Chapter Nine

One

Joel came to Seoul on Thursday, the fifteenth of May, to catch a train to Kwangju, there to be reunited with Paul. In his backpack he carried his portable shortwave radio, which had lately become his constant companion. His bus from Anyang traced a circuitous course through Seoul’s southern suburbs and finally joined a mass of traffic on Taepyong Street, the eight-lane boulevard which, a mile south of the Capitol, passed directly in front of Seoul Station.

Traffic slowed to a crawl a couple of blocks before the station, which was unusual for mid-afternoon. Joel roused himself from reading and listened to the conversation of his fellow passengers. They spoke excitedly, in low tones, as schoolchildren do when they talk about misbehaving classmates who are sure to catch punishment. “Look at those guys — Where are they going? — He’s got a stick, see? — What’s he going to do with a big stick like that? — Look, they all have ’em!”

Joel looked out. Clusters of young men strode along the street confidently like frisky stallions, calmly accepting the awed stares of passers-by.

“What’s going on?” he whispered.

The view of Seoul Station and its broad plaza answered his question. The plaza, which Joel estimated to be the size of a ballpark, was packed with people in a restless, undulating sea of faces. The crowd overflowed the plaza and spilled out onto the street. He opened a window to listen: the low cacophony of a multitude of slogans all shouted at once, buzzed about. “Burn General Chon! — Trash the Yushin Constitution! — Democracy and Justice!”

Traffic ground to a halt. “I won’t get my train today,” Joel muttered, and he set out to walk the remaining mile to the Peace Corps office. By the time he reached the first intersection above the train station, traffic on Taepyong Street had begun to thin out. He surmised that traffic blockades had been set up nearby.

The unmistakable rumble of diesel engines appeared from around a corner and grew louder as armored personnel carriers and buses sped in close formation to cleared areas of the street. Riot police filed out. They wore the familiar gray-green body armor, wide-flanged helmets, and heavy boots. They also wore gas masks and carried large metal shields. Shiny black jeeps pulled up behind them, their roll bars mounted with tear gas generators.

The appearance of the police caused a stir among the students. The chanting stopped abruptly, then just as quickly began again with renewed intensity.

The riot police hung back, watching and waiting for reinforcements. Clusters of students began to march brazenly up toward City Hall and beyond, on the same street, to the Capitol. More joined in. A large triangular intersection, bounded by the Seoul Plaza Hotel, City Hall, and the old Doksu Palace, appeared to be their first destination.

Joel followed along with the students, only because he could not break away from them. The press of students around him was so great that he could hardly move. The best he could do was keep pushing slowly toward the edge of the crowd, hoping to escape down a side street and take refuge in the British Embassy nearby.

A woman at his side screamed through cupped hands: “Kill General Chon! Kill him! Rip his guts out!”

Traffic had now completely cleared out of Taepyong Street. A double line of riot police, backed by tear gas generators, stood along the east side of the street. The students lined the west side in disordered masses. They taunted the police by making brief forays into the middle of the street to hurl stones. The police stood expectantly, poised to move.

The order came when a pack of two dozen students entered the street not far from City Hall Plaza. They pranced into the street, whooping it up, emboldened by the police’s stillness. Barely had they reached the middle, however, when a squad sprinted toward them and, easily surrounding them, fell upon them with heavy batons. Three students were left lying on the pavement, hardly moving. Four were captured and hustled roughly behind the lines of police. The rest retreated, yelping with pain and fright, clutching broken arms and bleeding heads.

The incident spurred the students to another attack. Shouting angrily, they moved in bigger groups into the street. The police response was larger, too, and netted more students into custody with each short pursuit.

Joel watched the spectacle with numb fascination. On the students’ side, there was chaos; on the police’s, order. Both sides seemed to be probing the other, testing reactions to their actions.

Suddenly a voice, amplified through a bullhorn, shouted an order, and those police who had not yet put their gas masks over their faces quickly did so. Another order got the tear gas generators on the black jeeps turned on. The jeeps started running along the street’s center lanes, leaving thick white gas trails behind them.

A tickling sensation in Joel’s throat erupted into searing pain. His eyes flooded with tears, and caustic mucus poured freely from his nose. He stumbled blindly to the side of a nearby building. The students who had tied wet handkerchiefs around their faces fared better than the others in the clouds of gas; only slightly disabled, they carried their rocks to within throwing distance of the police, let them loose, and scurried back to the masses of their own lines. Those who came unprepared for the gas hacked and sputtered, crying out in pain; most of them had experienced tear gas before, as Joel had during his years in college, but this gas was different. It burned the lungs so much that the students nearly lost the ability to run. Joel caught the eye of one sufferer. His look told a story of shock and fear. “What is this?” he managed to utter through a fit of coughing.

The gas worked well for the short term: the students retreated to the side streets and forced the stranded civilians to run even faster to get away from them. The police did not pursue them beyond the students’ side of the street. They quickly returned to their own lines.

Joel ran to an alleyway just off the main street. There he found a cluster of students, about fifty in number, standing quietly, watching. Most had found something to cover their faces with. They seemed to be resting. He stood with them, relieved to be in a relatively quiet spot. He used the moment to take his handkerchief from his pocket, wet it from a helpful student’s canteen, and press it against his face.

“Kaja! Let’s go!” One of the students raised his fist and, with a deafening war whoop, led the entire lot out onto the street. They carried Joel along like a cork on a wave. He had gone many yards out onto the street before he knew what had happened; with great effort he fought his way out of the rear of the ambush and ran back to the alley, more out of breath than before.

As the fighting increased in intensity, time moved ever more slowly. The two sides lost themselves in war lust. More and more students, their reactions slowed by exertion and the effects of the gas, got caught by the police. They were beaten mercilessly in the street, in full view of their comrades at the curb, then hustled into buses to bleed and moan while the police went back for more. They would not get medical attention for hours. The police flaunted their brutality. One very tall member of the squad brought a dazed student into the street and, while staving off a shower of rocks with his shield, kicked him in the groin and the head until his heavy boots sent him in a motionless lump to the pavement. He and the policemen around him pantomimed laughter and dragged the student back behind their lines, leaving a swath of blood behind them. Other policemen along the line watched the spectacle and repeated it.

A line of abandoned buses was parked at the curb not far from where Joel stood. An excited shout came from a band of students near one of them. “The keys!” they said. “The keys are still in this one!” They pried open the door and scrambled in. With a sputter and a belch of smoke out of the tailpipe, the blue-and-white bus came to life. Cheers and chanting followed it as the student in the driver’s seat ground through its gears and sent it careening across the street, nearly out of control. Joel watched in horror. Whether intentionally or not — he could not tell which — the bus blind-sided a squad of police. The thud-thud of contact with the first pair of policemen and the flopping of a body beneath the wheels carried sickeningly to Joel’s side of the street. Some of the students around him gasped in horror, but most went into a paroxysm of cheering that turned to rage when the bus finally ground to a halt and came under attack. The hapless driver and his passengers were literally thrown out of the bus. Their heads crashed against the pavement. The policemen surrounded them and rained kicks and punches on them. All this was done in full view of the students. When the police left, all that would remain of the deed would be the many red splotches dotting Taepyong Street that day.

Joel had seen enough. More than enough.

He rushed away along with a cluster of middle-aged men to a nearby subway station. The closest one was outside the Seoul Plaza Hotel. He tried to descend with them into the station, but his way was blocked by hundreds of refugees eager to leave as quickly as they could. He fought his way down into the packed ticket area. Some people shoved change into the booths and ran to the turnstiles without waiting for their tickets; others vaulted through without paying.

A fresh wave of gas tainted the air. Joel had forgotten that tear gas is heavier than air and will sink to high concentrations in low areas. Soon the rush of people reversed and became a stampede trying to get out. The station spit him out into bright sunshine. The students, their noses and mouths covered desperado-style with handkerchiefs, waved truncheons and hurled rocks, but held to a line along the west side of the street. The police commanded the east side.

However, he found himself now on the same side of the street as the police, and well behind their positions: he had been turned around underground and had crossed the street down there. Being upwind of the action, the gas was not so bad and the area was scattered with curious onlookers.

Mark Follett was there, pacing briskly back and forth, straining to see.

“Joel! Hey, Joel! Over here. Can you believe it? Can you believe it? This is big, man. It’s big.”

“Were you over there?” Joel asked. “Did you see the fighting?”

“Well, no ... but you did? Hell! Tell me about it. What did you see?”

Joel knew that Mark wanted to be appalled, to be entertained by talk of a demolition derby. He shook his head. “I want a drink.” They ran a few blocks further east to the vast underground shopping complex beneath the Choson Hotel.

“What is this place?” he wondered as he descended into a darkened cocktail lounge. Clusters of well-dressed businessmen, many of them Westerners, huddled in conversations over drinks, talking calmly about matters that did not seem to excite them. A pianist in the corner tinkled out an easygoing version of a current Barry Manilow tune. Joel and Mark quieted down somewhat in the somnolent, smug atmosphere.

“Hell, I wish that guy on the piano’d find something else to play,” Mark whispered. “So what did you see out there? Molotov cocktails? The thing with the bus?”

“You don’t want to know,” Joel replied, “and I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Come on. Can’t you see how amazing all this is? It’s incredible!”

Just then a commotion began outside the smoked glass wall that separated the lounge from the arcade’s walkway. A student, his eyes red and swollen and his head streaked with blood, fell against the outside of the glass and slumped to the floor, leaving a long red smear behind. Most of the customers gasped but did nothing to help; a couple of them laughed nervously. Joel shook his head in disbelief. “They have no idea what’s going on out there,” he muttered to Mark. “These ignorant bastards sit in here making their deals, drinking together, having fun, and just down the street the biggest upheaval in years is killing and maiming people. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this.”

More students, all battle-weary and carrying rocks or sticks, and helping each other along, started pouring into the underground arcade. The pianist stopped playing. Several of the businessmen gingerly side-stepped the intruders and went away. The bartender, a normally relaxed man whom everyone called “Johnny”, muttered bleakly that the democracy movement was about to drive him out of business.

“They’re gonna send us home,” Mark stated flatly. He could not take his eyes off the muffled flow of injured students. “With all this going on, Peace Corps has got to send us home.”