“Maybe it’ll be too hot for them,” joked a platoon leader in one of the rear buses.
“It’s too hot now,” replied one of those standing in the aisles. “This gear’s killing me.”
There was a chorus of mock sympathy and a punching of shields.
“You’ll have rest soon enough, Chun,” said the platoon leader. “Some student’ll put you on your ass.”
“I’ll break his head first,” said Chun, lifting his truncheon.
“You monster!” cried out another. “What if it’s a woman?”
“Then I’ll stick it somewhere else,” Chun retorted.
“Someone’ll have to show you where it is.”
“I know where it is.” Chun was twenty-four, son of a janitor, and a policeman who hated university students with a passion. It wasn’t only the fact that he had come from a poor family and had missed out on the opportunity to go further than high school that made him feel so hostile toward the students — rather it was what he saw as their blatant hypocrisy. The same hooligans who would be throwing rocks and insults at him today would, in four years time, be executive trainees for Hyundai, Samsung, or some other giant chaebol while Chun would still be a policeman fighting a new generation of students shouting their obligatory anti-U.S. slogans. The latest were “Drive away the American bastards!” and “Down with the government!” banners scrawled in their own blood. Oh, some of them, the leaders, were genuine Communists, and Chun hated them the most for inciting the more gullible in the giant “reunification rallies,” thousands of students deafeningly applauded the Democratic Reunification Party’s belly-crawling overtures to Pyongyang. But Chun believed most of them were simply out for excitement under the pretense of it being serious political protest. It was a lark, a time to vent all the teenagers’ pent-up rage against parents forever pressuring them to Kongbu haera! — “Study! Study!” A chance to lash out at police, teachers — against all the Confucian-bred respect for authority.
Chun filed out with the rest of his platoon near City Hall, but designated as a “flying wedge,” his platoon would not remain at any particular junction. Instead it would be on standby — ready to move quickly to reinforce weak spots in the H. Chun took great pride in knowing he was a member of the most experienced riot police in the world. Never mind all the “Cherry Berets”—the old “Olympic Police”—sliding headfirst down ropes like monkeys for the evening news crews, or the blue-denimed National Police; when the big battalions of protesters came out, when it went from bricks to Molotov cocktails, it was Chun and the other “Darth Vaders,” the black-helmeted riot police, who settled it. A squad of neatly turned out National Police passed by, their white helmets wonderful targets for any projectile. One of them waved. Chun nodded with stiff formality; the riot police remained aloof. Someone in Chun’s platoon said the Catholics and Protestants were coming out in support of the students.
“So?” a rookie asked.
“Protestants!” replied a corporal. “That’s how they got their name, right? Protest-tants. Means golchikkori—troublemakers!” As far as Chun was concerned, the Catholics were no better. And if it was true the Christians were going to get involved, it would be a long, hard day. Students might then win middle-class support. The worst possible combination.
He heard a crackle of radio static; another three platoons, a hundred men in all, were being requested by the officer in charge of policing the square around Myongdong Cathedral. Catholic nuns were forming a human chain, swaying and singing hymns. Then there was a call from police HQ diverting two platoons to Yonsei University in the west. Less than a minute later an urgent plea came in from Korea University campus in the city’s northeast. This was unusual, the students normally favoring inner-city streets for their protests, where they could best be concentrated to gain maximum TV coverage and where if you ran out of paving stones, there were always construction sites — plenty of loose brick. Besides, the Molotov cocktails, made mostly with empty OB and Crown beer bottles, were much more effective against closely packed police in city streets than on open campuses. What was behind the new tactic? Chun wondered.
A “most urgent” call came in for a “wedge” at the corner of Yulgog and Donhua about four blocks northeast of the U.S. Embassy.
The first shower of projectiles thudded against the bus’s thick window mesh as it passed Changdokkung Palace on the left. Chun could see the students, about two thousand, he guessed, overwhelming a hundred or so National Police, white helmets dotting the huge crowd as it swarmed about the entrance to the Secret Garden — a phalanx of placards demanding reunification. Soon the crowd of students, half already inside the gate, was expanding, contracting, and expanding again, at once controlled and uncontrollable, pushing and pulling, its waves surging through the gates, spilling into the gardens.
“Beautiful!” said Chun. “Those bastards are bottled up inside by the wall. Perch in a pond.” He pulled out his club. “Boom! Boom!”
“Chun!”
“Sir?”
“You’re on tear gas.”
“Yes, sir,” said Chun, cursing under his breath. He badly wanted to use the stick. He broke open the short, wide-barreled gun and plopped in a canister of “pepper” gas, the most acrid, then snapped the gun shut. Next he tightened his gas mask and flipped down the steel mesh face guard. The platoon, now in its “Darth Vaders,” was ready.
“Don’t be disappointed, Chun,” said a muffled voice. “Fire ‘em off quickly. Then you can go in with the butt.”
“Perepi”—”TV!” somebody shouted. “Migook”— “American!” Chun pulled the stock into his shoulder, aiming high as if readying for a lob shot, but the moment the cameras were gone or their view blocked by the wall, he intended to fire straight into the crowd. And if it zapped one of the protesters full force on the head—”Tough tit!” Accident.
“Wedge forward!” came the command, and Chun fired.
Four of the half-dozen leaders of the riot, all members of the DRP, Democratic Reunification Party, were at the Secret Garden at the time, but this wasn’t known until film of the incident was replayed several days after by police. By then it was too late. The two KCIA men at the garden entrance never stood a chance, swept along in the irresistible tide of students and riot police — much of the crowd lost from view in the gardens, where giant billows of tear gas enveloped the ginkgo trees and evergreens like morning mist, many of the students, eyes burning, stumbling blindly into the lily ponds, the riot police now in “free run,” clubbing as they went, leaving the dazed and fallen to be arrested or clubbed again and dragged away to the buses by the more lightly equipped National Police regrouping in the rear.
The younger of the two KCIA men, his voice drowned in the cacophony of screaming students fleeing from the gas, was knocked down, still holding his coat, his other hand reaching into his shirt pocket, extracting his KCIA card. The next instant he was trampled underfoot, warm blood streaming down his face, unable to see. He lost consciousness.