Authors: Martin Limon
“While she’s on this train,” the old man said, “she is responsible for the
kibun
of the passengers, for their sense of calmness and safety. You interrupted that.”
Ernie seemed confused. He knotted his fist. His face was red, he was embarrassed, and when a young American man is embarrassed—when other people see him as a boob—his natural response is to hit somebody. Violence, in the American mind, will make you seem smarter.
The halaboji read all this in Ernie’s thoughts. He continued to stare up at Ernie, but now his face wasn’t stern. He was calm, waiting patiently for something. For what, I wasn’t sure. I was just hoping it wasn’t a right cross.
Ernie glanced back at me. Mercifully, what must have been a rational thought flitted across his visage like a skittering storm cloud. He turned back to the old grandfather, hesitated, and, at last, lowered his right fist.
I exhaled, not even realizing that I’d been holding my breath.
More mumbling broke out in the crowd; a few of the Korean men would’ve just as soon punched Ernie out. The halaboji motioned for Ernie to follow. He did. I followed them out of the passenger car and back toward the front of the train.
In the dining car, the old man stopped and sat at a table. He motioned for Ernie to sit, and then he stood again and greeted me with a short bow. Suddenly, he didn’t seem old at all. It was because of the traditional getup that I’d assumed he was a grandfather. Now that I looked more closely, I realized that his physique was still sturdy beneath the silk vest and pantaloons, his hair gray on the edges but black on top. I revised my estimate of his age downward to about fifty. Still, he was twice the age of either Ernie or me. After the three of us were seated, a waiter approached and the man spoke.
“Have you ever tried ginseng tea before?”
“Often,” I replied.
He ordered three cups of ginseng tea. We sat silently until the hot brew was served; then the older gentleman raised his handleless cup with two hands, gestured toward us, and drank. Ernie and I did the same. We continued like that, without speaking, until only the dregs of the ginseng powder remained.
The man leaned back and smiled. “My name is Gil,” he said. “Gil Kwon-up. Chief Homicide Inspector of the Korean National Police.”
Every American MP and law-enforcement official in Korea knew of Inspector Gil. But Americans have trouble pronouncing the first letter of Gil’s name. In Korean, the sound falls somewhere between the harsh English
k
sound and the soft
g
sound. I listen carefully when Koreans pronounce the letter, and I can replicate the sound reasonably well, but most MPs and CID agents at 8th Army didn’t bother. They referred to Inspector Gil Kwon-up as “Mr. Kill.”
It was said that he’d made his name in law enforcement some twenty years ago, during and after the Korean War, first by hunting down Communist saboteurs who were planting bombs and blowing up trains, buses, and public buildings. Supposedly, Mr. Kill captured or killed dozens of them. After the war, he then turned his attention to the criminally insane: men—and in a few cases women—who’d been driven mad by the brutalities of the Korean War. Some of them had seen such horrific things and suffered so much that only by pain and blood and terror could they somehow continue to live. After the war, madness was common, despair rampant. People who had once been human were now inhuman, capable of the most appalling acts of violence. Inspector Kill, along with other dedicated members of the Korean National Police, had to wipe out those who were incapable of returning to a world ruled by peace.
Kill had been ruthless, we’d been told, wiping out the worst of the criminals—not even bringing them to trial, but rather bringing peace and justice back to the world out of the smoking barrel of his little pistol. And now, disguised as a calm calligrapher, Inspector Kill sat across from us, his hands resting placidly on white linen, studying me over the brim of a porcelain cup.
Finally, he spoke. His English was excellent, which is probably the first thing most G.I.s would notice. He’d almost certainly studied in the States, maybe trained there during the fifties and sixties when anti-Communist cadres around the world were being prepared to fight the Red demons lurking behind both the iron and bamboo curtains.
“The second rape was less daring than the first,” he said, “but more brutal.”
The KNP report, written in Korean, still sat in my AWOL bag back at my seat. I had yet to decipher it.
“A foreign man,” Gil continued, “boarded the southbound Blue Train, either in Seoul or Taejon or East Taegu. We’re not sure which. What we’re sure of is that a woman named Mrs. Hyon Mi-sook departed the train at the end of the line and then made her way through the Pusan Station, dragging two bags and three small children: the oldest, her son, aged nine, and two younger twin daughters. She queued up at the taxi line and eventually caught a cab that took her to the Shindae Tourist Hotel.”
Lodging establishments are divided into three categories in Korea. The lowest is a
yoinsuk
, nothing more than a building, usually somebody’s residence, with a traditional warm
ondol
floor heated by charcoal gas flues in the foundation. For a small fee, you rent a sleeping mat and you can spread it out in the communal hall and catch some shut-eye. The next step up is the
yoguan
, which again is furnished in the traditional Korean style, bedding on the ondol floor. The difference is that the room you rent is separate. The top of the line is the tourist hotel, which is a fully Westernized hotel with central heating, beds and mattresses, and indoor bathrooms with shower stalls and towels.
This Mrs. Hyon Mi-sook must have been fairly well off if she could afford to stay in a tourist hotel. Mr. Kill slid a photograph out of the inner pocket of his jade vest and laid it on the table.
“That’s her?” Ernie asked.
Kill nodded.
She was a knockout. A gorgeous Korean woman with full cheeks and sparkling white teeth smiled out at us. Kill continued his story.
“As soon as Mrs. Hyon had checked in, she and her children were escorted upstairs by a bellhop. Almost immediately after her elevator doors closed, a Western man entered and approached the front desk holding a woman’s handbag, saying it was hers and that she had left it on the train. The desk clerk offered to take it from him, but the man waved him off and asked which floor she was on. The startled clerk told him. The big Western man went to the stairs and climbed them two steps at a time.”
“Will the clerk be able to identify this man?” Ernie asked.
“So I’m told.”
We could imagine what happened next, but Kill elaborated. The Western man, lurking in the hallway of the third floor, waited until the bellhop left and then immediately knocked on her door. Whether she looked through the peephole and saw a Western man holding a purse or thought it was the bellhop returning, we’ll never know. Korea is a trusting society. Violent crime is so much more rare here than it is in the States. Whatever the reason, she opened the door.
“Are the kids still alive?” Ernie asked.
Kill nodded. “They weren’t hurt,” he said. “Not physically.”
I studied this strange, calm man who sat in front of us. Despite his age, his body expressed the grace of someone who’d studied martial arts for years; his knuckles were callused and his waist waspish. He stared at us pleasantly, his mouth set in a half smile, black eyes absorbing everything. Waiting.
I wanted to ask more questions, about him, about the beautiful woman who’d been so cruelly raped and murdered, and about the fate of her children. But the train jerked and a blast of steam screamed out of the side of the engine. Our cups rattled atop their saucers. We were entering Pusan Station. Mr. Kill rose, spoke briefly to the waiter, who bowed, and then turned and made his way through the train back to his seat.
Ernie and I followed.
The train came to a complete stop. We grabbed our bags and waited as the elderly passengers and women with children filed off in front of us. When we reached the end of the car and were about to step off onto the cement platform, the stewardess was there waiting for us. She bowed to me and then, after I’d passed, she stepped close to Ernie. I turned in time to see her whisper something in his ear.
We walked in darkness toward the row of streetlights shining in front of the station. I asked, “What was that all about?”
Ernie held out his palm, showing me a slip of folded paper. I grabbed it and opened it, twisting it toward the light. The stewardess’s name, written in English, and a phone number.
I handed the paper back to him.
“See, Sueño,” he said, grinning. “Acting like an asshole pays off.”
I didn’t reply.
Ernie wadded up the little note and tossed it in the gutter.
The staff at the Shindae Tourist Hotel bowed so much, I almost mistook them for a flock of ducks. They weren’t showing this elaborate politeness to Ernie and me, but to the revered gentleman in the blue silk hanbok—a revered gentleman who’d also flashed the badge of an inspector of the Korean National Police.
The head clerk, wearing a black suit with matching bow tie, showed us the steps the rapist had climbed to reach the room of Mrs. Hyon Mi-sook. The room had been taped off by the local Pusan contingent of the KNP, but Mr. Gil ordered the clerk to unlock the door. We stepped in.
The sink in the bathroom and the counter surrounding it were slathered in dried blood.
“He washed himself here,” Gil said. “Or at least that’s what we believe. The oldest son told us that he forced him and his two sisters to crouch there in the bathtub and then he jerked down the shower curtain and covered them with it. They could barely breathe.”
“But he didn’t actually
hurt
the children?” Ernie asked.
Gil shook his head. “No.”
Not physically, at least.
“The mother was found bound and gagged with some of the towels.”
We returned to the main room. There was more blood on the bed. “He tied one arm here.” Gil pointed at the posts at the head of the bed. “Another arm there, and a leg each down there.”
“Spread-eagled,” I said.
“Yes,” Gil agreed. “Spread-eagled. This rag,” Gil said, pointing to a washcloth, “was found stuffed in her mouth.”
Inspector Gil knew all this from the detailed KNP report that had been sent to him in Seoul by teletype. His eyes shone as he paced slowly around the room, examining everything. The bed was stained brown, as if an urn of mess-hall coffee had been spilled, but I knew it wasn’t coffee. I could tell by the stench. The air reeked of the meaty odor of a butcher shop’s slaughter room.
“After he raped her,” Gil said, “he started cutting her. She fought. One hand was found free and there was blood and flesh under the nails.”
“Good for her,” Ernie said, sudden passion filling his voice.
Gil glanced at him. “It didn’t do her any good. She died anyway. The boy said he heard his mother stop struggling. Then the foreign man entered the bathroom and washed himself thoroughly; and, without saying anything, he left.”
“How long did the kids stay in there?” I asked.
“Until morning,” Gil replied. “Until the maid found them.”
Outside the Shindae Tourist Hotel, Mr. Gil ordered the doorman to call a taxi. He blew a whistle, and a small Hyundai sedan appeared almost instantly. We piled in and rode silently. The broad streets of the city of Pusan were swathed in darkness and washed with a salty mist from the sea. We swept through lonely streets until we finally reached the cement-block foundation of the building known as the Pusan Main Police Station. As we climbed the well-lit stone steps, an officer wearing a gray Western suit was waiting there for us. He bowed to Mr. Kill and then shook hands with Ernie and me. He turned and ushered us into the huge wooden building.
I paused and studied a plaque written in Chinese. A few of the characters I could read. Apparently, this building had been built in 1905 during the waning days of the Chosun Dynasty. It had originally been the Pusan area’s main administrative building, but had then been converted to other purposes. Unspoken were the uses it had been put to during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. Still, the building had been in continuous use for almost seventy years.
I hurried to catch up with the other men and followed them down long wooden corridors. Inside open-doored offices, blue-clad Korean National Policemen worked at desks or interrogated prisoners, even at this late hour. There were a few Korean women in uniform, mostly typing reports or carrying paperwork. We climbed three flights of broad wooden stairs until we were ushered into an office marked with Chinese characters I couldn’t decipher. As soon as I had a chance, I copied the characters into my notebook. Later I discovered they meant “Homicide Division.”
We sat on hard couches surrounding a coffee table. Soon, a female officer brought a metal tray with cups and a bronze pot of barley tea. We drank. The officer in the gray suit pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them all around. When everyone refused, he grimaced and stuffed the pack back into his coat pocket. Then, in English, he introduced himself: Senior Inspector Han of the Pusan Korean National Police.
He pulled out a teletype report written in hangul. The ticket sellers at the train stations in Seoul, Taejon, and East Taegu had all been interviewed thoroughly. The ones at Taejon and East Taegu were certain they hadn’t sold any tickets to foreigners yesterday. This made sense because there were few foreigners in Taejon and Taegu, and they were unlikely to be traveling south toward Pusan. The American military has only a small contingent in Pusan. The bulk of our forces—about 90 percent of the over 50,000 G.I.s stationed in-country—are either in Seoul or north of Seoul, on compounds in the 2nd Infantry Division area near the Demilitarized Zone.
The ticket sellers at the Seoul Station itself, however, couldn’t be sure if they’d sold any tickets to foreigners or not. There are plenty of foreigners living in Seoul, and when you’re a ticket seller in a busy station like Seoul’s, one day blends in with another, and the customers become an undifferentiated mass.