by Todd Turner
June 27, 15:39 KDT
USAF Camp Kim, South Korea
“Do you think it was worth the risk and the shit storm that’s about to come raining down on us from everyone, including our friends the Americans?” the general groaned to Kim.
“I hope so. I hope with all my being that it was all worth it, and I think it will be, my dear general; after all, the Americans have much bigger things to worry about.” Kim knew that Bonner’s betrayal would be keeping the American politicians busy for a while.
The old general realized he was out of his league. He could only hazard a guess at what the spymaster might know or think he knew. Either way, he knew an ominous statement when he heard one.
The interrogation room was almost a perfect cliché, only without the bare lightbulb hanging from electrical wiring. Instead the light was provided by wall-mounted fixtures with heavy metal grates surrounding them for protection. No table, no windows. A solid steel slab door banged shut with a metallic clang to make the person feel entombed. A smaller wooden door led to a three-by-three-foot chamber with a stainless-steel toilet and a tiny sink with no hot water.
Chung had no idea how long he’d been there, sitting shirtless in his underwear, allowed toilet breaks and not much else. His “captors” did offer food, but he refused. When he also refused water, an IV was run to keep him hydrated, all part of the plan. Jong-Kip Chung, a.k.a. Robert Lee, was now a guest of the United States Air Force somewhere in the bowels of a building located somewhere within the sovereign territory of the United States of Camp Kim in Seoul, South Korea.
Interrogations such as this follow the usual pattern. Chung had been briefed on what would happen if he were caught. He wasn’t a seasoned spy and not trained in techniques to resist and endure interrogation procedures.
It started out this way: food, water, toilet facilities, but with a tinge of humiliation by having you sit around in your skivvies. Strangers come and go, each letting you know in some way you are no longer in control of your life. The removal of a man’s freedom, privacy and modesty does things to his psyche. Without the skills to resist, it nullifies him; his confidence abandons him.
Lieutenant Commander John Preston came in much sooner than he would have liked. For a successful interrogation, he preferred to let the suspect stew for a while, wonder about his fate, begin to fear the worst, or at least accept he may never leave. The problem in this case is that there wasn’t time. This had to happen much quicker than usual. The kid gloves treatment was over, and things were going to change.
“Let’s start with the simple stuff. What’s your name?”
“I am Robert Lee.”
“Wrong answer, dumb ass! Do you really want to play it this way?”
“I don’t understand. I am Robert Lee, a truck driver.”
Preston got up and gently and softly walked around behind Chung. He stood there, knowing Chung felt his presence behind him, knowing it intimidated him. He paused for full effect, then leaning down behind him, he whispered behind Chung’s ear, “I don’t have time for your fucking games. I need answers. I need them fast. And I will do whatever I have to do to get them.” Preston then stood, and slowly walked out the door.
Chung didn’t expect that. He thought he was going to be hit. Now he was confused by the passiveness of his interrogators. He found a thread of defiance within himself and grasped it tightly, muttering out loud, “No wonder these cowards are losing their power! They are weak.”
Just then the door opened, and he realized his ordeal was far from over when two technicians wearing white lab coats walked in. One of them pushed a wheeled cart with a white sheet draped over it.
They positioned the cart behind him. One technician then grabbed Chung from behind, putting his neck in an arm hold and pressing hard on his carotid artery. In moments he passed out.
It’s a very quick method of immobilizing someone—and also relatively short-lived. Both served the interrogators’ purpose just fine.
Chung woke a few minutes later with a pounding headache. He recognized he was still in the same room, but now he was naked and shackled to a wire-framed chair that was secured to the floor with industrial clamps. What he didn’t yet know was that the clamps would also serve as a ground. He began to understand this as he saw the technicians clip wires to the chair.
To give him a taste of the situation, and also to test the system, a pulse charge was issued from the twelve volts DC battery, but only two amps were run through the system. Chung jumped from the bite of the juice. It was quick and the low amperage produced a minimal shock, but it was noticeable all the same.
Again, the door opened and in walked Preston. He grimaced at Chung and gently took the seat across from him.
“Let’s try this again, shall we? What is your name?”
With defiance and now disdain on his face, Chung repeated, “My name is Robert Lee!”
Preston nodded to the tech, who triggered a one-second burst of twelve volts and five amps. Not horrible, and far from deadly, but a good jolt of juice. Chung’s jaw clinched and his muscles tightened but he recovered the defiant look all too quickly, and Preston nodded for another jolt before even asking a question. He kept that pattern going. Each time the techs increased the amperage one amp.
After the eighth shock, the look of defiance was replaced by one of futility. Acquiescence was yet to come, but it wouldn’t be long.
“What is your name?” Preston asked in the same level tone.
“Jong-Kip Chung,” the defiance now replaced with anger.
“Who are you working for?”
“I already told you, you dumb ass. I work for Daewoo Motor, where I drive truck!”
Preston put out his lower lip in a look of considered disappointment, and gave the tech a nod.
The jolt was now at fourteen amps, but still just one second long. Now the length would begin to increase. The goal was to get the information they wanted and not kill their only source of that information or contaminate its veracity. The heart muscle gets tricky with DC amperage, but since the electrode contacts are limited to the skin surface and kept away from the chest area, the risks can be mitigated.
Another nod, and another, now up to four seconds, and the agony can actually be smelled—or perhaps it’s just the shit piled on the floor from that last one.
Preston calmly and flatly asked again, “Who do you work for?”
The anger was gone. It was replaced with self-pity and fear. Through tears of desperation, Chung said in a low voice, “They’ll kill me.”
“Then it seems to me, we are your best bet, because you should know that to them you are already dead. If you go back, you will not live. Your only chance is with us, and at this point I’d give that a twenty percent chance at best.” For emphasis, he nodded to the tech and a four-second shock was delivered.
When it stopped, Chung slumped in the chair with his chin on his chest. For a moment, Preston thought he’d gone too far; but he knew and trusted in the abilities of the technicians. They were charged with the responsibility of delivering the appropriate level, intensity, and time of shock whenever they got a nod. Appropriate is defined as being nonlethal.
Preston slapped him on the cheek repeatedly. As Chung began to show he was back with them again, Preston said with the calm voice that by now seemed almost psychotic, “Who do you work for?”
“You know who I work for! I work for Father Kim Jong-un,” Chung’s response was a sad indicator that he was a brainwashed victim of North Korea’s communist system, where every person is taught they are the “children” of the country’s political leader. A system, much like Iran’s, intended to place the leader in the exalted position of being literally a god to the people.
Preston was very pleased now. It was clear this man was not well trained. Such a devotee with the proper training would never break. He’d die before giving any information to the “evil Zionists” of the West—and Preston therefore would have to kill the man in order to validate h
is willingness to die.
“What was your mission?”
“Fuck you, you insect. That’s what you and your kind are—locusts trying to occupy the planet and devour its resources.”
Preston ignored the insult. He didn’t give a shit what this brainwashed victim of an isolationist, communist regime thought of him. In truth, he knew the man wasn’t capable of independent thought. The rhetoric he spewed was no more meaningful than those of a parrot that repeats learned words and phrases and recites them by rote without knowing the meaning of any of it.
Another nod to the tech and Chung found himself covered in sweat; but it wasn’t enough. It was time to up the ante.
Torture is a crime and is governed by hundreds of agreements between countries in the time of war. Yet there exist no such agreements with North Korea, nor is there currently an official war with North Korea. The American people and for the most part its courts are content not knowing what goes on in these closed rooms.
The progression of torture usually depends on the personality traits of the person being tortured. Typically, there is time to formulate a personality profile so the information can be used to administer the most effective methods. Does this person respond best to humiliation, bodily harm, threats to his family? What specifically is the most effective motivator?
In the absence of such information, pain is usually the universal motivator to get someone to speak; but it’s an art. You cross a certain threshold and information spills out, but it’s just as likely fabrication as truth.
SWAT teams and other law enforcement agencies know that when faced with a suspect they need to have surrender, if they aim guns at the suspect’s head and threaten to kill him, he will remain defiant. He will fail to surrender. If the sights are lowered to his groin, however, the suspect almost always surrenders—and quickly.
When the techs set a tray of instruments on the table, the purpose of some were obvious, while others were less so. Chung began to feel a lump in his throat. When techs began to touch his genitals, that lump rocketed to his stomach and his penis began to retract in fear. At once, a long metal rod on the tray had meaning, and it was not a pleasant thought at all.
While the technicians added hardware, Preston left, muttering, “They break. They always break. Question is, can we count on what they have to say?” On his way out, he wondered how these “techs” could do what they had to do. Looking at them now, he got an even darker feeling when he saw they actually enjoyed it.
Twenty minutes later he returned. A table had been added, set in front of Chung, so thankfully Preston couldn’t see what was below the man’s waist. There was a new look in his face now, one that clearly said, “I’ll do whatever you want—please don’t let them hurt me anymore!”
It’s a type of Stockholm syndrome: one interrogator is considered a “friend” since he is the one communicating. Consequently, he’s the only human being with whom the captor feels he has a connection, even though this is also the person responsible for his plight.
Gently, in the same even tone, Preston asked, “What is your mission?”
Looking down at his crotch and then up to Preston’s eyes, and then over to the table, Chung responded.
June 27, 20:35 KDT
USAF Camp Kim, South Korea
“My mission was to drive the truck full of cars to the port. Back and forth. That’s what I did. Then one day I get a message to take one load of cars the next day to a warehouse located between the factory and the port. That’s it. I swear that’s all I know.”
Preston paused for a just a moment, considering, then gave the techs a nod. Chung saw the gears turning in Preston’s head and the upward glance to the techs and he begged, “No, God no! Please don’t!”
Preston broke his flat-tone delivery with a shouting tirade. “Don’t you use God to beg for mercy! Or have you forgotten you forsake God? You think that crackpot despot is your god? What mercy do you think HE would show you at this moment? Your only god right now is me! I will decide if you live or die, and on what terms you live or die! Do you understand? From this point on, you have no way back. Your life, as you know it, is over. There’s a new life that’s possible for you, but it’s tenuous at best, and dependent on your cooperation. So you better start talking and tell me everything if you even want a clue as to what your new life might look like!”
Chung looked down in shame. He glanced to his left, wondering if he could see the techs, wondering if he could somehow signal to them to end it, to put him out of his misery.
His eyes pulled back up to Preston’s, and Preston saw hope. Praise God, there it was. He’d won. He’d broken him. Chung now saw Preston as his savior, his gateway to living.
“I drove the truck to the warehouse and was signaled inside. As I pulled the rig into the warehouse, I saw a whole team of people around tools, and what looked like gas tanks. There were eight of them. As soon as the doors closed, I was instructed to get out of the truck and help unload the cars. With so many people, this only took a few minutes. Then I saw them jack up the cars. They had four lifts and worked on four cars at a time.”
“They replaced the gas tanks? Why did they do that?” Preston asked the questions as though Chung was a friend who would readily answer. The reply came straight away.
“I don’t know why.”
“How long did it take to replace the tanks?”
“No more than twenty minutes. It was like they’d done it thousands of times.”
“Humph, they probably had,” grunted Preston. “Then what?”
“We loaded the cars back up, and I was told to resume the delivery, but to pull over down the road and let the air out of a tire and call the dispatch for service.”
“To provide an excuse for your arrival at the port so late?” asked Preston.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“But what about the time up to that point? You were already way off schedule?”
“No, not really. The traffic around Busan is horrible. Our drive time can vary by as much as two hours. This whole process was around one hour,” Chung explained.
Something about Chung’s cooperation was beginning to strike Preston as odd. Yeah sure, guys open up when a ten-inch metal rod with wires attached is run up their penis, but the language and rhythm of speech had changed. He’d begun to use more casual English, as though he were very familiar with it.
He began to think Chung might be higher level after all. This could be good or bad. The potential good was that he might get more information about the enemy’s mission. The potential bad was that he might be skilled enough to provide disinformation under torture too.
He decided it was time to use the hardware that had been installed in Chung’s most private and—to the majority of men—most valuable possession. The technology was pretty simple. It was intended to leave internal damage only. Nothing would be visible outwardly, but the damage to the victim’s reproductive and urinary systems could be extensive, making orgasm impossible, and causing incontinence, forcing the man to wear a diaper or a catheter the rest of his life. The metal rod was inserted down his urethra through his prostate, and right up to the bladder sphincter. It had the ability to use both infrared as well as thermal heat to torture and damage all those sensitive bits.
Similar rods, more like thin-gauge needles, were inserted into each of Chung’s testicles. They too were designed to damage from the inside out, radiating heat from the needle core, how far, depending on how long it was active. The intensity wasn’t adjustable; it was either on or off. It’s all about how long the heat is applied.
Preston painstakingly explained the devices to Chung, informing him of their capabilities, and that they would destroy him. It is at this point a spy will decide how far he is willing to go to serve his country. While the pain of this procedure is not insignificant, it is still nothing on the order of more traditional tortures. No, the power of this process is to use the victim’s primal fears and instinctual needs against him. This is psycho
logical torture at its core.
Preston knew his man would either begin talking fast with just the slightest touch of the switch or clam up, in favor of sacrificing himself to the state. Something about him, though, led Preston to believe this would not result in the unmanning of Chung. His actions on the plane proved he wanted to live, and most desirably, as a full man.
Preston dialed a two on the digital timer, indicating a two-second “burn” of the metal cores embedded in Chung’s genitals. His finger hovered over the button . . .
June 28, 01:08 KDT
USAF Camp Kim, South Korea
Preston knew he’d have to apply the two-second burn. He knew Chung would not believe the machine’s function until he felt it for himself.
Preston depressed the button and the machine whined as though it were a generator starting up. Once the infrared system was charged, the timer began automatically, with an electrical clunk. Chung thought it sounded like the heavy-duty switch that signaled the sauna heater had kicked on back at the training institute’s gym.
Instantly, Chung felt the charge—like he was taking the most painful piss of his life, and that his nuts were about to explode from a sudden buildup of steam inside the tender glands.
He was convinced. Two seconds were an eternity, and he knew this machine would do exactly what Preston told him it would do.
His country would never forgive him. From this moment, he knew he was dead as far as his leaders were concerned. He looked at Preston and without either saying a word, the two men knew they had an accord. Chung accepted that his fate was now in the hands of his former enemy.
Though Chung was now a full-fledged informer, Preston knew he had to ask the right questions in the right way to get the answers he needed.
“OK. Let’s start with how many cars were shipped with these devices in them.”
