Ian Slater: WW III

Jordan laughed, but the worrier in him remained — as persistent as an allergy one can do nothing about. “So you think we should forget about the chopsticks?”

“Forget the chopsticks. There’s nothing to it,” said the general. “Chopsticks aren’t going to start a war.”

The general was right, chopsticks had nothing to do with it. The fuse that led to World War III would be lit by a misunderstanding over red ants.

Traditionally a Korean delicacy when slightly sautéed, the ants were sold downtown in glass jars by vendors scattered throughout the myriad alleys and side streets of Seoul’s brightly lit and bustling Myongdong district. Here, amid the spicy odors of kimchi (pickled cabbage) and the cooking of marinated meat, throngs of workers from late night shifts were hurrying home before the midnight curfew, past the variegated plastic canopies of the pushcart stalls, their owners hawking everything from soju (octopus) and pin daeduk (pork-and-vegetable-garnished mung bean pancakes), to the favored tangerines and oranges from the southern island of Cheju. The crowd’s shadows flitted through islands of fiercely burning carbide lamps that illuminated the vendors’ faces as if they were polished china, their voices rising, bartering becoming frantic in the race against the clock. Above the alleys, in the polluted and unusually cool summer air, neons flashed with accompanying urgency in the collective frenzy before the blackout drill, which tonight would precede the usual midnight-to-4:00 a.m. curfew, the blackout’s wailing of air raid sirens yet another reminder, as if any of the twelve million inhabitants of the city needed reminding, that they were only twenty miles from the border between North and South, and two and a half minutes from North Korea’s bombers, and within range of the NKA’s long-range artillery.

Only the night before, one of the South Korean patrols, continually on duty in the hills ringing Seoul, had clashed with six North Korean infiltrators. They had been intercepted while crossing the DMZ.

After a short, fierce firefight, not unusual along the DMZ, five of the infiltrators had been shot, one dying shortly after. South Korea’s CIOC (Counter-Infiltration Operations Command) was reasonably sure the six were from the NKA’s 124th guerrilla unit. It was this unit from which thirty-one North Korean commandos had penetrated the southern side of the DMZ on a bitterly cold January night during the infamous mission of ‘68, armed with AK-47 submachine guns and grenades, with express orders to assassinate President Park of South Korea. On the second day of the mission, four woodcutters saw them, notified local authorities, and the hunt was on. Even so, the guerrilla unit reached Pugak Mountain on Seoul’s northern outskirts, and charged the Blue House — official home of the president. Twenty-eight of the thirty-one North Koreans were killed in the ferocious gun battle that followed, rifle and machine-gun fire and bursting grenades echoing like strings of firecrackers in the hilly amphitheater around the city, causing several small brush fires. Two of the guerrillas managed to escape, but one, surname Kim, given names Shin Jo, no relation to the present General Kim, was caught. Trading his life against the certain fate of being shot as an infiltrator, Kim passed over to Chungang Chongbo-bu (South Korea’s Central Intelligence Agency) all the details of North Korean President Kim Il Sung’s plan to assassinate President Park, including the fact that at each of 124th Unit’s eight guerrilla bases in the North, there were three hundred volunteers.

This meant that since 1968, over two thousand North Korean agents were being prepared at any one time for further infiltration, agitation, and sabotage against the Americans and the South, that every day at least one agent was crossing the DMZ.

It wasn’t that the North Korean agent in the Myongdong area this evening before Independence Day had been badly trained. On the contrary, he had received high commendation from his base commander in Kaesong. Not only did he know the military dispositions, weapons, and insignia of all South Korean and American units, especially those along the eighteen and a half miles of the 155-mile-long DMZ guarded by elements of the U.S. Second Infantry Division, but in addition, before being sent south, he had been carefully instructed in those local habits and customs that can so often trip up an agent. He was made well aware, for example, of the new words and phrases creeping into the language. He was told to remember that even though South Korean men, like their North Korean counterparts, expected total obedience from their womenfolk, in the South one should no longer use the word sikmo, calling a maid a maid, but kajongbu —”homemaker” or “home manager”; in much the same way, his NKA instructor told him, as garbage collectors in America insisted on being called “sanitation engineers.” And the agent knew about the red ants. Savored by most Koreans, especially by those from the South, the insects were collected from their favorite habitat in the hills around Pusan and trucked to Seoul on the 270-mile highway that ran almost the entire length of South Korea. Once in Seoul, the ants, like so much other produce, were auctioned off to the highest bidders among the street vendors, who in turn sold them to shoppers off the fashionable Myongdong.

What better way for an agent to indulge his weakness for the delicacy that he could ill afford in the North and at the same time reinforce his cover as a genuine South Korean? Approaching the pushcart, he realized he had only forty-five minutes to get back to his safe, cheap yogwan, or “inn,” two miles from the city center, before the start of the midnight curfew and air raid drill. Still, he would have ample time if he used the subway. The misunderstanding that was about to occur was largely due to the fact that the agent, having only just slipped across the Han River near Kumchon fifteen miles northwest of Seoul the previous night, had been so busy avoiding ROK patrols and settling into the yogwan that he hadn’t yet had a chance to sit down and read a newspaper. This meant he’d missed the two-paragraph story in most of the dailies, except the Korea Times, which didn’t publish on a Monday, about the brush fires in the hills around Pusan, fires that had killed off large numbers of ant colonies. Reduced supply meant higher prices. Unaware of the sharp increase in price, the agent gave the vendor a ten-thousand-won bill, about ten dollars, for an eight-ounce jar. The vendor waited politely, the glass of red ants the customer asked for now costing twice the usual amount. His customer waited, expecting the jar of ants and at least two thousand won in change. Then he realized he hadn’t given the vendor enough. “Olmayo?” —”How much?”

“Ee-man” —”Twenty thousand.” The customer dug deep into his jeans pockets, joking weakly that it would wipe out his subway fare. The vendor, though annoyed, did not show it and got a good look at the man, remembering the posters, as common as theater billboards throughout the city: “If you see a stranger who does not know the exact price of things, or spends a lot of money and hasn’t got a job, or calls you tongmu, which means ‘comrade’ or ‘friend’—grab him! He is a spy.”

Well, he mightn’t be, thought the vendor. Then again… The vendor had lost both parents when the NKA had invaded in 1950.

“Sorry,” apologized the customer. “I haven’t got enough.”

“That’s all right,” replied the vendor, already starting to pack up his stall with the speed and deftness of long experience. “I’ll still have some of these left tomorrow — or another consignment will come in.”