59 Years Later

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.
HERMANN HESSE, The Glass Bead Game

It all started sometime in mid-August. A buddy of mine let me borrow a book. Usually such a favor results in nothing more than a good read at best; or, on the contrary, you get bored a dozen or so pages in, and try thinking of reasons why you couldn’t get into it so you don’t let them down too hard upon returning it prematurely; or you keep it for a while, in the bathroom, hoping it will serve some purpose, any purpose, before you finally return it much later so that they forgot they’d even lent it to you, and perhaps forgot what had ever moved them to push it on you in the first place. Not so with The Secrets of Inchon. Eugene Clark USN writes an engaging and intimate narrative of “The Most Daring Covert Mission of the Korean War.” From his makeshift camp on Yonghung-do Island with a couple of ROK military men to assist him, Clark explores the Flying Fish Channel and other sea-approaches of Inchon, as well as the tides, the seawall, the vast mud flats and the personnel and weaponry of the invading communist forces from the north. Meanwhile, he has to repel on what seems like a daily basis the Red infiltrators, some of whom simply walk over the mud flats at low tide from adjacent Daebu-do Island. He’s been given a mere two weeks to recon the sea and landscape in preparation for the amphibious landing of the UN Forces September 1950. If successful, he may play a historic role in liberating the south; fail, and, well, die.

The only complaint I have is that Clark and his editors didn’t include any maps in the book whatsoever. Anything would have helped, even a crudely hand-drawn map of the island would have been nice; perhaps a legend to indicate where they set up their CP, and where the guard posts were located--and the battle scenes--would have been useful.  Alas, it wasn’t meant to be a guidebook; it is first and foremost a war narrative. And his description of place is thorough enough to deduce locations of events with some certainty.

As you might be thinking, moments after finishing the read, I actually got on-line and began studying Yonghung-do Island and plotting my own approach to that historical place as an indifferent observer in peace time. It was somewhat tough going, but Google came through as usual (little did I know, the recent geographical map of the Seoul subway system includes Yongheung, though not connected, which is remarkable not only for how vast that system has become, but also for how close Clark and his comrades operated to the hostile mainland.

I called a couple friends but they were busy and the boy had school, so I set out alone at 10am on a Saturday morning early October. I estimated a 2-3 hour drive from Wonju and sure enough around 12:15pm I reached the man-made isthmus connecting Daebu-do to the mainland. My buddy Earl whom I said had inspired the journey in lending me the book, was also with me in the spirit of smoking cessation. He is one of these guys always battling the addiction, wearing the patch, chewing the gum, you name it. I hadn’t smoked in nearly two months, cold turkey, as I crossed the bridge onto Yongheung around one o’clock on a partly sunny afternoon. The first thing I did however was stop at the Family Mart on the edge of town and buy, among other provisions, a pack of Mild Sevens. Leaving the store, I gazed out at the mud, deep dark dank green mud, with egrets and herons out there for a late lunch. It must have been a mile or more to the water.

I had packed for an overnight, and I am not one who often stays in cheap motels. In other words, I packed a tent, pots and pans, a sleeping bag, pork chops, oatmeal, the works. I figured if I’m going to disturb this passage of history, I’d better approach it the same way they did—by rougin’ it.

My first order of business was to find the “Marine Battle Scene Monument” (Hae Goon Jeok Jeon Bi) which I noticed on Google maps. I had a bad feeling about it because according to my calculations, this was not the place I had reckoned the “Last Stand” or any fighting to have taken place. As I drove on, I soon realized that the island was even smaller than I had anticipated, so I over shot the little peninsula first try. After doubling back, I took a right onto what I figured was the right area. Unfortunately, after driving through mud and pot holes up onto the promontory, there was nothing to find except fishing houses. I descended the other side, and came to a marshy low land with a few little construction sheds built of corrugated metal. I got out and asked one of the workers if he knew where the monument was. He had no idea.

I went back up over the hill, keeping an eye out for any signs of a trail or a road that might lead me to my destination, but nothing appeared. I went back to the east side of the little peninsula. This time I got out of the car and walked up a grassy road to a good-sized garden, thinking it could be up there. There was a middle-aged couple—tourists—picking something. It must have been wild for the land was fallow. I high-stepped my way through the weeds and vines before finding a little dry rivulet on the other side. Dense woods covered the hill facing me, not the sort of place you’d find a monument. I shot down to the beach. It was lovely, rocky shores with millions of oyster shells segregated into their own piles and as many flat stones and pebbles. A few fishermen were casting into the surf, and a handful of tourists walking out on a sidewalk-pier. I headed for the rocks to the west and climbed them around the bend of bluff, gazing up now and then to see if there was a plaque of some sort. The rocks were of various colors and kinds, some jagged limestone and shale, others sandstone and sharp. I leaned my right hand gently on one, gazing around its breadth and it pierced a hole in my middle finger. I carried on a bit further and found a small stony beach with a natural altar in the middle of it. I approached and got down on one knee and muttered a prayer. The sun emerged from behind the cloud and I took it to be a sign. I passed one fisherman on the way back and asked him if he knew about the monument and he said no.


When I got back to the beach with the tourists who’d by now been chased back a ways by the rising tide, I said to myself with a laugh, “I came all this way just to cut my finger open…” Then I recalled the T.S. Eliot verses which go, “and what you thought you came for is only a shell, a husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled if at all. Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end you figured and is altered in fulfillment." Looking at the poem now, I realize this stanza is about places (real and metaphysical) of the “world’s end” and the “sea jaws,” according to Eliot, are one of them.

Back on the road again, I realized I had bought nothing on my list of things to buy my first time at the Family Mart, so I went back for charcoal and gloves, batteries and Zippo fluid. Inside, I saw an old man of about 65 or so. I did the math and reckoned he would have been 6 had he lived here during the war. I kept my mouth shut. Instead I teased the little boy in front of me: “how old are you?” “seven” “huh? Me too,” I joked. He smiled; the young lady clerk laughed. I drove around the southeastern edge of the island which I read as the Ferry launch. It seems so today as well. There were restaurants and shops , families and kitsch too, but I didn’t see a tourist center. Don’t know if they’d have been able to help me anyhow. I was on the brink of the most invigorating part of the day: the search for Lieutenant Clark’s Command Post or “CP”.

I headed up the coastal road, on the east coast. With my window down to let the ocean breeze in, I rolled by some old folks singing and dancing, in revelry, loaded drunk and having a grand old time at picnic tables outside of a sushi restaurant. I couldn’t help but think they had a damn good reason to be celebrating: they are survivors; and as for those who didn’t make it, tip your makkoli cup a few times for them.

Soon the skyline of Inchon came into view. The new skyscraper they built as the center of the new Industrial Zone dominated the picture—bold and space-age. And this is where the Reds crossed in junks on the night of September 14th, to recapture this little feckin’ island, while Destroyers and Battle Ships crept up over the Yellow sea hours away from pummeling the port city to bits.

When I got to Shimpo Beach, which it’s safe to say, is where Clark and co. launched their expeditions to Inchon under the cover of darkness, I opted to shoot up the wooded hill behind the beach instead, hoping to find the promontory where the guards (young Korean teenagers) kept watch at all hours for invaders. The pavement soon gave way to reddish dirt and mud with potholes and craters three feet deep full of muddy water to negotiate. My little Matiz managed surprisingly well. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that they did not have motor vehicles when they were here. Every run made back to the village with the drunken revelers, or to the Ferry landing was done by walking, row-boat, or at desperate times, by swimming. I found a secluded area which I thought might be good for camping. It was, albeit, near the crest of the hill, but it was protected somewhat by a bank on the side of the road. It wasn’t the lookout I’d had in mind (unless it was tree-less back in 1950), for it offered no view east towards Daebu-do where the Reds were coming from. It did however avail a nice view of Shimpo Bay, Muui-Do to the north and Inchon 10 miles or so north-northeast. I kept the spot in mind nonetheless and headed back down to scope out the beach.

The first thing I noticed as I parked in front of the beach was the trees, lovely little pines that weaved and wandered in every direction on the dunes. I parked under one of them, and got out of the car, taking one last look at the photos in The Secrets of Inchon before embarking on the search for the CP. One word that Clark used to describe it, a word I have since fallen in love with, is “scarp”, or escarpment. Apparently they pitched their tent on top of the scarp on one end of the beach. Which end, we may never be sure. Anyhow, I stepped right smack in the middle of the stony beach and, looking out, I noticed the headland on the left looked eerily similar to the headland in the photo of Lieutenant Clark walking topless, head down, with his back to the sea, one hand in pocket, the other as though he’s about to roll a pair of dice. The photo captures both his pensive mood which pervades the mission and the look of strain he was under for the entire two weeks without respite.

Clearly the natives were restless, as a terrific wind was blowing in off the seas, in constant gusts of 20 or 30 miles per hour.

First, I headed east. I reached the end of the beach where a couple small groups of fishermen were cooking their lunch. Behind them was a slope about 30 feet high. It was covered with grass, underbrush, and precariously leaning trees. It showed signs of erosion. As you might assume, a restaurant had been built, so unfortunately, the top of the slope was not accessible to the sightseer. Anyhow, I took a couple photos and imagined the CP/Camp as being tucked away in there. Now I realize, after reading the section again, that depending on your definition of “scarp”, the camp could have been set up anywhere back behind the beach and away from the water. The promontories on either end of the beach, were simply used as look-outs. Following this line of reasoning, where exactly they set up their CP is a needle in a haystack. Perhaps a military specialist would read the land better and could make an educated guess.


Next I headed west to the other end of the beach. Along the way, I saw a Korean man, maybe 60 years old, walking by himself under the pines. He looked at me as if to say, “What are you doing here?” I was certainly a curiosity, the only white man on the whole island, I’m sure. He looked lonesome and perhaps drunk. I had half a mind to chat him up, pick his brain, but figured he wouldn’t be in the know, and plus I was alone and didn’t want to risk being followed. I took a couple pictures at the other end of the beach, and then walked up a concrete hill, where a couple of guest houses had been built, one of them called “Grace.” There were noisy parties of young people cooking outside and drinking. I shot up the road which led to the top of the promontory and looked out over the sea. It was, as Clark writes, about a 100 foot drop and quite likely where one of the guards given “heavy clubs and one grenade to take care of any single enemy arrivals” would have been stationed. “These would make ideal lookout points,” writes Clark, “for both east and west approaches.”

After I’d had enough of the beach, and come to feel quite sure that I’d located and walked around the area that I was most interested in finding, I was famished. I decided to go set up a camp of my own and BBQ some pork chops. I got back in the car and drove back up the muddy hill. This time there was a lady stuck in a mud puddle. I offered to help her partner push, but he waved me on. I decided near the top to get out and venture down the ravine to the water. There was a somewhat gentle descent in a little rivulet that made a trail. At the bottom, I jumped down four feet to a tiny beach covered with white shells, oyster shells, and what not. It was quaint and peaceful and entirely secluded. I pulled the cigarettes out of my breast pocket, packed them, and opened them. I lit one and it was perversely relieving yet, it tasted horribly and hurt my throat. After a couple more drags I put it out, and littered the damn thing.


I started a fire in the grill as soon as I’d unloaded everything. The wind was much calmer than it was on the beach, but still a bit of a nuisance. I am not the best outdoorsman by any stretch, but I do pride myself on being bold, if not plain stupid, in the “wild”. For instance I was nearly crushed by the rubber tree that an elephant in the Thai jungle decided to snap right above me as a warning that I’d come too close. I was nearly pelican food after descending to a ledge with a 200 foot drop to the brine that didn’t offer much of a way back up on a bluff in Santa Cruz. Anyhow, I got the tent set up, but one of the poles is in need of a replacement and I had forgotten the stakes! I tried to ground the son of a bitch with rocks by placing them on four corners, but that didn’t work at all. Brittle, clay-like rocks, toppled upon each other, crumbled. Basically I sat on a log, cooking pork and potatos, to eat with rice and kimchi, meanwhile placing bets with myself that the tent wouldn’t blow away. I think it was Kerouac who imparted the idea that watching nature, whether it be stars, mountains, or bugs, is better than watching TV, but I was not too thrilled to be watching the place where I intended to sleep bounce up and down, looking more like a parachute than a tent.

I was hoping all along against the hope that nightfall wouldn’t cause the wind to let up. But it was nearly dark by the time I was finishing my pork chops; the sun had set behind me, and it was getting chilly fast. I cleaned up a bit and then I lit another cigarette. I uttered a prayer too. A prayer for Chae and Lim, a very young defender of the island, and one of the cooks, the groom and his betrothed, who were killed during the Last Stand on September 14th. She was bludgeoned to death by the Reds, and he blew “himself to bits with a grenade” upon finding her dead and brutalized body on the scarp. Lieutenant Clark witnessed the drama; was knocked off his feet by the suicidal explosion. I said aloud, hoping their spirits might hear me, “you didn’t die in vain, Lim, Chae, we are here, we are the inheritors of what you died for…thank you.” The wind showed no sign of letting up. I hurriedly folded up the tent, and packed up the red Matiz. It wasn’t fit for man or beast; rain was predicted for the morning to boot. In spite of my courage and adventuresome spirit, I too found myself retreating from this doomed and haunted island.

As I slammed the trunk tight and walked to the driver’s door, I recalled for the thousandth time the real tragedy of Yonghung-do. As the UN liberators were arriving at Inchon to save the lives and freedoms of millions and millions for generations to come, and while Lieutenant Clark and his assistants, Ke and Youn, were boarding the USS Mount McKinley, the people of Yonghung were being massacred wholesale by the vindictive Reds. The Island and its gracious people had served its purpose; now it was being left to the dogs. With that thought in mind, I reached for the pack of Mild Sevens in my breast pocket and, as though it were a grenade, chucked it into the woods, whimpering, “get the hell out of there, you goddam Commies,” and drove home.

The Dog Days

It was a sad lunch hour. The meat was chewy, soft and bland unless dipped in the sauce, a stir-it-yourself mixture of chili paste, bean paste, hot mustard, sesame seed and black pepper. Whether you dipped it or not, it seemed to take hours to chew each piece fully, and even then you had to swallow hard what remained squishing around in your mouth—a big lump of fat. I couldn't help thinking of Oliver, my childhood pal we'd put down back in '97, when his tumors took over, his eyes dimmed, and his arthritis paralyzed. It was a dreary day in March and we had a ceremony in the front yard. Susan read the lovely prayer she'd written in the gray light of noon as family and friends who'd gathered listened and choked back their tears—after all he's just a dog. But we'd purchased him out in B'ville, months after dad was interred at St. Mary's. “Ollie” would be cremated and his ashes scattered on top of the hill in the Jewish cemetery across the street, where he used to run wild in his youthful days. This fateful day he lay on the lawn in the damp grass, sniffing the cold breeze keenly, his moist black nose flicking and twitching like new. He seemed happy it was the last thing to go, and to know it was his last chance to use it. No, “happy” isn't the right word. Rather, he seemed placidly invigorated, as we all were, though we didn't know it, by the coming of spring: dogs can smell things much farther off than people can--I remember that day as being damned cold—and even on the threshold of death, Ollie knew better than we did. After the prayer was done and the eyes dabbed with tissue, we carried him over to the station wagon and placed him in the way-back. I chose not to go with him to the vet.


I chewed and chewed, as my company kept commenting on how “savory” it was. October had suddenly come, one of the first chill days, and now, in addition to nearly a decade of time that had spun these reflections into such a distance, I had been flung across thousands of miles of space, to live the better half of it on the other side of the world. The lengthening shadows, the weakening sunlight and the pungent aroma all worked to make it seem much longer ago and much farther away.


~


Usually dog is steamed, stewed, roasted, or boiled, and eaten in summer for stamina; “...you can do it all night...” someone once told me, “...after eating dog.” On those unbearably hot, humid summer days (the “dog days of summer”, as we say in the west), dog is eaten by young and old alike. Three days in particular are observed by the faithful: Cho-bok, Jung-bok, and Mal-bok. Like most Eastern holy days, these follow the lunar calendar, taking place every ten days beginning the 20th of July and ending August 9. This is what I'd heard. Looking around the small restaurant I noticed the faces were mostly elderly faces; droopy-eyed, denture-mouthed faces, all of which somehow held that smug look usually seen on young people at 25. I couldn't help but wonder if it was already kicking in. Everyone sat Indian-style, on the floor, elbow-to-elbow, in church clothes for it was Sunday. However, unlike the clean surfaces found in a church, the restaurant was a bit filthy, the tables not wiped thoroughly, and apparently not disinfected. A film of grease seemed to cling to everything, even the antique wall-clock which was made of wrought copper.


~


I continued eating without good appetite. My boss noticed this and ordered me a bowl of rice to work as a sort of chaser. Everyone else was content with the heaping side dishes of spicy pickled vegetables, or kimchis. They waited for the right moment, when the stew was reduced to bones and only the stodgy broth remained for the mixing with white rice over the gas range which had been conveniently located in the middle of the table for all the reach. As the slurping of the steaming-hot porridge increased in frequency and volume, I excused myself and went outside for a smoke.

The street was empty save a bunch of children playing tag: “Yer it!”, I made out it their tongue. I wanted to join them, to play, to forget, to soothe myself after the trauma I'd just experienced. But instead, I matched a cigarette and walked around the corner where the soft sun was angling its way through the trees; its rays caressing everything, drawing those long shadows that make your legs look longer and your heart feel softer. A gust of wind picked up and blew a few scraps of litter, making an eddy around a large aluminum pot near the side-door. I exhaled smoke and approached the pot out of curiosity; its cover did not completely conceal the contents. An exposed chunk of pink flesh—rib-cage-like--hung over the edge of the pot. The steady plumes of steam did little to hide it as the wind whipped them away. I should have known better--a steaming pot at a dog restaurant—but it was too late. With a scrawny rack of ribs imprinted on my eye, I turned away and puked on the side of the road.

Lift the Ban Absolutely

South Korea is one of many countries in the world where you might hear Queen played just about anywhere: TV ads, shopping centers, and bars where revelers of all ages sing “We Are the Champions” at the top of their lungs. No one who was here will ever forget how that song became the second national anthem during the soccer team's run to the semis of World Cup 2002. Ironically, however, South Korea is one of only thirteen countries in the world that wouldn't welcome the legendary rockers were frontman Freddie Mercury alive today.

Like the U.S. did, up until last year, South Korea bans foreigners with HIV/AIDS from working inside its borders. Now its government may follow the U.S., as the Korean Immigration Service (KIS) is considering lifting the ban on certain kinds of workers. Whether or not this comes to pass, it would seem that Korea (and the U.S.) must break the habit of looking overseas to find scapegoats for its own problems. Take for instance the burning of poppy fields in Asia while junkies languish in the gutter at home and meth-labs pump out millions in illegal drugs right under their nose. Try asking a Korean why it's so easy to find a whore just about anywhere and they'll invariably point to the Japanese. First of all, it's been generally known for decades that the best way to fight the drug war is to cut demand not supply. In Korea's cities, it's the very Korean thugs who get rich off exploitation of women, who make prostitutes a dime a dozen, not the Japanese. Now turn again to HIV/AIDS. According to sfgate.com, “Until 1990, health experts say every AIDS victim contracted the disease overseas or through contact with a foreigner living here...but by 1993, the majority of new infections were passed from Korean to Korean.” This begs the question, Then what's the use of banning foreigners today?

It certainly comes as good news that the ban may soon be lifted. From an international perspective, it has been a blot on Korea's image. All twelve other countries who uphold a similar ban are recognized by human rights advocates as either “partly free” nor “not free.” Sadly though, the lifting of the ban may be no more than an attempt to save face, as the “decree” came from UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon who “suggested that Korea abandon the policy.” One reason to see it as an empty gesture is that “there will be no changes for E-6 visa applicants” (entertainers, artists, athletes and models). This can't be taken seriously. Instead, one is tempted to joke that Eminem and Ronaldo better wear their “jimi-caps” at all times if they ever plan on performing in Seoul or Sudan.

Let's be honest: the real threat to Koreans is Koreans. Studies show that the lack of sex education in Korea is astounding, and may cause a huge rise in HIV in the coming years. When 30-33% of athletes polled answered, yes, you can get HIV from skin contact or a mosquito bite, the education system has failed them. When only 6.4% of sexually active adolescent males answer yes, I use condoms, the red flag goes up.

It would be interesting if someone did a study of how banning HIV/AIDS-infected people from Korea has effected the rate of new infections in this country, or in the U.S. or Yemen. It seems unlikely that it would indicate a slowing. Whatever the case may be, “Health officials say a thriving sex industry and a reluctance to talk about safe sex likely contributed to a steady increase in infections.”

Whether you make sweatshirts in KyunggiDo, grammar worksheets in Seoul, or hat-tricks on the soccer field, HIV/AIDS is a serious issue that effects us all. And since no one is exempt, no one should be barred from entering any particular place to ply their trade because of it. Someday, nearly everyone in the world will have a friend or loved one with the virus. In the best of all possible worlds, this would be the only measure to prevent the spread of HIV: teach all to understand exactly how the virus spreads and how to prevent that. To paraphrase a Socrates scholar I read recently, let's not suffer the separation caused by dogma and ignorance; let's move in the direction of unity through understanding and friendship. If South Korea truly intends to be "the Champions” it clearly must lift the ban on all foreigners with HIV/AIDS.

Peace-lovin' Assassin

History may be servitude, history may be freedom. See, now they vanish, the faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured in another pattern.
-from T.S Eliot's Little Gidding


I have always wondered what T.S. Eliot means by these lines. Whatever it is, they transformed my view of history when I read them back in college. I guess up until that point I had thought of history as a collection of dead people, cryptic documents, and biased fabrications. Ever since, I have learned to live history, to breathe history, and to understand that we are the “renewed, transfigured...pattern” of the past. One-hundred years later, and so we ask, what is Mr. Ahn Jung-geun's place in this complex pattern of which we are today's subjects...

Ahn Jung-geun is the quintessential patriot, martyr, freedom-fighter. He represents revolutionary thinking on subjects such as peace-politics, economics, and education, as well as bravery and courage in resisting the Japanese Colonial powers with his army and assassinating Ito Hirobumi in 1909 at Harbin. I suspect, however, that he is remembered most for his assassination of Ito, and, as a result, his legacy includes a rather volatile, and violent message. In other words, it would take a skillful pen to write a children's book about his life. It also requires some objectivity to write a fair appraisal of his place in East Asian History in light of the contrasting images of him as both a man of peace and a man of violence. Clearly he was deprived of the opportunity to make good on the former image by his death sentence at the hands of the Japanese courts. We must also be objective because otherwise we run the risk of viewing his life and legacy through the lens of rose-colored Korean-sympathy, or perhaps, Japanese-antipathy. We must be careful to view his story with an equal mind, honoring as many perspectives as possible.

So, where does Mr. Ahn belong? One might say he deserves a seat beside Aung San Suu Kyi and Benazir Bhutto, two great leaders who oppose the oppressive powers that be and have great success rallying the people in support of their cause. Others may point to Jose Rizal, the great Filipino hero who was also executed more or less unjustly. How about Bishop Belo of East Timor, or the late Kim Dae-jung? Like these men, Mr. Ahn’s mission was ostensibly peaceful, and, under different circumstances, he too may have become a Nobel Laureate. Again, the assassination and his subsequent execution blur his legacy from an objective point of view, perhaps preventing him from being seated next to the peace-makers past and present.

Does Mr. Ahn belong in the same category as his fellow countryman Park Chung-hee? Both men exhibited great economic vision and excellence in military affairs. Perhaps Mr. Ahn belongs with Ho Chi Minh or Sukarno, two other great men caught in a tug-o’-war between colonial powers and miraculously coming out on top. Or should we place Mr. Ahn beside Kim Okgyun and other brave revolutionaries whose efforts failed and who now dwell in the dusty pages of relative obscurity?

If one of Ahn's goals in assassinating Ito was to establish peace in Asia, it was clearly a risky, if not desperate, method. One tends to wonder if Ahn considered that the best way to foster peace is to leave a strictly peaceful legacy behind; if civil disobedience wasn’t a better option; if such an idea existed in the Korea of his times. Whatever the case may be, it is more than likely that as a result of Ito’s death, conditions became increasingly worse for Koreans.

The irony of Mr. Ahn's famous act is that Ito was actually against the annexation of Korea, and had delayed the cabinet vote in attempt to block it. Sure, Mr. Ahn had other reasons for taking justice into his own hands, but I'm afraid it was too little too late, for both men. The rationale that Mr. Ahn gave for his actions was to avenge the murder of Queen Min and to prevent Ito from doing more harm in the future. Such tenuous and facile justifications didn't appease the judge, but they did have a profound impact on the political landscape of East Asia. Just as the death of Queen Min represented the end of the Monarchy, the assassination of Ito became a symbol of resistance to the Imperialists. And as such, it inspired his contemporaries, people like Kim Gu and Ahn Chang-ho, as well as generations to come.

Four years ago, a pair of anti-Japan protesters imitated Mr. Ahn by cutting off a finger for Korean pride. And today, one can see Ahn Jung-geun in the peaceful protests at Kwanghwamun, or in the militant union strikes at auto factories. Without a doubt, his spirit of rebellion lives on in Korea.

In the final analysis, it would be hard to place Ahn Jung-geun at the pinnacle of East Asian leaders for he is too human and too enigmatic. His is the story of a militant idealist, with a sensitive, Christian side. In short, a man of contradiction. And for this reason he is all the more intriguing and inspiring. To put nation above church and retain faith as he did is remarkable. When Mr. Ahn got word that his murder attempt had succeeded, he crossed himself. When Father Wilhelm came in secret to serve his final right, he refused to admit he'd done wrong. Yet to his captors, in his cell, Mr. Ahn asked to be called his Christian name, Thomas, not his Korean name, Jung-geun.

Jung-geun, or Thomas, peace-maker or assassin, one thing is certain: Mr. Ahn is a complex and heroic figure who should be renewed and transfigured in the pattern of history for generations to come.

Many Thanks to David Kennedy for inspiration and editing

The Test of Time

Often while walking abroad, when he happened also to come out of himself, he had such moments of dreadful and sane mistrust of mankind. What if nothing could move them?
-from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent


I.
You have to be in the right mood to take in Nirvana, and I can't say that I was. But the video they made for “Heart-shaped Box” had crept into a dream some months ago, and kept nagging me like an old injury until I saw it again. The sudden flash of the fetus stewing in the IV unit, feeding the decrepit old man; the crows perched atop the empty cross ready to scavenge the martyr's meat; another fetus or two hanging from an ancient tree. There it all was. On “youtube”. Don't know whether I had been, in a dream, testing its relevance 13 years later or merely trying to satisfy a certain longing, but now it felt like a mistake: a preconscious terror, if you will, threads itself throughout the video, which we can only vaguely identify with, akin to Dorothy waking up in Oz: some things are better left to dream: reality is just too tenuous. Apparently the guy next to me in the PC Bang wasn't in the mood for Nirvana either—perhaps he'd just paid for an abortion—because he got up and changed computers. Gradually, that warm old fecund nostalgia came over me like a flood, carrying me back ten years or more to a time when it wasn't nostalgia at all, but the violent reds and yellows of the set's backdrop that fixed me. Only now the two seemed to work together: I found myself flailing in the eddies of my misspent youth, floating in the current towards the home my mother sold years ago, aware all the while of the director's intimation of apocalyptic sunset that betokened the end that was from the beginning, a something inevitable as nightfall itself, that sensation that you're too late to see what you'd wanted to see, or maybe you'd already seen it, in dream or memory only, in light of which, there is nothing to see. That's why there's music. The fat lady, naked to her insides, and the fetuses, dead before birth, gave me a chuckle and then a shiver, but it was the thump of the bass drum and the raw emotion of Cobain's vocals that really resonates, passing the test of time. The video, like dream itself, as great as it may be, was just background noise: music is always more than video, which deceives, distracts, dies.


~



I see myself back home, in the house my mother sold for little more than she and my dad had bought it for twenty-odd years earlier. I see me in the back yard now, the backyard which holds my earliest memories--that past that's somehow with us, the pain, the expression of pain, and the aftermath. I see the wiffleball soaring into the weeping willow and unfalling with the falling branches; the poplar with the treehouse and the boards nailed to the trunk I could barely scale to reach the little box where Marty jerked off with porno mags: I am there, but they are not. They are all gone now, the willow, the poplar, the people, and the neighboring pines that made a cool canopy in the summer heat. I see myself suddenly in a war zone--and that's what we called it--when the Labor Day storm of '98 hit and left 30,000 casualties: a veritable pile of fresh death-in-wood. But by then I had seen enough senseless destruction to be numb for a century or two. Such musing led me to Oakwood cemetery which never looked the same anyhow. That's where I went to get away from my dead and that's where I decided one crisp Autumnal dusk to go abroad. I'd been chasing a gorgeous French au pere named Amelie Lambec for whom I played Tchaikovsky's violin concerto on my bedroom stereo and somehow didn't lay her. I know why now. On a bench by the plaque with the Lord's Prayer and the surviving trees standing around listening passively to my plan: one more paycheck, buy a round-trip ticket to Portugal before moving to San Francisco to get my degree and from there, Asia?...Asia is the place to be...bamboo, geishas and delectable mushrooms, the likes of which Kurt suggests fertilizing.




II.


As I walked out of the PC Bang into the drizzling forenoon gloom, I got the feeling that I was living in the past. Some people are doomed to dwell here, it's true. That all of our current thoughts and actions are connected so intimately with what we've done and been, as to render what is happening and what will happen to various lucid states of knowing already, what your friend is gonna say before he says it, what the news will report before it's reported—that memory & meditation therein fills us to bursting with a distillation that we pour out onto the fleeting again and again, on and on, into the future. It's our hubris, perhaps. But we are not arrogant, and we are very religious. If religiousness is a state of devotionless devotion, unattached dependence, to a prison of freedom in which we move--if only just a little--between rock and hard place, to jump from one fire into another, to grip the bars and scream into the void the words that will ultimately amount to our history, the accidental history that no one will ever chance to read.


The drizzle smacked of Seattle. And no, I was not necessarily thinking still of Kurt Cobain, feeling sorry about his suicide there in his greenhouse perched over Lake Washington. No. That case was closed. Just as my father's death--although it too was a bad death, a mysterious death--there's no use dwelling on things that are final. Whatever either man had to leave us was received, once or twice, or a million times until it became a part of us, period. And here we are to reshape it, as the ebb and flow of time changes it, as it changes us, in our very hands. No, I was actually feeling nostalgic for a time in the place where I now found myself living that was long gone, which maybe only lives in my mind and which never did exist in this place or any other place, not even the cemetery where I dreamt it, or in the history books that suggested it. The storm struck with raging winds, immaculate lightning, and torrents of rain, and twenty minutes later we walked knee deep in water down streets as dark as prehistoric night in a town we once knew so well by the trees which now lay at our feet. Home. Yes, it was something about being home and home now being Korea. And I began to regret, almost grieve, a time when Korea was something other than an experiment in westernization. A time when technocratic consumerism, which Solzhenitsyn once said amounts to “liquid manure,” wasn't the raison d'etre of this lovely and rather engaging little nation. Sure it boasts being the first most-on-line country in the world, sure it has a strong economy which allows foreign fools to come and teach English for 40 or 50 bucks an hour, but there is something wrong with the way people live here, top to bottom: CEOs and I are liable to buy a woman even though sex is better one knows when its gotten by love; drinking cheap booze begins to snowball so that feeling shitty the next day, one drinks more; sometimes on a mountain path we see a pile of stones, built by human hands, an organic pagoda of sorts, each and every stone a wish...well, rather than adding one, I often consider taking one off.


The rain more or less stopped, so I decided to climb one of the ubiquitous mountains to get away from the hum of engines, the ping of the hammer, and the people driving 2 km between department stores to shop, and shop and shop.


The beauty of the Bundang District is in its system of streams running in depressions along wide boulevards, through parks, all the way to the lake with no boats and where no human swims. Instead, the brave make use of the bungee jump on the lake's west bank. Bundang-Gu has apparently won international awards for urban planning and civil engineering. Truth be told, it is a suburban nightmare growing everyday by the hundreds; a trap for bad business with no equity, a revolving door for those venturers who think they will, but won't, get rich quick. In spite of the rooftop parks, pseudo-European plazas, and plenty of imported cars and goods, it is a dull place without any soul. Yet somehow it remains one of the most “livable” places in the country.


After waiting five minutes to cross at the crosswalk, I opted to shoot down a steep bank to the Bundang stream. I skipped under the bridge and headed east toward the lake. It happened to be Lunar New Year, so the paths meandered along without the usual bikers, joggers, and speed walkers. There was the occasional old man hobbling along by himself, and I would nod to him and then raise my head to inhale the gentle mist and the scent of mud. For weeks it had been bone-dry and bone-chilling, false sun and ubiquitous ice, combining to make for skin-cracking aridity that made you wary of washing at all with water. I had heard say of people able to feel the coming rain in their joints. Now I felt sympathy for them. I could feel mine thawing and loosening, a dull pain, in the damp breeze as I walked. I noticed the ducks and stopped to watch a couple swim in the patches where the ice had melted and dunk their heads. I saw a magpie light on a branch, call twice, and fly away to the adjacent ginko tree.


In time I reached the lake and it seemed like everyone was there, family after family, riding rented bikes for one and two, and red pedal-carts for three. Gossiping mothers and bored fathers; lap dogs scurrying, children playing and grandparents lounging: a family day. My mind wandered back to the old men moseying along, separate from the herd. I made my way around the lake to the road which leads up through a small farm to a trail which goes into the woods. Approaching the farm, I noticed a massive cherry tree I had never seen before. How many times had I done this hike and never noticed it. I gazed in wonder at its broad, stout trunk next to which sagged a small lean-to used for relief from the summer heat. I shivered as I neared the tree, and couldn't help but notice the aluminum sign beside it estimating its age to be 300 years. I touched its bark. It reminded me of an elephant’s skin. As broad as an elephant’s long, I was thinking, when I heard footsteps on the path behind me. Slow and methodical. I turned and found a hunched old woman, negotiating the muddy path, swinging one leg forward and then, and then, the other. Her hands folded over the small of her back which was nearly parallel to the ground. She was an arm's length from where I stood, yet somehow, it seemed, she hadn't noticed me. I greeted her in her language and still, she pulled herself along, looking straight at the mud without making so much as a sound.




III.


When I got to the top of the mountain there was not much of a view. Just a few dozen high-rise apartments to the north and west, and to the south, my neighborhood, which was barely visible through the mist, and behind which more mountains that you struggle to see even on a clear day because of the smog, loomed invisible. Besides, the trail was used for other things, things other than sight-seeing, such as stretching and weight-lifting as was apparent by the equipment built into the grounds.


On my way down I came to the site of a vast highway construction project. A few month ago, some friends and I had discovered a pair of smoking holes on the side of the mountain down which we'd just come. Construction had apparently proceeded with some efficiency for now the holes were outlined by concrete arches, which made it clear that they were tunnels cutting through the mountain, probably for cars, and trucks. Also, there were tall metal barriers separating the site from the farming village, and consequently my passage to the creek and eventually home.


The trail stopped somewhere around the middle of the barriers, having been destroyed in the process. I had to high-step some weeds and vines that were brittle, yet cumbersome. I tripped a couple of times, and once sank suddenly into a cleft of rock and banged up my knee pretty good. I was trying to find the end of the wall. My mind drifted to that lady, that monk, who was now somewhere around 100 days into her fast, a fast she undertook alone, in protest of the the KTX “bullet train” construction that was currently tunneling through Chungchung-nam-do or thereabouts. Crouched over, rubbing my knee, I burst into laughter at the absurdity of a bullet train in a country the size of West Virginia, and of the need for yet more roads and tunnels to accommodate all the cars. There seemed to be more than enough already. I recalled hearing a “business English” student I once taught say that Korea needs to do whatever it can to survive in a global market, or something to that effect. That was the same guy who said he cannot tolerate Koreans marrying foreigners because it taints the race. Meanwhile the roads are veritable parking lots on holidays and the Korean society is an aging society that needs people more than racism and tunnels.


Just as I was about to turn around and go back up the mountain to find another way down, I came upon a gap in the divide. I passed through and scurried down an unsure pile of dirt on the other side. It felt like running on border land and that's exactly what I did was run for the village. Once, I looked back over my shoulder and saw staring at me the holes blasted out of the mountain, like the eyes of some shocked and suffering animal.




IV.


When I got back to the terrific concrete tower called home, I sat down and iced my knee. I found myself meditating on the hegemony--or whatever you call the force of unnature--that does as it pleases, using hapless humans as its agents to shape the world to its perverse design. I thought of the explosions of dynamite in the heart of the hills and the will of the world to destroy or preserve 10 or 10,000 species a day, and all in sparking a fuse, or not. There are multitudes ready to die for the former and still others willing to die for the latter. And then there are the epidemics running rampant with enough or not enough vaccination being delivered. Multitudes ready to die so that it happens and others equal to preventing it.

As the cars whirred past my window, which is higher than last year, moving faster than they moved last year, I wondered if the earth wasn't just an aborted fetus hanging from the tree of creation we call the universe. Maybe that's what Kurt was getting at. My thoughts turned too to D.H. Lawrence, and his idea that God can do without man. I tried to recall which book it was and, pulling Women in Love off the shelf, I opened to the page reading, “...just as the horse has taken the place of the mastodon...if humanity ran into a cul-de-sac...the timeless creative mystery would bring forth some other being, finer, more wonderful, some new, more lovely race, to carry on the embodiment of creation...” Closing the book, I took a shallow breath of stale air and grimaced.