The winter of 1971 in Chunchŏn was brutally – unforgettably – cold with a heartless grey sky, a frigid wind blowing from Siberia and iron-hard ground underfoot, but now – years later – my most vivid memory of that winter was an evening spent in the company of a friend who practiced his English with an eye-witness story of war crimes.

I had been living in the city for a year, teaching at a boys middle school, and during that time I had met many English teachers from other schools in the city, and among them Mr. Kim, (not his real name, for reasons which will become clear), stood out for his eccentricity, his wit and his unusually fluent English – not the most common qualities for someone in his position. He was the vice principal of a girls high school. Much of his day was taken up with administrative duties, so his classroom work was limited to the most able seniors. He was in his forties, with a handsome face usually set in a slight smile as though he was always amused, and although short in stature he carried himself well and had a natural authority and charisma.  I knew he had attended the best high school in Seoul and then graduated from Seoul National University between the end of Japanese rule and the outbreak of the war. In a provincial town this background and his other qualities made him different and even unapproachable. But I was a foreigner, different in my own way, and for our separate reasons we enjoyed each other’s conversation. He could give lucid answers to my many questions about life around me and he clearly enjoyed the challenge of expressing himself in a language that he seldom got to use outside the classroom. 

That morning we met by chance (his school was along the same street, farther up the hillside from mine) and after some brief chat he suggested we meet for dinner that evening and I gladly agreed. By the time I left school it was already growing dark and I made my way downtown with my book bag over my shoulder, hands thrust in my coat pockets for warmth and my numb feet stepping carefully along the icy streets. A light snow was falling.

In the time I had lived in Chunchŏn I had come to feel attached to the place and its people.  It was a new city, most of which had grown up since the war, and many of the buildings were thrown up in a slapdash way. The Japanese Occupation had left few trees in the country, so wood was in short supply and the buildings were mostly cement, some of them still unpainted, and the result was straightforward, utilitarian and unappealing. The pleasures of Chunchŏn came from the splendid scenery of the surrounding lakes and mountains, and even more so from the people, many of whom were from the north, places like Pyŏngyang, Kaesŏng and Hamhŭng.  They were refugees who had settled here after the war with the hope that this was a temporary arrangement, but almost twenty years had passed and while some still longed for the north, most had accepted that this was now their home, and their children, including my students, had known no other.  These people had experienced terrible hardship and survived it with the toughness, resilience, perseverance and optimism that make survival possible. 

Over a hundred thousand people now called the city home and it was a busy, bustling place. Chunchŏn was an economic center and also the capital of Kangwŏn Province, so the local government played a prominent role in the town, but a far more noticeable presence was the Korean military. With the DMZ not far off, Korean Army uniforms were commonplace on the streets. In other countries a concentrated military element would mean some degree of disorder, even unruliness, but not in Korea; I always felt these soldiers were well disciplined and controlled, a reflection of their culture. One always saw soldiers in the market, in the restaurants, tea houses and drinking houses but they were always well behaved. Military service in Korea was a serious business, understandable in a country still officially at war.

So when I entered the crowded downtown restaurant that evening I first saw soldiers sitting at tables near the front, and I was pleased to see that Mr. Kim had found us a place near the back of the room and farther from the door with its frequent blasts of frigid air. He half stood to greet me, shook my hand and patted the stool next to him. 

“Come sit. You must warm yourself.” His manner to me was always slightly abrupt in a good-natured, avuncular way. I had come to expect this from Korean men of a certain age and I understood that ordinarily they did not have social contact with someone so much younger. I was an odd fish, a foreigner and very young but I was also a school teacher and shared aspects of their life and I was intensely curious about their country and their language. I asked a lot of questions, sometimes about things which they themselves never questioned, and I listened closely to their answers. Curiosity is, after all, a kind of flattery. And, of course, they were all teachers and no doubt pleased to have such a willing student.

Many restaurants in Chunchŏn served beef and chicken in a style we might call barbecue, marinated and then grilled. Guests sat around a drum with a fire pit in the middle, and the drum was fitted with a wooden brim-like edge of several inches which served as the table space. A charcoal fire burned in the middle of this drum-table and above the fire a large open duct with a built-in fan took away the smoke and shared the wonderful aroma with the whole neighborhood.

I sat and held my hands over the red-hot charcoal, thawing from my long walk. Speaking to the young girl who had hurried to our table, Mr. Kim ordered beef and soju, another helpful way to dispel the cold. 

As our dinner grilled and smoked before us we sipped our soju and spoke of the weather (yes, rather cold so far, even for Chunchŏn), our very different situations at school, (one must expect discipline to be harsh at a boys school… it’s very different with girls, much more pleasant), the interminable Southeast Asian war, (Vietnam so very different from Korea, Americans can’t expect much from a place like that…) And having touched on the subject of war, I felt bold enough to ask something that I’d wondered about since we first met, something like a personal question.

“Mr. Kim, your English is so very good and I know you’ve studied it for years but I wonder if you had much experience studying or working with Americans? Perhaps there was a missionary among your teachers….?”

He smiled and said, “No, I knew no missionaries. After graduation I taught school for awhile before the war, and then I was an interpreter officer attached to the American Army. I was fortunate to work with American officers who wanted to communicate clearly, so I did not hear much of the usual GI pidgin English. I knew grammar and vocabulary already but I was also careful to learn correct expression.” 

This led to comments about the problems of colloquial language or even worse, slang, and how it never sounds right coming from a non-native speaker, and he insisted I really must avoid learning Korean slang, and he emphasized the danger of picking up the terrible expressions used by schoolboys. But I wanted to go back to the other topic.

“So you served with Americans? Where were you during the war? I ask because my father was here, too. He was an engineer and spent part of his time in Pusan. It’s very unlikely you ever met but you might have been in the same place at the same time.” 

“Well, I’m sure you’ve heard that Pusan was a very crowded place during the war, there were so many refugees. I was there briefly but in fact I spent most of my service on Kŏje-do.”

 “You mean the island off the south coast? What was the Army doing there?”

He paused, reflected and showed his slight smile before he answered. “Few people know about Kŏje-do and no one wants to talk about it now. The island had the main camp for North Korean prisoners of war, about 130,000 of them at one point. Many unpleasant things happened there and it’s all best forgotten.”

I said, “I’ve never heard anything about this. What kind of unpleasant things?”

He paused for a few moments, seemed to reflect on this as if choosing his words carefully and then said, “Well, you could call them war crimes, which is another way of saying murder. Some things were done by the guards and many other things were done by the prisoners to each other and no one stopped it. The people who ran the camp had very little control over the place. At one point the American general in charge was captured by the North Korean prisoners and put on trial.”

“What! How could that happen?”

“He was a fool. I knew him well and he was a foolish man.”

Slowly I drew the story from him and in later years learned more from the very few military histories that have gathered some of the details.  

When the North Korean Army swept down the peninsula in the summer of 1950, they forced into their ranks many young men in the south, including some who had fled the north in the years before the invasion. When the tide of war turned and the northerners were pushed back, many prisoners were taken and initially held in make-shift camps around Pusan. Faced with a security risk, the American forces began to move the prisoners to a hastily constructed camp on Kŏje-do, an island southwest of Pusan. By early 1951 the camp population exceeded 100,000 and there were serious problems controlling the prisoners. North Korean officers among the prisoners exercised a strict discipline and in fact controlled life inside the wire. This discipline was enforced with summary trials for anyone of doubted loyalty, and convictions led to swift executions. Hundreds died this way.

“These trials were common in the camp”, said Mr. Kim. “They dumped the bodies at the gate during the night. Some mornings there were many.” 

The main problem that developed in 1951 grew out of the attempt to screen everyone in the camp and separate the non-Communist prisoners who were in real danger and who did not want to go north when the fighting ended. The armistice negotiations had begun in Panmunjom and it was clear that a major issue would be repatriation of prisoners. Although many more North Koreans had been taken prisoner during the conflict, there were over 7,000 US soldiers held in camps in the north.  Both sides wanted complete return of prisoners.  The American policy was to screen all the prisoners held on Kŏje-do and repatriate only those who wanted to go back, but the North Korean leadership in the camps was determined that all prisoners would return to the North, When the first screenings resulted in thousands of prisoners denying any Communist loyalty and being reclassified as civilians, the Communist camp leaders resolved to end screening altogether, and this led to a series of violent confrontations.  

Mr. Kim described an incident he saw in February 1952 when a detachment of guards entered one compound to enforce the screening process. The North Korean prisoners attacked with rocks and crude camp-made weapons.

“What happened?”

“The Communists were determined to attack and our people were in danger, so our guards were ordered to fire and they killed about seventy of them.” 

I looked at him. His tone was matter-of-fact and I sensed no regret at all. I paused, filled his glass and, changing the subject, asked, “How did an American general get captured? It’s hard to imagine such a thing.”

Again I saw the wry smile.  “General Dodd had the ridiculous idea that he could negotiate with these people. Of course he had his orders to do the screenings and separate the non-Communist prisoners and he wanted to avoid any further killings. He actually went to the entrance of the camp for discussions with the North Korean officers and while he was talking he stood too close to an unlocked gate. It was a very tense situation. Suddenly they simply grabbed him and pulled him inside. It was very quick.” 

“What did they do to him?”

“Oh, they didn’t harm him at all.  They only wanted to use him for propaganda. They had a so-called trial and convicted him of war crimes. You know, the shootings, and mistreating the prisoners. It was all nonsense, of course, but some people believe anything if they see it in a newspaper. And then the Americans sent another general to negotiate Dodd’s release. Anyway, it all ended badly. General Dodd was released after a few days but only after the Americans admitted in a letter that they had killed prisoners and promised not to kill any more.  And they agreed to no more screenings. I know this because I translated the different drafts of the letter. So in order to save Dodd from his stupid mistake, they agreed to stop giving any prisoners a chance to say they wanted to remain in the south. Of course the promises were meaningless. It was all very stupid.” 

I thought about this, poured more soju and asked, “Did anything else happen? It couldn’t end just like that.”

“Well, General Dodd was very quickly Colonel Dodd and soon left the Army.” He smiled and said, “No, I understand your question. Well, things could not go on as before. In a few months the Americans built many other small camps around the country and dispersed the prisoners in small groups.  The Kŏje-do camp was closed. And then everyone forgot about it”

A while later our dinner ended we made our separate ways home, agreeing to stay in touch and meet again. I had many other conversations with him but none as memorable as this one. 

 “…then everyone forgot about it.”  This last part is still true. The official record of these events is very scanty, no doubt because these incidents reflect credit on no one. But I’ve thought about this now and then because it offers some questions worth thinking about. 

The Geneva Conventions were aimed at protecting prisoners from the mistreatment of their captors, and the regime of Red Cross inspections was aimed at uncovering the cruelty of prison guards and atrocities condoned by camp administration. But these same standards did not address the possibility that prisoners would be subject to even worse cruelty, including judicial murder, carried out by other prisoners inside the camp, or that a camp administration would be so powerless to prevent these crimes. But the moral responsibility is clear when an armed force controls the lives of prisoners, and the American authorities failed in this responsibility.

Kŏje-do is also an example of history swept under the rug or re-written with a view to leaving out the unappealing parts.  Of course, this happens all the time and the most egregious examples readily come to mind: Stalin’s excision of the old Bolsheviks from the history of the Revolution, the refusal of American history books to relate the blatant racism of Woodrow Wilson or the fact that Roosevelt accommodated the southern racists in his New Deal coalition, and in Korea in the 1970s everyone knew that President Park had been an officer in the Japanese Army but one never saw this in print. 

Samuel Johnson wrote, “'Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” And it’s not just in war, for something like this happens whenever history is set in print. The result is always an act of imagination, a reinvention, with moments of clear decision: what to emphasize, what to downplay, and perhaps most important, what to leave out. The damage is potentially permanent because, to put it simply, we don’t know what we don’t know. 

Unless, of course, we happen to meet a witness, someone who was there, someone waiting to be asked by someone else willing to listen.

June 28, 2010