The Thirty-Seventh Parallel: Planning the Second Korean War

By A. L. Provost

The Thirty-seventh Parallel is a historical-based work of fiction, centering around a second planned North Korean invasion of South Korea, nine years following the signing of the Armistice in July 1953.
It is still just a good old fashioned tale of intrigue, deception, double agents, and edge-of-your seat suspense. If you enjoy a good spy story, youll love The Thirty-seventh Parallel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465331120

A. L. Provost

The author, an attorney and optometrist, resides outside Atlanta with his wife Evelyn, an attorney, their four talented children having gone on to careers in Optometry, real estate and teaching. In May 1961 the author received an undergraduate degree in Physics-Mathematics from Berry College, and in July of that year enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served two tours of duty in South Korea, the last with U. S. Army Intelligence as a Korean linguist and prisoner interrogator. In 1972 Dr. Provost was awarded the degree of Doctor of Optometry from the University of Houston, and in 1980 earned a Juris Doctor degree from Nova Southeastern University College of Law. Dr. Provost is the author of the best-selling memoir, Reflections in an Orphan’s Eye, The Puppeteer, a mystery novel of the wartime South, and thirteen other mystery novels.

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Copyright © 2007 by A. L. Provost.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1

Preparation for War

Chapter 2

The Massacre at Kapyong

Chapter 3

The Mysterious Stranger

Chapter 4

After the Armistice- The Soviets and the Chinese

Chapter 5

Planning the Second Invasion

Chapter 6

The Kremlin Papers-General Zheng’s Visit

Chapter 7

General Park Chung Hee Assumes Power-May 16, 1961

Chapter 8

Rethinking the Invasion

Chapter 9

The North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau (NKRB) is Formed

Chapter 10

Cousin Kim and Major Lee

Chapter 11

The Infamous 502

Chapter 12

The U-2 Surveillance Aircraft

Chapter 13

The 1st North Korean Parachute Regiment-1957

Chapter 14

North Korean Pilot Training-August 1960

Chapter 15

NKRB Meeting in Pyongyang- September 12, 1960

Chapter 16

The Paratrooper Espionage Agent- Hung Suk Boon

Chapter 17

The Capture of Pak Soon Myung- December 15, 1960

Chapter 18

The Interrogation of Pak Soon Myung

Chapter 19

The Paratrooper-September 1961

Chapter 20

The Pacific Stars and Stripes- Korea Bureau

Chapter 21

The Korean Photographer-Sil Hung Baek

Chapter 22

The 75th Heavy Boat Company- Bong Yung Pak

Chapter 23

Making the Stars and Stripes Connection

Chapter 24

Enter the Master Spy-Hung Suk Boon

Chapter 25

Operation Stars and Stripes

Chapter 26

The Pipeline to NKRB-Wonsan

Chapter 27

The Honest John Rocket

Chapter 28

Meeting at the Hanguk Cafe

Chapter 29

Three Years Behind Enemy Lines

Chapter 30

Deciphering the North Korean Message

Chapter 31

The CIA Cracks the Code

Chapter 32

Osan Sleeper Agent-Pak Hoon Mil

Chapter 33

General Kusnetsov Visits Air Terminal Zeta-November 21, 1961

Chapter 34

On the Road to Pyongyang- November 23, 1961

Chapter 35

Planning the Invasion- November 23, 1961

Chapter 36

The Thirty-Seventh Parallel

Chapter 37

Kim Il Sung’s Reunification Plan

Chapter 38

Turning the Courier-Bong Yung Pak

Chapter 39

The First One-Time Sheet

Chapter 40

Douglas Bannister and the Invasion Plans-December 4, 1961

Chapter 41

Chance Meeting With Hung Suk Boon-December 11, 1961

Chapter 42

U-2s Locate Air Terminal Zeta- December 10, 1961

Chapter 43

George Masterson’s Mission- December 18, 1961

Chapter 44

The Treaty of the Thirty-ninth Parallel

Chapter 45

Finding the Friendly Sleeper Agent-December 16, 1961

Chapter 46

Informing Douglas Bannister

Chapter 47

The Plan to Spring Pak Soon Myung

Chapter 48

The Prisoner Escapes- December 27, 1961

Chapter 49

The Word Invasion

Chapter 50

The Mamasan, the Message Drop, and the Mistress

Chapter 51

Major Lee and the Produce Truck Driver

Chapter 52

Return to Wonsan

Chapter 53

Colonel Hwang’s Mistress

Chapter 54

The Trial Run to Wonsan

Chapter 55

The Train Scheduler of Camp Roberts

Chapter 56

The Operation of Camp Roberts- Yoon Ril Mi

Chapter 57

The CIA Sets a Trap

Chapter 58

The Teahouse in Wonsan- January 5, 1962

Chapter 59

The Colonel’s Diary

Chapter 60

The First Twelve Pages-January 22, 1962

Chapter 61

Meeting in Seoul-January 24, 1962

Chapter 62

Colonel Hwang’s Lockbox

Chapter 63

The Eighty-seven Pages-January 26, 1962

Chapter 64

Preparations for War-February 2, 1962

Chapter 65

Colonel Hwang’s Diary- February 15, 1962

Chapter 66

Intrigue in Wonsan-February 20, 1962

Chapter 67

Meeting in Beijing-February 26, 1962

Chapter 68

The Kaesong Corridor Blunder- February 28, 1962

Chapter 69

The KCIA Lends a Hand-March 5, 1962

Chapter 70

Clues to the Invasion Date- May 28, 1962

Chapter 71

The Pentagon Plans for War- June 10, 1962

Chapter 72

Monitoring the Sleeper Agents June 10-July 19, 1962

Chapter 73

Final Meeting in Pyongyang-July 18, 1962

Chapter 74

The Pages Out of Order

Chapter 75

The Final Invasion Plan

Chapter 76

Altering the North Korean Code- July 23, 1962

Chapter 77

The Reunification Date Determined . . . By the Weather

Chapter 78

The Alert Mistress-July 24, 1962

Chapter 79

Paratroopers and Torpedo Boats- July 26, 1962

Chapter 80

Hung Suk Boon’s Inglorious End- July 26, 1962

Chapter 81

Ma Young Ril’s Escape-July 26, 1962

Chapter 82

Death on the Road to Pyongyang- July 27, 1962

Chapter 83

Chronology of a Disaster-July 27, 1962

Epilogue

"Let us always make clear our willingness to talk,

if talk will help, and our readiness to fight, if fight we must."

               President John F. Kennedy

Acknowledgments

This is my fourth published book. I keep telling my help that with a little more effort on their part, we’ll have us another winner.

Harry Conlon, my long-time friend and literary advisor, has informed me that an author’s favorite book is his or her latest one. And in the case of The Thirty-seventh Parallel, we are in agreement. Thanks for everything, Harry.

Encouragement is the vehicle that pushes writers to greater heights. Love of the craft keeps them there. But alas, once more I cannot claim all the credit. Thanks to my friend Kim Hu Song, for his technical advice about Korea, and to Evelyn, my lovely wife and partner, for her expertise and patience in proofreading my lengthy manuscript, and for occasionally reminding me that I really am not able to walk on water-yet.

And lastly, to Amanda Johnson, my loyal literary assistant, who has guided my books along the sometimes arduous path to the publisher. Again, I could not have done it without her.

The Author

Foreword

My first book was a 600-page memoir of my ten-year postwar odyssey of growing up at 135-year-old historic Oxford Orphanage, the oldest orphanage in North Carolina and the second oldest Masonic institution in the United States. I barely escaped with my life.

My second and third books, The Puppeteer and Deception at Los Alamos, are historical-based mystery novels, that took place during World War II.

In The Thirty-seventh Parallel, I am again writing about what I know. After graduating Berry College in May 1961, I joined the U.S. Army. Following basic training at Ft. Jackson and advanced artillery training at Ft. Sill, I spent twenty-eight days on a troopship, throwing up all the way from San Francisco to Inchon.

Following three months at the 4th Missile Command, located at Camp Page in Chunchon, South Korea, I still couldn’t get the cantankerous Honest John Rocket to work. So I left for Seoul, to show off my writing skills to 40,000 G.I.s, as the feature writer for the Pacific Stars and Stripes daily newspaper.

Following the year-long tour with the newspaper, I returned stateside, where I studied the Korean language for a year at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Upon graduation, I attended the prisoner interrogation school at Ft. Holabird’s U.S. Army Intelligence Center, located in Baltimore, Maryland.

My second Korean tour was spent at the 502nd Military Intelligence Battalion’s prisoner interrogation center, located in Seoul, just around the corner from the Pacific Stars and Stripes office and living quarters.

The Thirty-seventh Parallel is a historical-based work of fiction, centering around a second planned North Korean invasion of South Korea, nine years following the signing of the Armistice in July 1953.

In the book, I have described the Stars and Stripes offices and living quarters, and the prisoner interrogation compound, known to G.I.s as the 502, exactly as they existed in 1962. Camp Roberts, the 4th Missile Command., Camp Casey near the DMZ, the 75th Heavy Boat Company, Yongsan, Chunchon, Osan, Pusan and Panmunjom, are all locations I visited often and wrote about during my tour of duty as a writer for the Stars and Stripes.

Just as in the case of The Puppeteer and Deception at Los Alamos, although I have striven for accuracy in the historical aspects of The Thirty-seventh Parallel, it is still just a good old fashioned tale of intrigue, deception, double agents, and edge-of-your seat suspense. If you enjoy a good spy story, you’ll love The Thirty-seventh Parallel.

The Author

Prologue

Korea is a nearly 600-mile-long, irregular, S-shaped peninsula, that varies in width from 125 to 200 miles. It encompasses an area of approximately 85,000 square miles, about the size of Minnesota. Korea lies in the same latitudes as the eastern United States, between Georgia and Maine. In the United States, the 38th Parallel runs through a line connecting Salisbury, Maryland and Fredericksburg, Virginia, roughly equidistant between Richmond, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Korea divides the Yellow Sea to the west, from the Sea of Japan, that Koreans still call the Tonghae, or East Sea. Westerners refer to the country as Korea. The name was derived from the Koryo dynasty (AD 918 to 1392), that translates as High and Beautiful. Today many North Koreans continue to use Choson, the dynasty that ruled from 1392 to 1910, and many South Koreans use Taehan, as the official name of their country. Koreans, both North and South, are a proud people. A unified, democratic Korea certainly would become a world power.

Because of Korea’s strategic location, between China, Japan and the Siberian Far East, the Korean people have been kicked about for centuries by domineering, warlike neighbors. One could almost call Korea the stepchild of the Far East. Korea’s religious, legal and social structure, however, have been influenced to a far greater degree by China.

Despite its cultural ties with the Chinese peoples, Korea developed its own distinct identity. The Koreans are a pure race. An astute Westerner, having spent a few days with a Japanese, Chinese and Korean, is able from that point on, to distinguish among the three races.

In 1443, near the beginning of the Choson dynasty, the Korean phonetic alphabet, called Hangul, was completed under the direction of King Sejong. As a result, a Korean living in Pusan, the port city on the southern tip of Korea, is able to converse freely with a Korean who lives on the Yalu River, that divides Korea and China. Unlike the Soviet Union and China, there are no distinctly separate dialects, or languages, among the Korean people.

Undoubtedly the most tragic influence on the Korean way of life was the belligerent Japanese who, in 1910, abruptly and cruelly ended the Choson dynasty, that had lasted since 1392, with the annexation of Korea.

Japan invaded Korea in 1905, and for thirty-six years, from 1910 until the end of World War II, Japan ruled Korea as a Japanese colony. No Korean will ever forgive, or forget, the senseless atrocities committed against a peace-loving people between 1910 and 1945. Nor should they. The root cause of present-day Korean problems, both North and South, can be traced directly to the warmongering Japanese in 1905.

The Cairo Declaration, issued on December 1, 1943, by the United States, Great Britain and China, pledged that, in due course, Korea would have its independence.

Following the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the victorious Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, that reiterated the validity of the 1943 Cairo Declaration.

On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan, at which time Joseph Stalin pledged to support the independence of Korea. Stalin, however, recognized an opportunity to exert Soviet influence over the Far East. On October 14, 1945, when Stalin’s hand-picked puppet, Kim Il Sung, arrived in Pyongyang, he was wearing the uniform of a major in the Red Army. He was introduced to the people of Pyongyang as a national hero. Proving yet again the communist mantra, Saying it, makes it so.

The infamous 38th Parallel never was intended to be an international boundary. On August 11, 1945, the United States drafted General Order No.1, that included the terms of Japanese surrender in Korea. The Order provided that Japanese forces north of latitude 38 degrees north, the 38th Parallel, would surrender to the Soviets, and those south of that line, to the Americans. Stalin did not object to this Order. On September 9, 1945, the United States received the Japanese surrender in Seoul.

The designation of the 38th Parallel was made for purposes of convenience only. After all, somebody had to accept the surrender of thousands of Japanese troops, and do so in some order.

Thus began the story of the Two Koreas. On September 8, 1945, when American troops first landed in the southern part of Korea, Soviet forces had already been in the northern part of Korea for a month.

By the following day, September 9, 1945, when the United States received the Japanese surrender in Seoul, Soviet forces had already begun sealing off the 38th Parallel. Almost overnight, the world was introduced to North Korea and South Korea. Soviet occupation forces had quickly turned what had been intended only as a line of administrative convenience on a Hammond map of the world, into what, through no official action, treaty or agreement, was to become an international boundary. This artificial border was practically indefensible.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was proclaimed on September 9, 1948, under the dictatorship of Premier Kim Il Sung. The Republic of Korea (ROK) was proclaimed on August 15, 1948, with President Syngman Rhee as its leader. North Korea boasted heavy machinery, mineral resources, and electric power. South Korea had a larger population, light industry, and a broad agricultural base. An immediate and detrimental consequence of the division of Korea was the fact that only twenty percent of the land area of North Korea will support agriculture.

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean Army invaded South Korea, quickly overrunning the inept South Korean mainly defensive force of 98,000 men. On September 15, 1950, aided by record thirty-foot-high tides, General Douglas MacArthur counterattacked, outflanking the North Korean Army via amphibious landings at Inchon, on the west coast of South Korea.

General MacArthur’s bold move caught the overextended North Korean Army completely by surprise. The communist invasion forces were trapped, and either surrendered, or fled northward. By October 1, 1950, only three months after the invasion, United Nations forces, led by the United States, were back at the 38th Parallel. The communists’ stroll through the park was over.

On September 27, 1950, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered General MacArthur to destroy the North Korean armed forces, and two days later, President Truman authorized MacArthur to advance into North Korea, a move that was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on October 7, 1950. On October 20, 1950, U.N. forces entered Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and on October 26, 1950, American forces reached the Chinese border at the Yalu River.

Mao Zedong, known also to a generation of American schoolchildren born in the forties and fifties, as Mao Tse-tung, who had wanted no part in Kim Il Sung’s folly, also could not tolerate General Douglas MacArthur peering across the Yalu River through a pair of powerful U.S. Army field binoculars. So the order emanated from Beijing, at the time called Peking, and in November 1950, the Yellow Horde attacked in overwhelming force across the Yalu.

However, the Chinese army’s advance came to a screeching halt near Pyongtaek, about thirty miles south of Seoul, its numbers decimated by U.S. M-60 machine guns and 155mm howitzers, giving new meaning to the military expression, cannon fodder.

In February 1952 the U.N. General Assembly formally condemned China as an aggressor. By March 31, 1952, U.N. forces had again reached the 38th Parallel.

China’s Mao Zedong resented being drawn into the war by the wiles and deceit of Kim Il Sung and Joseph Stalin. China committed troops to North Korea only after the Americans had reached the Yalu River, and Mao Zedong believed China would be invaded by the riled-up General Douglas MacArthur.

Mao Zedong’s fears proved to be founded in fact. In March 1952, General MacArthur publicly advocated extending the war into China, as payback for China’s intervention in Korea.

However, President Truman, committing the biggest blunder of his administration, dismissed MacArthur, because of the latter’s impudence, and replaced America’s All-time No.1 Hero, with the lukewarm General Matthew B. Ridgeway. Matt did the best he could, operating without a clear mandate to win the war.

The Korean War ended in a costly stalemate, with the Armistice that was signed on July 27, 1953. Kim Il Sung and Joseph Stalin’s stupid gamble had resulted in roughly four million casualties, the brunt of which were suffered by North Korea and China. North Korea never would have started the Korean War without the backing of the Soviet Union. The Chinese certainly had not encouraged Kim Il Sung; Mao Zedong sought no argument with the Americans.

China had been the biggest loser, having been suckered into a war that it had not started, and in which it wanted no part. South Korean casualties were 1,313,000 including 1,000,000 civilians. North Korean casualties were estimated at 2,500,000 including 1,000,000 civilians. Military deaths included, United States (33,629), South Korea (47,000), U.N. forces (3,194), and North Korea (520,000).

The one statistic that, sixty years later, still sticks in the collective Chinese craw, is the number of Chinese deaths. China sought no part of any invasion of South Korea, yet lost 900,000 men killed in action. The Soviet Union, that had sponsored North Korea’s invasion, lost zero men. Therefore, the Chinese would do anything in their power to prevent a repeat of the folly known as the Korean War.

The foregoing discussion provides an overview of Korea, through the date of the signing of the Armistice, July 27, 1953. To begin our story, The Thirty-seventh Parallel, we must return briefly to the period of time just prior to the beginning of the Korean War.

Chapter 1

Preparation for War

From the time Kim Il Sung, Joseph Stalin’s handpicked puppet, entered Pyongyang on October 14, 1945, the North Korean dictator’s goal was the reunification of Korea under his leadership. On two separate occasions in 1949, Kim Il Sung implored Joseph Stalin to authorize an invasion of South Korea. Stalin, believing Kim Il Sung to be the proverbial loose cannon, turned him down both times. However, the nagging child refused to go away. In early 1950, Stalin relented, and North Korea and the Soviet Union began making plans for the mid-year invasion.

In the late 1940’s, during the Chinese Civil War, Kim Il Sung had sent tens of thousands of North Koreans to China, to assist the communists’ Mao Zedong in his fight with the Nationalists’ Chiang Kai-shek.

In preparation for North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, China released these troops back to the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA). Two of these Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) divisions, moved as complete units to the NKPA, simply changing their names.

At 4:40 a.m. on June 25, 1950, the superbly-trained and well-equipped communist North Korean Army, launched a surprise attack along a broad front in its invasion of the Republic of Korea (ROK). The Korean War had begun.

Leading the assault, 90,000 North Korean troops pushed south along the breadth of South Korea, quickly decimating the poorly-trained and ill-equipped, Republic of Korea army, that maintained defensive perimeters around Kaesong, Uijongbu, and Chunchon. More than 150 Soviet-made, T-34 tanks spearheaded the lightning thrust southward.

The First and Sixth North Korean divisions, supported by a detachment from the 105th North Korean Armored Brigade, pushed westward toward Kaesong.

The Third and Fourth North Korean divisions, aided by the remainder of the 105th, attacked eastward toward Uijongbu.

The Second and Seventh North Korean divisions launched the central attack, aimed at Chunchon.

By June 28, 1950, the ROK Army was in disarray, and Seoul had fallen. The ROK Army, a 98,000-man, mainly defensive force, was armed with U.S. M-1 rifles, .30 cal. carbines, 60mm and 80mm mortars, 2.36-inch rocket launchers, 37mm antitank guns, and 105mm howitzers. However, this poorly-trained South Korean force was no match for the invaders.

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Chapter 2

The Massacre at Kapyong

In central Korea, just south of the 38th Parallel that divided the two countries, armored columns of the North Korean Second and Seventh Divisions’ Soviet-maintained T-34 tanks, with their feared and deadly-accurate 85mm guns, mounted a secondary assault against Chunchon, the provincial capital of Kangwon province, quickly overrunning the poorly-equipped, unprepared ROK Sixth Division.

The small village of Kapyong sat astride the only dirt road that linked Chunchon with Seoul, to the southwest. At daybreak on June 25, 1950, remnants of that North Korean Second Division, continued down the Seoul-Chunchon road, overrunning the ROK Sixth Division, that had attempted in desperation to block the road.

Supporting the armored and infantry invasion, was the North Korean Air Force, consisting of 180 Soviet-built Yak fighters and Ilyushin IL-28 bombers.

The column of fast-moving T-34 tanks, approaching Kapyong, was led by 30-year-old Captain Hwang Sung Il, a ruthless and highly-efficient tank commander, who, early in his military career, had developed an intense personal hatred of the South Korean people, whom he referred to collectively as barbarians.

Captain Hwang’s T-34 tank unit entered Kapyong without firing a round, unchallenged by the outnumbered and outgunned ragtag remnants of the fleeing ROK Sixth Division.

At the northern edge of the village, the column of tanks halted, and Captain Hwang climbed down from the turret of the lead tank.

Because no gunfire had come from the direction of the advancing troops, a small crowd of villagers drew near to the spectacle, believing the tanks to belong to the South Korean Army.

Suddenly, Captain Hwang barked an order to his men, who quickly aimed their AK-47 guns at the frightened, unsuspecting villagers.

The soldiers quickly separated the men from the women and children, forcing the nineteen men to kneel, facing the terrified women and children, who began crying and wailing, expecting the worst.

Seventeen-year-old Rhee Bong Chil, who had been visiting his friend when the North Korean tank column rumbled into Kapyong, hid beneath the hut, directly across the dirt road from his own hut, observing the horror played out before his guileless eyes.

As the atrocities proceeded, the teenager held his hands over his ears, and closed his crying eyes tightly, in a vain attempt to block out the surreal carnage unfolding in the tiny village.

For the next two hours, troops of the tank column terrorized the frightened people of Kapyong. Before the tanks proceeded south in the direction of Seoul, Captain Hwang and his men had coldly executed thirty-one men and boys. The incident became known as The Kapyong Massacre. These horrors would be repeated often as the North Korean Army advanced rapidly, and for the most part, unopposed, southward.

Fearing that either the tank column would return to commit more atrocities, or that more North Korean soldiers soon would come down the road from the north, all the remaining villagers, mostly women and small children, fled in a southerly direction through the fields, avoiding the dirt road.

Because the villagers’ personal safety was foremost in their minds, they did not remain to bury their murdered relatives.

Rhee Bong Chil waited until nightfall, before emerging cautiously from beneath the hut. He had remained hidden throughout the long, hot day, sobbing quietly in the horror of his predicament. Revenge had yet to replace fear and uncertainty as the predominate emotion in the young boy’s psyche. This surely would come later. Survival was the frightened lad’s immediate concern.

In the dark, the boy first located his father’s body, sprawled haphazardly on the dirt road. He quickly dragged the body off onto the side of the road, and positioned it as if for burial. Then he gathered all the money he could find, from all the huts in the village, and hurriedly placed an ample supply of fruits and vegetables in a makeshift cloth sack.

Finally, the boy found his mother’s body. He quickly knelt beside her, and kissed her cheek. After he had covered her body with a large blanket, Rhee Bong Chil hurried east through the darkness, walking along the Kapyong-Chunchon road, away from Seoul.

From his vantage point beneath the hut, he had observed the tank column move south toward Seoul. Thus he had been puzzled as to why the surviving women and children from his village, had fled in a southerly direction, toward Seoul, following after the North Korean tank column.

At that seminal juncture in his young life, seventeen-year-old Rhee Bong Chil realized that he was on his own, that he would have to fend for himself, to do his own thinking.

Therefore, he reasoned, if the North Korean Army was headed south, toward Seoul, he certainly was not going south. So east it was, and the boy started walking, in the darkness of a moonless night, toward the provincial capital of Chunchon.

The homeless teenager became one of literally hundreds of thousands of starving refugees, North Korean and South Korean alike, whose position on a map’s coordinates was determined by the ever-fluctuating battle lines, during the first two years of the war.

The young orphan’s sleep, usually in a ditch by the side of a dirt road, was interrupted constantly by the incessant wailing of starving children, and the horrifying images of seeing his father shot in the back of his head while kneeling in the village square, pleading with the tank commander to spare the life of the boy’s mother.

Which mother of a dog is your wife, shouted the brutal communist officer. The boy’s mother stepped forward from the group of terrified, crying women and children, huddled together on the dirt road, under the menacing stares of the enemy soldiers, brandishing AK-47 machine guns.

I am his wife, pleaded the boy’s mother, the most beautiful woman in the village.

You may have her as your prize, Captain Hwang Sung Il said to his men. And after you’ve had your way with her, kill her.

The frightened boy observed from his hiding place beneath the hut, as four communist soldiers dragged the boy’s mother into her hut, stripped off her clothes, and began raping and beating the screaming, terrified woman.

After about fifteen minutes, while the boy’s father remained kneeling with the other men of the village, in the blazing morning sun, the boy heard a short burst of machine gun fire, and the four soldiers emerged from the hut, laughing derisively. At that very moment, Captain Hwang shot the boy’s father in the back of the head, and the man’s body crumpled forward.

Then Captain Hwang, a pistol in each hand, calmly and methodically walked behind each kneeling peasant, and shot him in the back of the head, yelling Kae sik-ya!" (Son of a dog) with each shot, while female relatives and children screamed uncontrollably at the sight of the executions of husbands, brothers and fathers.

Then Captain Hwang walked among the remaining villagers, singling out twelve of the older teenagers. Ordering these boys to kneel facing him, Captain Hwang calmly shot each boy in the forehead.

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First two pages of the 118-page Confidential Korea Handbook (Declassified), published by the Department of the Army in September 1950, two months after North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950.

Chapter 3

The Mysterious Stranger

Winter came early for soldiers fighting on the Korean peninsula. It came even earlier for the starving, poorly clothed refugees. When the first heavy snow of November 1950 fell, North Korean soldiers and South Korean soldiers were killing each other in the bitter cold. North Korean refugees were huddled with their homeless cousins from South Korea, sharing what scraps of food they could scavenge, just trying to survive what would prove to be the longest winter of their existence, and for tens of thousands, their last.

As often as possible, refugees remained in the rear of the American lines. In the wake of the northward-advancing American army, the homeless found literally thousands of dead North Korean soldiers, and their abandoned vehicles and weapons.

However, the refugees were not the least bit interested in dead communists, or their abandoned equipment. Whenever the Americans paused along their forward advance, to rest and hastily eat their tins of rations, usually they left lying on the ground, oftentimes on purpose, generous amounts of these lifesaving rations.

On the bitterly cold night of November 15, 1950, an exhausted Rhee Bong Chil huddled with a dozen or more North and South Korean homeless peasants, inside the bombed-out skeleton of what, six months before, had been the offices of the North Korean Finance Ministry, in downtown Pyongyang. The advancing American army artillery had pounded the capital of North Korea for twelve straight days, reducing the city to rubble.

The cold and hungry band of refugees had started a small fire, using a few scraps of wood, and sat huddled in a group as close as they could get to the meager but warm blaze.

Suddenly, hearing an English-speaking voice approaching the building in the darkness, Rhee Bong Chil looked up to see a tall Korean man, dressed snugly in a heavy coat, and wearing what appeared to be boots of the style worn by North Korean officers. In the light of the flickering blaze, Rhee Bong Chil could see that the man was speaking into some sort of large telephone, except he was speaking English, not Korean.

The frightened boy could observe also the black butt of a Russian-made Makarov pistol, protruding from the man’s trousers belt. This was the same type weapon that had been used by the North Korean tank commander, whom his troops addressed as Captain Hwang, in coldly executing Rhee Bong Chil’s father, just five months before. The frightened boy could only wait, expecting the worst. There was no avenue of escape.

The stranger clicked a button on his hand-held radio, looked out over the small group huddled apprehensively before him, and asked expectantly,

Does anybody here speak English?

No answer.

I didn’t think so, said the tall Korean, who appeared to be polite and well-nourished. He also seemed, to Rhee Bong Chil, to be taller and heavier than any Korean he had ever seen. The man’s erect posture was markedly at odds with that of the average Korean, following decades of subservience to Japanese colonial rule.

Then, in unaccented Korean, the man asked when was the last time the refugees had eaten. Four days ago, had been the reply from some of the refugees. Six days ago, said an elderly, white-haired Korean man, holding his sickly wife close to himself, in a protective manner.

Looking over the members of the pitiable group, the man said, again in Korean, to Rhee Bong Chil,

You seem to be the strongest here. You come with me, and we’ll get some food for the group.

Twenty minutes later, the two were on the southern outskirts of Pyongyang, approaching an encamped company of American infantrymen. The tall Korean raised his hand-held telephone to his ear, and the boy heard the man say,

U. S. Recon. Three-two-four-zero. Home run.

The youngster would remember these English