we entered.
“Ah, General Crabtree. Good of you to come.” He motioned toward a six-foot-long control panel with plenty of buttons and knobs and blinking yellow and green lights. “As you see, we’re just about to begin our broadcast.”
Crabtree stopped in front of him. “You can’t do this, Bok.”
General Bok frowned, his dark eyebrows twisting upward. “And why not? Is it American policy to promote a brutal dictator like Park Chung-hee? Is it America’s place to see our country divided, as it never has been before in its five-thousand-year-old history? After all, it was your decision after World War II that led to the split. It was your decision that mandated that American troops accept Japan’s surrender in the south, below the thirty-eighth parallel, and Soviet troops accept Japan’s surrender in the north.”
“A poor decision,” Crabtree said. “I admit that. And we Americans have regretted the division of Korea ever since. But this,” he said, gesturing toward the old man, “this is no way to solve anything.”
“And why not? Reinstating the Chosun Dynasty, the royal family Yi. All Koreans, north and south, will rally to that banner. I can deal with the north. I’ve been speaking with them for years, both at ROK Army Third Corps and through more informal contacts amongst members of the prominent families in Japan and on either side of the DMZ.”
Bok must be delusional, I thought. The power of prominent families in North Korea must’ve disappeared by now. Maybe a few had survived, those who had thrown in their lot with the Communists early on and maintained total loyalty toward Kim Il-sung ever since. Whomever Bok had actually been speaking to in North Korea was probably a Workers’ Party apparatchik controlled by the regime.
Bok continued, still addressing General Crabtree. “Besides, you’re a foreigner. What could you know about what’s good for this country?”
Crabtree took a half-step toward him; they stood nose to nose. “I know that right now, right this minute, Korean soldiers are killing other Korean soldiers. And why? For some cockamamie idea about bringing back the past, picking up with a system from a century ago. It won’t work, I tell you. If the Commies up north have led you to believe that they’ll go along, they’re playing you. All they’re really after is chaos in the south so they can attack.”
Bok shoved his nose up until it was almost touching General Crabtree’s. “Let them!” he said. “Then we can fight it out once and for all. Settle this.” He slashed his hand do
wnward in a diagonal motion like it was a sword. “One side will win, and one will lose. But in the end, we’ll be one country again. One country and one people, like we were meant to be.”
Estella hurried forward. She gently touched Crabtree’s elbow, smiled up at him, and coaxed him back a few steps. The General’s face softened. Soon she had him a few feet away, motioning to swivel chairs around a short conference table. He refused to sit but didn’t return to Bok.
Meanwhile, as they’d been arguing, a technician had been fiddling with knobs and dials. I watched him, trying to figure out what he was up to.
Bok spoke to the old man, Yi Il, leaning forward and explaining the important topics he wanted him to discuss, but the old man appeared to be struggling with his handwritten Korean script. Estella left General Crabtree with Katie and Screech Owl and hurried toward the man she’d called her grandfather. As the three of them—Bok, the old man, and Estella—pointed at the script and discussed it, I realized they’d switched to Japanese.
The technician, nervous at the tension in the room, took advantage of the delay and hurried over to a small table with cups and a thermos on it. While he poured what smelled like barley tea, I continued to study the control panel. There was one metal switch close to the microphone that was larger than the others, and conveniently placed so whoever was speaking could reach it easily. Checking to make sure that no one was watching, I leaned forward and flipped the switch. A red light came on. Below it was a Chinese character. I couldn’t be sure, but I believed it said “On.”
The three of them continued to discuss the script, speaking in sibilant Japanese. I wondered if the sensitivity of the microphone was enough, so I found another knob with numbers on its edges and twisted. On a scale of one to ten, it now read eight.
I returned to General Crabtree. He was perspiring, and Screech Owl was close to him. When I reached him, he said, “You’re both armed?”
As if he’d conjured up a pack of genies, a half-dozen Korean soldiers entered the broadcast room, and the same lieutenant who’d allowed us up the stairs ordered his men to hold us at rifle point while others stepped forward and reached for our .45s. Screech Owl was about to fight them. So was Ernie, but I said, “Hold on. I think we’ve got something else working.”
“What?” Crabtree asked.
“You’ll see, sir. But there’s no sense getting ourselves killed when it won’t ultimately do any good.”
He nodded, seeing the logic in that.
Crabtree gave the order, and the four of us allowed ourselves to be disarmed. The Korean soldiers didn’t bother to check Katie Byrd Worthington. She kept fiddling with her camera and taking shots, asking people to pose and reaching into her generously pocketed jacket for more film and flashbulbs. One pocket held a bigger bulge. The Luger.
Bok took a break from coaching the elderly Yi Il. He shouted an order and had us taken outside.
I hung back for as long as I could, listening to them speak Japanese. Watching the technician, still frightened and preoccupied, gulping down tea. He hadn’t yet returned to the control panel.
The lieutenant and his armed guards held us downstairs in the lobby. I sat as close as I could to the front door. Every time another soldier walked through, I heard the words emitting from the metal speaker in front of the building. Japanese, not Korean. A crowd was beginning to gather. People were mumbling amongst themselves, not happy to be hearing the language of the colonizing power broadcast outdoors for everyone to hear. Private conversations were one thing. A public display was another.
Most people in the States didn’t realize the extent of Japanese Imperial oppression in Korea. Some had heard of “comfort women,” forced into prostitution for the Japanese troops. Some had heard of the forced labor, Koreans being taken from their country and transported to frigid northern islands to slave in coal mines. Or young men being transported into the remote wilderness of Manchuria to risk their health and even their lives chopping away at the endless forests. But as terrible as all these were—and they were terrible—there were some things Koreans considered to be even worse.
First, the Japanese had taken away their language.
In the years after the Sam-il uprising, the Japanese policy had become one of erasing all elements of Korean culture. Its goal had been to turn Koreans into obedient, second-class subjects. The Korean language was banned in schools. All education was delivered in the new national language, Japanese.
Second, the colonizing authorities decided to re-register everyone in the country under a Japanese name. This was a major blow to a country that honored its ancestors so highly. Almost all Korean holidays centered around visiting ancestral grave mounds and having picnics to commune with the dearly departed. Confucian filial piety ran deep—it was not only a virtue, but a part of the country’s cultural marrow. To take a Korean’s family name was to take their identity. Which was the plan. To strip Koreans bare of their cultural touchstones and rebuild them into faithful subjects of the Japanese emperor.
It didn’t work. Although they were forced to show loyalty in public and participate in the economic life of the Japanese empire, Koreans never lost their identity—or their hatred of those in power, which grew under the boot of the Imperial Japanese Army.
Communicating primarily in Japanese, General Bok, Estella, and the old man were going over the entire speech. Bok coached the wannabe crown prince on the correct pronunciation of some Korean words with which he was unfamiliar. Bok, in his fluent Japanese, exhorted the old man to muster all the sincerity of which he was capable. Or at least, that was how it seemed to me. Even though I couldn’t understand exactly what was being said, except when they briefly switched to Korean, it sounded like Bok was giving the old man a locker-room-style halftime speech. And Estella repeatedly soothed her grandfather in her soft voice.
Outside, the crowd was growing larger. A few of them occasionally lobbed a stone toward the speaker that was spouting the offending language. Finally, the dim-witted lieutenant seemed to realize what was going on, but before he could do anything, the speaker was briefly turned off and then back on again. Three notes rang out from a xylophone, calling for everyone’s attention. An officious voice in Korean, maybe the technician’s, announced an important address from Major General Bok Jung-nam. All citizens take heed!
Bok spoke for ten minutes, basically talking about the valor of the ROK Army III Corps troops, how President Park Chung-hee had agreed to sign his resignation, how the country would be united under the banner of the Chosun Dynasty, and how for the first time in almost a hundred years, all foreign troops would be expelled from the country.
Instead of cheering, the crowd outside seemed confused. Some of them were murmuring amongst themselves about the long discussion they’d heard in Japanese. Someone shouted, “What about the Japanese? Will they be allowed in?”
Others jeered. More rocks were thrown.
Bok, unable to hear any of this from his studio, introduced Yi Il, heir to the throne of the Chosun Dynasty. Haltingly, the old man began to read his speech. Even I could tell that many of the words were mispronounced and the rhythm of the sentences didn’t sound right. At one point, the old man faltered so much that Estella’s voice chimed in softly in the background, apparently repeating how to say a word in Korean. Then the old man asked her a question. Just two or three words, spoken in Japanese, but it was enough to enrage the crowd. People were shouting now. “We don’t want a Japanese king taking over our country!”
Rocks smashed into the windows. Rotten onions and loose heads of cabbage hit the front door. A contingent of guards pushed their way outside and shoved the mob back. But more people had joined, apparently excited by the sporadic gunfire in the city, many probably having listened to the amateurish radio broadcast.
With the front doors open, Screech Owl noticed it first.
“Gunfire,” he said.
“Yeah,” I
replied.
“But coming from the north now.”
“The Second Corps,” General Crabtree said, standing up and walking toward the front door. “They’re moving in to save the city.”
“Bok’s plan,” I said, “is that the people will rise up and support him.”
“Not now. These people are mad as hell.” Crabtree turned to me. “What’s gotten into them?” he asked.
I told him about switching on the mic early, while they were preparing in Japanese.
“That’s enough to piss them off this much?”
I nodded. “Think about it. What if this happened in the States—someone went on national broadcast and told us we had a new president, but he started speaking and he wasn’t an American?”
Crabtree grunted. “Fat chance anyone would let that go through.”
“This is a hundred times worse. Everyone listening in a few minutes ago knows that the figure at the head of this coup is more in tune with the country that brutally colonized them for decades than Korea. Royalty or not, they don’t want anything to do with him.”
The ROK Army guards were approaching full panic. The mob outside was growing faster than they could push them back. No one was watching us.
“Time to leave,” Screech Owl said.
“Yes,” Crabtree said. He put his hand on his Sergeant Major’s shoulder. “You lead these people back to Yongsan Compound.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve got to go upstairs. Try to reason with Bok. Stop more bloodshed.”
“And you want to talk to Estella,” Katie said. She’d sidled up to the two men while they weren’t looking.
“What is it with you?” Crabtree said. “Don’t you ever give up?”
“Not as long as there’s a story.”
“Well you’ve got your story,” he said, motioning to the mob outside. “But if you want to ever see that in print, you’d better follow the sergeant major and get the hell out of here.”
