As Mrs. Yi and Myong-song entered the outskirts of Taegu, three-wheeled trucks and early morning taxicabs swished by on the narrow strip of blacktop that was the main road leading into the city from the west. Straddling the entranceway to the Taegu Market stood a huge wooden arch with fancy lettering welcoming one and all. Mrs. Yi pushed her cart past enormous glass tanks full of wriggling mackerel, past rows of snorting pigs and honking geese, and piled rolls of wool and cotton and silk. The entire market area was laid out like a giant squid in the center of the city of Taegu, with overhanging balconies and eaves and lean-tos made of canvas and bamboo blocking out the sun. Mrs. Yi finally jostled her way through the crowd until she reached the produce area and the stall of the mother-in-law of her husband’s second cousin. The elderly woman smiled and greeted Mrs. Yi and hugged Myong-song and soon enough space was cleared on the raised plywood platform. Mrs. Yi piled her iridescent green cabbages alongside mounds of round pears and red persimmons and jumbled green beans and all the earthly bounty that the fertile southern valleys of Korea offer in such abundance.
Myong-song played, the women chatted, Mrs. Yi sold most of her cabbage at a good price, and for the last day of her life they tell me she was happy.
My partner, Ernie Bascom, held the photograph up toward fluorescent light. His lips were pursed and there was no apparent emotion on his face. Behind the round lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses, however, his green eyes glowed.
“Nice chest on her,” Ernie said finally.
Mrs. Yi Won-suk, like many petite Korean women, was about as flat-chested as it is possible to be. Still, she was beautiful. The photo was taken at a resort area. She stood by the shore of the Naktong River, vamping with some of her girlfriends on an outing just before she was married some five years ago. Her face was calm and unblemished, with full lips and a smoothly rounded nose and eyes that were bright and cheerful. Her legs were straight and the calves, revealed by a short skirt, were full and round.
Ernie and I had been flown down to Taegu by chopper, mainly because the 8th Army provost marshal was worried that once the Korean newspapers got wind of what had happened to Mrs. Yi, the proverbial waste would be splattered all over the Korean tabloids.
I took the photograph out of Ernie’s hand and slid it into the neat dossier that the Taegu detachment of the Korean National Police had prepared.
Our host was Lieutenant Rhee Han-yong. He’d picked us up at the military helipad and transported us over here in a police van, sirens blaring, until we reached this red brick police headquarters building in the heart of downtown Taegu.
Lieutenant Rhee pulled out a pack of cigarettes, Turtleboat brand, and offered one to me and then Ernie. We both declined. Lieutenant Rhee had the weathered face of a cop who’d spent many years standing on a round platform directing traffic. Now he directed a homicide squad. Smoke swirled past his flat nose, causing him to squint.
“GI,” he told us. “Must be. Other foreigners live in Taegu we already check.”
“They had alibis?” Ernie asked.
“Yes. Alibi. Good alibi. Very good.”
“What kind of alibis?” I asked.
“Two Peace Corps workers. That day they take go mountain somewhere. Also five priests. How you say? Chondu-kyo.”
“Catholic,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes. Catholic. Everybody say they inside church that day.”
Taegu is a city of about a hundred thousand people. It sits in the central valley of South Korea and is responsible for more than half the country’s output of exportable produce. Few foreigners live in Taegu because there are few business opportunities. The big industrialized capital of Seoul gobbles up most of those, along with the dynamic seaport of Pusan to the south.
That meant that the main source of foreigners living in Taegu was the US Army compound, Camp Henry, headquarters for the 19th Support Group. I’d already checked before Ernie and I left Seoul. Camp Henry was home to about fifteen hundred GIs. A decent-sized pond for a criminal to swim in.
Forensic science is not the most highly developed art in Korea. In fact, it has not developed very well here at all. Why? Because with the Park Chung-hee government firmly in power and the Cold War raging and President Nixon and now President Ford providing total backing to the Park regime, the Korean National Police enjoy the luxury of solving crimes with methods more traditional than forensic.
A judiciously employed rubber hose is one example. A sucker punch to the stomach another. But in this case those crude techniques wouldn’t do much good.
No suspect was in custody.
Why were the KNPs so sure that the perpetrator had been a foreigner? Two pieces of evidence: the semen and the pubic hair. The semen showed a blood type of O positive, extremely rare amongst the ancient and largely homogenous tribe that occupies the Korean Peninsula. And the pubic hair was obviously Caucasian. Short, curly, light brown.
Because of this evidence, the Korean National Police had requested our presence to help them find the GI who had raped and murdered Mrs. Yi Won-suk.
When a married woman is violated and then strangled, right in front of her four-year-old daughter, it is bad enough. When that unspeakably hideous crime is perpetrated by a foreigner, it becomes intolerable. The KNPs would go to any lengths to nab the killer. But their long arm didn’t reach into the inviolable sanctuaries of US Army compounds.
That’s where Ernie and I came in.
“I need to see the site,” I told Lieutenant Rhee.
“You no go check compound?”
“We’ll check the compound and we’ll find the GI who did this. But first I see the site.”
Ernie nodded his agreement.
Lieutenant Rhee glanced back and forth between us, not liking the idea. Finally, he sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. As he stood to his full height, he straightened his wrinkled khaki uniform and said, “Kapshida.” Let’s go.
Lieutenant Rhee, like most Korean cops, didn’t want the 8th Army CID interfering in his operation. What he wanted us to do was the same thing the powers that be here in Korea wanted US military police to do. Control GIs. Slap them down when they became unruly and particularly when their wild ways caused grief to Korean civilians.
Not that the Korean government wanted us gone. Quite the contrary. Communists on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone were massively equipped by the Soviet Bloc, fielding a standing army of over seven hundred thousand soldiers. South Korea’s army could hold the northern troops off for a while, but in a prolonged conflict, the naval and air support of the US would prove indispensable.
The Koreans needed us here for their very survival.
But sometimes those of us assigned to defend their country-especially young GIs far away from home and far away from everything that made them civilized-could prove to be a royal pain in the butt. Like when they became drunk and unruly and brawled with whomever happened to be in their way. Or when they drove their tanks and their armored vehicles too fast through sleepy, straw-thatched-hut villages. Or when they treated Korean women as if they were dolls to be toyed with and then discarded.
We ducked through a rickety wooden gate and entered a small courtyard. Earthen jars, probably filled with winter kimchee, lined the wall to the right. On the left, chicken wire housed a skinny white rooster who was busy scratching the earth. Flagstone steps led to a raised wooden platform that served as the floor of the hooch. In front of the sliding door sat an old woman. The neighbor, Lieutenant Rhee told me, and the first person to hear the four-year-old Myong-song when she burnt her hand and started wailing.
I nodded to the old woman. With sad, wrinkled eyes, she nodded back.