It’s me. Ryu Yohan.
They walk around the rock and enter. There is a puddle on the other side and a large, open space. In spite of themselves, they are surprised. Judging from the voices chattering under their breath in the dark, there seems to be at least a few dozen men. The youth from the local church who was standing guard at the rock comes forward.
Yohan, we’re in big trouble. We hear Chaeryŏng is in absolute pandemonium.
So. It really happened.
Someone calls out to Yohan from the back of the crowd.
Chairman Ryu — we’re here, too.
It is the youth group leader and the young deacon Yohan had met in Chaeryŏng. They all have rifles slung over their shoulders and cartridge belts at their waists. Some are even equipped with hand grenades. A young man from Mount Kuwŏl who was at Chaeryŏng from Mount Kuwŏl and a man from the Youth Corps call Sangho aside to discuss something. All the young men from Sŏbu Church in Chaeryŏng start speaking to Yohan at the same time.
The People’s Army took over the whole town! My entire
family was murdered!
When did this happen?
We just barely made it out of there!
Are you the only survivors?
No way to know — we just scattered in every direction.
Sinch’ŏn must rise up — we can’t just take this sitting
down!
We’re running out of time.
Sangho raises his voice, calling for everyone’s attention, All right, all right. Let’s put our heads together. If we don’t act right away, Sinch’ŏn, too, will end up a whirlpool of blood. We have to secure public order before the Crusaders arrive. Anyone who wants to survive must fight.
We must rise at once! Tomorrow!
We have to take over the town first.
Once we’ve taken over, we need to eliminate anyone who shows the least sign of resistance.
Now, now, we just have to hold out for a couple more days. The Reds are retreating even now, and they’re undermanned.
As soon as the sun sets tomorrow, we need to assemble our forces, one group in Namsan and another here in Hwasan, and mount a surprise attack.
It is agreed that they will take action the next night. They decide which buildings should be occupied. The first target is the police station, where they will be able to secure some more weapons. Next, they decide to organize a squad to take over the county hall, the office of the Democratic Youth League and Women’s League, and the office of the Department of Defense. They plan to take over the entire town first and arrest any Reds, along with their families, that live in or near town — all before dawn. It is the only way to ensure their own safety. Yohan makes a suggestion.
When dawn breaks, we must be prepared to give our lives to God. We may have to make do without a hymn, but we must have a prayer. Now, let us pray.
They all lower their heads. Yohan begins his prayer in a low voice.
Our Father in Heaven, we have guarded our faith under the oppression of the Communists, the enemy of the Holy Ghost. Thou hast told us to wear the armor of God, to become strong so that we can fight against the scheming designs of the devil. Thou hast shown us that the battle we wage is not a battle of flesh and blood but a battle for sacred service and divine power, a battle against the rulers of the dark world, against Satan, that evil spirit. The only way we will win this war is to rely upon the power of God and to prepare ourselves with the weapons of God. The Crusaders of freedom are just around the corner, coming to liberate our brothers in faith, but the army of Satan continues to threaten us. Let Michael, the Archangel, come among us and grant us the wisdom and courage that was once bestowed upon Joshua and David.
The prayer complete, they all raise their heads. Each young man, like one enveloped by the flames of the Holy Ghost, burns with hatred and abhorrence — for Satan himself.
The next day, we all went down into our respective villages and gathered up our peers, other men who’d been lying low. Then we heard that some of the men from the meeting we held the night before, the ones whose beliefs were well known in their villages, had been arrested by armed police officers and members of the Democratic Youth League later that same night. I was waiting at the funeral house, in hiding once more, when my brother Yosŏp came to tell me that Father, too, had taken refuge. I asked him where, and he said that he was in the same place I’d hidden before, under the wooden floor of our outer wing. I was relieved — I’d hidden there safely for three months. Yosŏp told me that Pak Illang had brought a bunch of men and combed through our house. Sangho joined us later on. He said that his father, Presbyter Cho, had been taken prisoner and that we needed to go rescue him immediately. We divided the party into detachments, joining forces with young men from all the villages in the area — Ch’ansaem, Palsan, Yongdaengi, Onjŏng, and Sansuri. We moved out towards Hwasan, avoiding the main roads by taking the paths that cut between the rice paddies and dry fields. There were quite a number of us, from all the neighborhoods around town except for Kyot’amni.
It wasn’t until ten o’clock that we all managed to regroup in Hwasan. Christians from the lower township were in charge of the gathering in Namsan, and we heard quite a few had come together there as well. Initially, we numbered about three or four hundred total. Among those of us waiting in Hwasan were some who had fought in Chaeryŏng, so we had about sixty people with arms. All through the night more young men kept on coming to join us, and so our numbers kept increasing. Silently, we moved down into town. The men with firearms went first; those who had nothing but cudgels and farming equipment fell behind. We knew there wouldn’t be many people at the police station or the county hall, so we weren’t too scared. The two buildings faced each other, so we divided the party and attacked both simultaneously. By the time we got to the center of town, the Namsan group was coming in, too. The men guarding the police station couldn’t put up much of a fight against a force our size. We passed through the front gates with no trouble at all and gunned down the man who’d been standing guard, running straight on into the building. We opened every door and shot anyone we found on the other side. Within ten minutes, we had the entire two-story police station under our control. After a few shots over at the county hall, it quieted down there, too.
We sent an armed party to the office of the Department of Political Defense and inspected the armory in the police station. Those of us who’d had nothing but clubs and scythes now had real weapons. That’s when the group that was supposed to handle the Department of Political Defense sent for us — they needed us to hurry over there. Sangho and I rushed over to find them holding two prisoners. There had been six at first, but four had resisted during the attack, and were shot. The enemy had been interrogating the believers they had taken into custody. As soon as they received news about the uprising in Chaeryŏng, they’d started executing the prisoners. If only we had put our plan into action a day earlier, those men might have lived. We found about thirty bodies in a well in the backyard. The body of Sangho’s father was there, too. It looked like the enemy had driven the prisoners into a well and thrown a hand grenade in after them. The division of the People’s Army that had been in Chaeryŏng had already moved north, in the direction of Hwangju and Sariwŏn. The enemy we came across that day had been left behind — they were cut off from their army, completely isolated. They had taken care of the rebels, as they called us, but they hadn’t had time to evacuate yet. After questioning the prisoners, we sensed that they had been planning to leave the next day.