GOLDSEA | ASIAN BOOKVIEW | FICTION
The Innocentby Richard E. Kim
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1968, 384 pp, $22.95
An idealistic Korean Army officer joins a military coup against the corrupt civilian government installed by the Americans.
EXCERPT
he war came to an end late one evening in the summer of 1953, and before
we could grow accustomed to the eerie stillness in the trenches and bunkers
along the front lines, I had already been relieved of my rifle company and
was in Pusan, on my way to the United States, where I was to attend the
Officer's Advanced Course at Fort Benning in Georgia. There were fifty-one
of us in our group, young colonels and majors, fortunate survivors of the
war, now waiting for a transport ship to sail for the Pacific. The mood of my
fellow officers was expansive and their behavior exuberant; they had
managed to live through the bloody war; they had done their share of work;
and, having welcomed the opportunity to go abroad, to America, as if on a
well-earned vacation, they gloried in their smart dress uniform in place of
baggy fatigues, heavy boots, and steel helmets; and they dreamed of such
exotic places as Hawaii, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York; but, above all,
they indulged in the thrilling, seductive sensation of men who had not a
care, not a worry in the world. They did not think about tomorrow and
tomorrow, not for the moment anyway; like schoolchildren let out of the
classroom, they were contented. The atmosphere was contagious, although I
was able not to succumb to it. It was not because I did not approve of the
euphoric state of mind my fellow officers seemed to float in, but because, at
the time, I was deeply immersed in brooding speculation concerning the
uncertain future of our country; I was trying to convince myself that the
destiny of the nation was somehow inseparably bound up with what I was
-- or rather with what I became, as a result of the irrevocable, momentous
decision I had made before I came down the battle-scarred mountains of the
central font; I had decided to stay in the Army.
"Oh, but why, Major Lee?" Reverend Koh asked me. "Why, indeed? The war
is over and done with and that's that. Your place from now on should be
back in your university."
The way he said it startled me. For a moment, I was overcome with a
certain shock of recognition that came from nostalgic remembrances of
things past. I blurted out, "The late Colonel Chang used to say that to me. 'I
hope the Army will let you go back to your university.' You know -- that's
what he used to say."
"Yes, I remember that," he said. "I remember that. It seems as though it
was only yesterday when we..." His voice trailed off as he looked straight
into my eyes.
It was in the winter of the first year of the war in Pyungyang that I had
first met him, an Army chaplain; he had been sent out of the Army for a few
years and was still working with the North Korean refugees on the Tent
Island outside the harbor of Pusan. I had written him that I would be
sailing from Pusan on my way to America, and he had come to see me off.
He, too, had shed his steel helmet and fatigues for a straw hat, a faded blue
denim shirt, and khaki trousers. In the shadow of his straw hat, his darkly
tanned lean face twitched and he said quietly, "They are all dead now." He
paused and touched my arm. And here we are."
We were standing on the front deck of the transport ship, leaning against the rail, engulfed in the shimmerzing haze of a sizzling sun. It was hot. Under my shirt I could feel the sweat oozing down my chest and back and soddening my starched uniform; my chin felt the steamy heat through the collar whenever I tugged at the knot of my tie. I thought of the snow-covered Pyungyang, of the cold, frozen North KOrea, and the chaplain announcing, "I am Chaplain Koh of the Third Bridgade." The clean, crisp, wintry morning after the blizzard thathad left behind it a thick, deep layer of dazzling white snow, and the...
"Can it?" I said. The sweltering air choked my breath with a nauseating vapor of oil, grease, soot, and the rotten, polluted water thick with ugly scum. The stench that pervaded the humid air was intolerable and the deafening cacophony of noises from the piers and the nearby railroad yard unbeable. "Or, for that matter," I added, "can the country?"
He seemed jolted by my words. He gave me a penetrating look. "The country! Oh, this miserable country!" he cried out impatiently. "What is going to become of it! The country is staggering with hordes of hungry, weary refugees, the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, and all that our politicians are doing is bickering, squabbling, cutting each other's throats. They are all rotten, I tell you, those politiciains! They are nothing but a bunch of subservient, petty, greedy, inefficient nincompoops! My God, is this what we deserve after all these years of bloody fighting! The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. The police are nothing more than a one man's terrorist gang, spies are snooping around everywhere, extortions and tortures are rampant. Where is justice, where is democracy, where is freedom? Tell me, is this what the people have suffered through the war for? If our politicians couldn't care about the people during trhe war, I suppose they could care less about them now that the war is over. And what about the military? You know as well as I do about our generals! Those petty little ignorant men, pompous asses getting fatter and fatter from war-profiteering, scared to death of that one stubborn, blind, old fanatic locked up in the inner chamber of that idiotic palace of his in Seoul, surrounded by a gang of fawning little monkeys, running the country as if it were his private kingdom. Ah, your generals! What have we accomplished by all our suffering in the war? What have we gained? What have we saved and protected from the Communists!"
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