Back in the Land of the Morning Calm

As I mentioned before, trying to remember distant incidences and events often causes others to pop up out of nowhere. At other times, a recent event will trigger a flood of old memories.

I saw an article a couple of days ago about the possible stationing of American troops in Australia to assist in checking what some (apparently everyone but the Chinese) see as Chinese expansionism in that region. Newscasters were commenting on problems that have arisen in similar situations in the past, reminding me of a few more events from my time in Korea.

I’ve tried to stay more closely focused on just martial arts related events. This one gets into several that are not. Please let me know if you’d prefer I stick to just my martial arts experiences.

Also, writing these events down as I remember them is very helpful for me. If I don’t, they may well slip back beneath that dark water and never surface again.

I tell people that your hair sucks the gray matter out of your brain as you get older. And, as my hair is now almost completely white, I likely don’t have a lot of gray matter remaining inside my head; it’s all moved to the outside. So I need to write these things down as I remember them. Did I say that already?

“Koreans are tough little bastards who don’t like anyone who’s not Korean. I’m not even sure they like each other all that much.” Newsweek Magazine

The above quote was from an article that appeared in the national publication, Newsweek, around the time of the Seoul Olympics. But although I too found Koreans to be a tough, hearty people, I also found most of them to be very kind and hospitable. They were tough because they had to be. Life there, when I was in Korea in the early 60s, was difficult.

Once, while qualifying on the rifle range, which was located far out in the countryside, we had just moved back to fire from a more distant point when something caught my eye as I was about to fire. What I saw amazed me. Several people were crawling across the firing range, between us and our targets, as bullets whizzed over their heads. They were collecting our brass (spent bullet casings) to resell as scrap metal.

Several women and old men worked in a field beside the range. As we prepared to leave, a distraught, spindly-legged old man struggled past us with a very pregnant woman on his back. We asked one of the Korean soldiers what was going on. He told us the old man was carrying the woman to a midwife, as she had gone into labor. Apparently, it was common for poor women to work in the fields until their babies were coming before seeking medical assistance. One of our drivers drove her into town.

So life was very tough for many Koreans.

They had been dominated militarily several times over the centuries by people who didn’t treat them very well. When I was there, there were still huge gouges in the earth throughout the country from WWII and Korean Conflict bombs. And its dramatic mountain ranges were barren of trees. The Japanese had reportedly cut down all the beautiful Korean pine trees near the end of the war to extract pine oil to fuel their planes, ships, tanks, and trucks.

The weather in Korea ran from one extreme to the other. It was bitterly cold in the winter – 30 below zero with a 30 mph wind at morning formation. In the summer, it was very hot, well over 100 degrees, and humid.

Then the monsoon hit and the days of pouring rain washed everything unsecured – including the contents of thousands of outhouses – down the steep main street of town and into the army base. We woke up the first morning to find our foot lockers floating in two feet of foul water.

Many Koreans went well out of their way to be kind to me. Once, I was taking the train back to camp. For some forgotten reason, I caught the small electric train at a station farther from the center of Seoul. Apparently, they saw far less non-Koreans there as a crowd gathered around me while I waited for the train. They were not threatening, just curious and growing in number. The station master hurried out of the control room and escorted me inside so I wouldn’t be bothered.

Another time, though, people gathered around me and a friend in a not so friendly or curious fashion. PFC Mills and I were on our way back to base from somewhere in town. He had been in the Army for several years but was still very low in rank because he kept getting into fights. He had been told that if he got into another one, he would be spending time in 8^th Army prison, which was why I was with him – to try to keep him out of trouble.

As we walked down the hill towards the main gate, he accidently knocked over a bicycle that was leaning against the front of a small weight lifting gym. Two stocky bodybuilders rushed out to see what had happened to the bike.

Very few people had cars back then. Almost everyone rode a bike. This bike, as with many of them, was homemade out of heavy metal tubes and clearly the larger of the two men’s pride and joy.

He snatched the bike up and lifted the heavy bike into the air a couple of time with one arm to impress us, then switched arms and did the same with it. He set the bike down and gestured for Mills to see if he could lift it.

Mills grabbed the bike, pressed it into the air easily, switched arms and started to lift it… then said, “Screw this” and threw it down. It hit the sidewalk, flipped over, and landed in the street.

The big guy went berserk. He head butted Mills in the face, grabbed his ankles, and knocked Mills to the sidewalk. Then, he quickly sat on Mills’ legs, locked his own in place, and hung on as Mills tried unsuccessfully to buck him off.

Although Mills couldn’t get up, he could sit up, which he did… and slugged the guy in the face with all of his considerable might.

The guy scoffed at him and said in broken English, “You can’t hurt me, I’m Korean”. Mills hit him again, harder this time. The guy repeated that he couldn’t be hurt as he was Korean. This went on a few more times, with the guy repeating the same thing each time he was punched. Pretty soon I began to believe him – and think even Mills was becoming a convert.

The guy’s face was a mess. And an unhappy crowd of people started closing in on us. I figured we had to get out of there quickly or it could turn ugly. So with a big smile on my face so as not to antagonize anyone, I moved in behind the guy and used a soft choke to get him off.

Mills got up and we started down the hill towards the gate… but not alone. The big guy picked up a big rock, lifted it over his head, and ran after us.

We ran hard for the base entrance, with the guy hot on our tails.

We flashed our passes as we sprinted through the pedestrian entrance. The guy kept running at full speed, obviously intending to follow us into camp.

As he reached the guard shack door, the MP stepped out and stuck a cocked .45 in his face. He stopped.

The next day Mills and I got summoned to the main gate. The guy, his face swollen and stitched up, was there with his attorney. Also there was the camp commander, Colonel Bowie.

The attorney presented the Colonel with a bill for the guy’s medical treatment and “pain and suffering”. Mills scoffed at the amount. He told the guy he would give him a chance to go Double or Nothing. The Colonel wasn’t amused. He asked me what had happened. After I explained the details, the Colonel told Mills to pay the guy some amount far less than the guy wanted but far more than Mills considered right… but he paid it. More importantly for Mills, he hadn’t started the fight – although he could have done more to prevent it – so the Army didn’t incarcerate him.

After teaching my English Conversation class one night, a student wanted to talk. By the time I got to the front doors to the large, two storied brick provincial high school, they had already been locked and chained. So I had to go out the back.

This meant I had to walk up a long, steep, very narrow, and poorly lit alley that ran between one of the school’s outer walls and the office building next door.

As I got about half way up it, a man on a bicycle turned and headed down the alleyway. His eyes quickly locked on me and, instead of stopping or slowing down so I would be able to pass safely, he peddled harder. And heading downhill, he quickly picked up a good deal of speed.

I was trapped.

We had practiced a jump side kick at Sensei Brown’s dojo. I had never seen much use for it…until then. I took my left leg back and waited in horse stance.

As he was about to hit me, I jumped up and kicked, knocking him off the back of his bike. I landed on top of the fallen bike and twisted my ankle but got into a stance to fight in case he pushed the matter.

He grabbed his bike and scampered down the alleyway. And I limped back to base.

In order to keep U.S. currency from getting into Communist hands, the military issued paper money known as “script”. No one was allowed to carry greenbacks or even possess them. All transactions on base were done in script. All transactions in town were supposed to be done in Korean won, their currency, which we were required to buy on base.

But because it could be counterfeited for easily than greenbacks, the military changed the script every now and then. This happened once while I was there. They blew the base alert whistle, calling all military personnel back to base, where everyone had to report to their individual units and be accounted for. At the same time, all of the relatively large number of Korean civilians were escorted off base. Then, we exchanged all of our old script for script of a different color, making old script worthless.

Usually the locals knew about what was going to happen long before we did. The working girls in Seoul, who dated high ranking U.S. military officers, would hear about it and pass it down the line. But this caught everyone by surprise.

Korean money lenders and those running businesses in town who illegally accepted script ran to the base fence. They threw bushel baskets of old script over the fence, asking anyone they could see to exchange it for them and they’d pay them handsomely. But no one was allowed near the fence. So many in town lost huge amounts of money.

Not long after that, another event occurred at the fence, one that still makes me laugh.

The Vietnam War was just getting started. As soldiers were drowning there as they tried to cross its many rivers and streams, the army passed a regulation to combat this problem, one that utilized our rain gear (ponchos) as flotation devices. We were instructed to strip down to our white army boxer shorts and wrap our weapons and clothing in our ponchos. Then, soldiers who could swim were paired with those who couldn’t. The strong swimmer would then pull their gear and partner across.

The day came for us to be tested at our base swimming pool. As the pool was located next to the fence and the local red light district, all the women who worked in that trade came out to see what was going on.

The flamboyant and boisterous group of ladies who lined the fence would yell and wave at any customers they recognized. And it got worse – and funnier.

When the very thin fabric of our boxers hit the water, they essentially became transparent. As each pair of soldiers climbed out of the water, the ladies would let out a hoot of approval or ridicule. The memory of the ladies partying at the fence and hundreds of us standing in our skivvies still makes me chuckle to this day.

Thanks, again, for reading my humble ramblings. I should now be done with my time in Korea, the beautiful Land of the Morning Calm, and ready to move on to my next adventures.

(As I mentioned above, if you’d prefer I stick to just my martial arts related incidences, let me know and I’ll try to do that – and paste the non-martial arts stuff into a separate file for possible use should I ever get around to writing that book.)