watch.) Henderson likened the ROK to the “Southern way of life” in the United States, an apt analogy given the prevalence of landed estates served by multitudes of peasant tenants; if this was hardly Athens, the North was much like its opposite: “steelier, more Spartan, more hardbitten, more ideological and less yielding and opportunistic.” 20
T HROUGH C HINESE E YES
In contrast to the ephemeral traces Korea made on American minds, Ha Jin’s novel
War Trash
rings true on every page, a closely observed and much-pondered experience. An interested, fair, discerning observer—so shocked by what he saw—he embraces the odd mass of humanity clustered in Korea during the war. His protagonist’s unit crossed the Yalu to find empty land, “with at least four-fifths of the houses leveled to the ground.” The farther south they went, even fewer houses remained. The image of a blind woman “in a ruffly white dress” picking through a garbage dump, a toddler strapped to her back, remains with him forever as a sign of human resilience. Even amid the blasted landscape, Korean womensang songs, sometimes for hours in the evening, and remained so fond of cosmetics that most had a pouch of stuff to make up their faces (few Chinese women over forty bother with wearing skirts, let alone makeup). He came upon a prison camp holding hundreds of women guerrillas; women sang there, too; “their voices transported me into reveries.” He noticed that Chinese and North Korean soldiers paid for what they took from civilians, whereas South Korean troops just took. How is it that a Chinese foot soldier sees these things, but Americans apparently didn’t? Then after he was captured, he wondered why American doctors and nurses were so kind to him. 21
Ha Jin re-creates fictionally the notorious episode when North Korean POWs captured Brig. Gen. Francis T. Dodd on May 8, 1952, during riots on Koje Island. North Koreans in the camps looked more like highly organized militias than POWs, Ha Jin thought; women were their communication channel to guerrillas on the island and to their superiors in the North. A Korean People’s Army colonel named Lee had fought for many years against the Japanese in Manchukuo, and spoke fluent Chinese; he and others explained that Kim Il Sung had ordered them to open “a second front” inside the camps. The POWs spit out bitterness at General Dodd: Why did American soldiers make North Korean soldiers strip naked after their capture? Why did their jets erase villages? After Dodd was released, American forces used flamethrowers to retake the camp, leaving seventy-seven dead among the POWs. 22
In 1987 I was able to interview Pak Chang-uk in Pyongyang, a double-amputee who rose from his chair to a standing position by throwing his trunk forward and leveraging his wooden legs under his weight; he provided a blow-by-blow description of the Dodd capture and the subduing of North Korean POWs in Camp 76, in a presentation so striking that he seemed ready to fight it all out again. After the war he sired three daughters and a son, the eldest daughter an architect and the son a railway engineer.
CHAPTER FOUR
C ULTURE OF R EPRESSION
The titular leader of the North Korean puppet regime and ostensible commander of the North Korean armies is Kim Il Sung, a 38-year-old giant from South Korea, where he is wanted as a fugitive from justice. His real name is supposed to be Kim Sung Chu, but he has renamed himself after a legendary Korean revolutionary hero … and many Koreans apparently still believe that it is their “original” hero and not an imposter who rules in North Korea.
—New York Times
E DITORIAL , J ULY 27, 1950
T he Korean War is an unknown war because it transpired during the height of the McCarthy era (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted when the war began and executed just before it ended), making open inquiry and citizen dissent improbable. This home front was a repressed but also
T HROUGH C HINESE E YES
In contrast to the ephemeral traces Korea made on American minds, Ha Jin’s novel
War Trash
rings true on every page, a closely observed and much-pondered experience. An interested, fair, discerning observer—so shocked by what he saw—he embraces the odd mass of humanity clustered in Korea during the war. His protagonist’s unit crossed the Yalu to find empty land, “with at least four-fifths of the houses leveled to the ground.” The farther south they went, even fewer houses remained. The image of a blind woman “in a ruffly white dress” picking through a garbage dump, a toddler strapped to her back, remains with him forever as a sign of human resilience. Even amid the blasted landscape, Korean womensang songs, sometimes for hours in the evening, and remained so fond of cosmetics that most had a pouch of stuff to make up their faces (few Chinese women over forty bother with wearing skirts, let alone makeup). He came upon a prison camp holding hundreds of women guerrillas; women sang there, too; “their voices transported me into reveries.” He noticed that Chinese and North Korean soldiers paid for what they took from civilians, whereas South Korean troops just took. How is it that a Chinese foot soldier sees these things, but Americans apparently didn’t? Then after he was captured, he wondered why American doctors and nurses were so kind to him. 21
Ha Jin re-creates fictionally the notorious episode when North Korean POWs captured Brig. Gen. Francis T. Dodd on May 8, 1952, during riots on Koje Island. North Koreans in the camps looked more like highly organized militias than POWs, Ha Jin thought; women were their communication channel to guerrillas on the island and to their superiors in the North. A Korean People’s Army colonel named Lee had fought for many years against the Japanese in Manchukuo, and spoke fluent Chinese; he and others explained that Kim Il Sung had ordered them to open “a second front” inside the camps. The POWs spit out bitterness at General Dodd: Why did American soldiers make North Korean soldiers strip naked after their capture? Why did their jets erase villages? After Dodd was released, American forces used flamethrowers to retake the camp, leaving seventy-seven dead among the POWs. 22
In 1987 I was able to interview Pak Chang-uk in Pyongyang, a double-amputee who rose from his chair to a standing position by throwing his trunk forward and leveraging his wooden legs under his weight; he provided a blow-by-blow description of the Dodd capture and the subduing of North Korean POWs in Camp 76, in a presentation so striking that he seemed ready to fight it all out again. After the war he sired three daughters and a son, the eldest daughter an architect and the son a railway engineer.
CHAPTER FOUR
C ULTURE OF R EPRESSION
The titular leader of the North Korean puppet regime and ostensible commander of the North Korean armies is Kim Il Sung, a 38-year-old giant from South Korea, where he is wanted as a fugitive from justice. His real name is supposed to be Kim Sung Chu, but he has renamed himself after a legendary Korean revolutionary hero … and many Koreans apparently still believe that it is their “original” hero and not an imposter who rules in North Korea.
—New York Times
E DITORIAL , J ULY 27, 1950
T he Korean War is an unknown war because it transpired during the height of the McCarthy era (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted when the war began and executed just before it ended), making open inquiry and citizen dissent improbable. This home front was a repressed but also
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