Ping-Pong Heart

– 13-

I’d met her on a cold case we’d worked: an American soldier who’d been killed right after the end of the Korean War. For almost twenty years, the murder had remained unsolved. Her name was Doctor Yong In-ja, and she was in charge of the Itaewon branch of the Yongsan District Public Health Service. With her help, we’d closed the case.

She wasn’t a standout beauty, as Ernie had repeatedly mentioned to me, but she smiled often and radiated warmth. One thing led to another and we’d become close. I later discovered that her parents had been murdered by the right-wing reactionary forces who were fighting for control of Korea immediately after the war. They’d been leaders in a trade-unionist movement that sought true democracy, and were resisting the rule of the Koreans that had collaborated with the Japanese colonizers oppressing the country from 1910 through the end of World War II in 1945. She was committed to the same cause her parents had been devoted to, and it was this commitment that put her in danger. The military dictatorship of Pak Chung-hee saw her, and those of a like mind, as a threat to their iron-fisted control.

She soon escaped to North Korea, but when she ran into problems with the regime there as well, I’d helped her escape. Now she lived as a fugitive in Cholla-Namdo, South Cholla Province, and as far as I knew she lived either in or near the city of Mokpo. We had a son. His name was Il-yong, the First Dragon. I hadn’t seen him for almost a year now, and he’d soon be two years old.

Since she’d fled Seoul, she hadn’t contacted me. It was too dangerous. The Korean CIA had its tentacles deeply entrenched in all corners of Korean society. I also hadn’t attempted to search for her. If I had, the KNPs would almost certainly have followed me. An American in the southwest of Korea was unusual, and my movements would be reported and tracked. I couldn’t risk leading the extreme right wing of the Korean government to In-ja and our child. So I waited, hoping she’d reach out to me. She never did.

Ernie told me time and again to forget about her, to move on with my life. For months I couldn’t, but finally I realized that he was right. We’d never married and any further relationship between us was doomed by the forces that would just as soon arrest and interrogate her, torture her and dump her mutilated corpse in a shallow grave.

“She knows that,” Ernie told me. “That’s why she’s not in touch. She wants you to move on.”

And so I did. Finally. When I met Leah Prevault.

But when you have a woman you once considered to be your partner for life, and a son, maybe you never move on. It might not be possible.

After over an hour of driving we reached a split in the road. The sign to the left said busan, and the one to the right said mokpo. I veered to the right.

Ernie woke up. “You want me to take over?”

“I’m okay for now.”

“All right,” he said, crossing his arms and trying to get comfortable in the big canvas seat. We passed another billboard advertising Choco Pie, with the same cute girl smiling brightly.

Ernie knew why I was doing this. It was my chance. Miss Jo Kyong-ja’s hometown was Mokpo. Inspector Kill had told us that the KNPs would handle that aspect of the investigation, but he hadn’t told us specifically not to go there. Ernie and I could plausibly claim that we felt it was important for the investigation for us to actually visit Jo Kyong-ja’s home of record. It was a stretch, and we would almost certainly get our butts chewed for doing it, but nobody could accuse us of directly disobeying orders. And, just as importantly, it gave me a reason to go to Mokpo that the Korean National Police wouldn’t flag as suspicious. They wouldn’t wonder why an American investigator was prowling around Mokpo. They’d know. Or at least they’d think they knew.

How much could I find about the location of Doctor Yong In-ja and my son, Il-yong, under the guise of the Schultz investigation? Probably not much. But I had to try. Something deep down was telling me to go to Mokpo. It wasn’t rational. But this might be the only chance I’d ever have to go there, to see the city, to breathe the same air as In-ja and Il-yong. With no US military installations anywhere near Mokpo, the likelihood was vanishingly small that I’d ever have a reason to come here again. I had to take advantage of this opportunity. It would almost certainly be my last.

We finally rolled off the expressway and onto the broad road leading to the port city of Mokpo. Even out here, the sharp salty tang of the ocean bit into my nose, bringing me alert like smelling salts. Ernie rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Where the hell are we?”

“Mokpo,” I said.

We’d driven all night. The sun had been up for over an hour.

“Where we going?” Ernie asked.

“To the KNP headquarters,” I said. “I don’t want anyone to think we’re sneaking around.”

Ernie nodded.

We were unfamiliar with the city and didn’t have a map, but I stopped at a traffic circle next to a white-gloved cop on a platform directing traffic. In Korean, I asked him where we could find the KNP headquarters building. He waved and described two or three turns and streets. I thanked him and promptly forgot the instructions, but at least we were headed in the right direction. After a mile or so, I asked another cop who gave similar directions, and after a few minutes of wandering we pulled up to the big cement-block two-story building that housed the Mokpo headquarters of the Korean National Police.

We parked the jeep out back, Ernie padlocked the steering wheel, and we climbed out.

To say that we were gawked at like celebrities in the Mokpo police station is an understatement. We attracted so much attention, we were more like aliens who’d just landed in a spaceship. The cops down here, and the city’s general Korean population, saw very few foreigners and even fewer in military law enforcement. When we made it clear why we were here and mentioned Inspector Kill’s name, a young officer was assigned to us: Lieutenant Taek. He took us to the childhood home of Jo Kyong-ja.

“It is being watched twenty-four hours a day,” he said in passable English. “Nobody know.” Meaning the stakeout was clandestine.

We climbed into the back of a cramped Korean-made van and were introduced to two surveillance technicians. They let me look through a telescope that peeked through a hole drilled into the side of the van. Midday sunlight illuminated the scene.

“Mother live there and work there,” Taek said.

“And her son?”

“Yes. Now he in school.”

“High school?” I asked.

“Yes.”

It was a shanty in back of a fish cannery. Skinny dogs frolicked in the mud. A couple of toddlers wearing no diapers were being watched over by an old woman who squatted on a splintered wooden porch. Tin roofs spread over what appeared to be four or five hooches.

“How many families live there?” I asked.

“Twelve,” Lieutenant Taek replied.

“Twelve?”

He nodded.

Ernie took a look. The chomping on his ginseng gum sped up, but otherwise he showed no reaction.

“So the mom’s working in the cannery now?”

“Yes. And daughter not here.”

“Do you expect her to show up?”

He shrugged. “We don’t know. Seoul say watch, we watch.”

“Tell me about her, the mom. Who is she? What is she like?”

“She work in cannery,” he said.

“That’s it? That’s all you know?”

Lieutenant Taek paused, thinking something over. Apparently he decided that cooperating with us was better than facing the wrath of Gil Kwon-up, whose intimidating reputation reached even the very edges of the country. “She’s troublemaker,” he said.

Ernie sat back from the telescope, listening now.

“In what way?” I asked.

“She union. Not supposed to have union.”

The Pak Chung-hee government had banned unions. All except for the FOEU, the Foreign Organizations Employees Union-the one that represented the workers on the US Forces Korea compounds; in other words, the Korean civilians who worked for 8th Army. The workers in other industries, like steel foundries, ship-building docks or mining companies, were prohibited from forming unions on pain of death. The rationale was that the country couldn’t afford these unions yet. The rebuilding after the Korean War had to be done in a “cooperative spirit,” or the nation wouldn’t be able to lift itself out of poverty. This meant, in effect, that workers got the shaft while the chaebol, corporate conglomerates, made millions and continued to reinvest and grow larger.

“They have a union in this cannery?” I asked.

“No,” Lieutenant Taek said. “No can have. But secret, maybe they have.”

So the workers were organizing clandestinely. I’d heard about that. Just a few months ago, an illegal union had been formed by coal miners in the Taebaek Mountains. They’d brought production to a halt with a strike and even armed themselves to resist the KNP. Pak Chung-hee didn’t mess around. He sent in a battalion of ROK Army infantry, and they ruthlessly eliminated what the president considered to be an armed rebellion. None of this appeared in the Korean press, not even in the Pacific Stars and Stripes. I’d read about it in TIME magazine.

“So if she’s in a union,” I asked, “why haven’t you arrested her?”

“Maybe we do someday. Right now, we watch.”

“You want a bigger catch,” I said.

Lieutenant Taek looked at me, puzzled.

“A bigger fish,” I said, spreading my arms.

He smiled, understanding now.

“Do you think the North Koreans are helping the union?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe no. Anyway, we watch.”

I took another look through the telescope. The gigantic cannery loomed over dozens of tin-roofed shanties. What was taking place behind those walls was probably a scene right from an Upton Sinclair novel, and in a way I was glad I couldn’t see it. I thought of another question.

“What’s it mean, koshigi?”

Lieutenant Taek smiled even more broadly. “Who teach you?”

“I heard it. In Seoul.”

Taek shook his head. “Seoul people no speak. Only Cholla people.”

Of course, I knew that Miss Jo was from here, from Cholla province. “What’s it mean?” I asked.

Lieutenant Taek thought about that. “It’s like when you forget something or don’t know. So you wanna say something, anything.”

“So it means nothing,” I said.

“Or everything,” Taek responded. “But most important thing, koshigi means you’re Cholla people.”

“And Cholla people are troublemakers,” Ernie said.

Taek’s face darkened. He turned to Ernie. “Seoul people say so. Maybe they are troublemakers.”

His face flushed red. He’d said more than he intended to. But what he’d shown me was that the ancient animosity between the people of Cholla, who’d once been an independent kingdom, and those who imposed a central government from Seoul, ran very deep indeed.

I thanked Lieutenant Taek for his help and we returned to KNP headquarters.

An hour before noon, Ernie and I drove out to a long wharf near the cannery. It was lined with a promenade along the beach and what appeared to be hundreds of small fish eateries. Live mackerel splashed in green tanks. We climbed out of the jeep and walked.

“Do you suppose they’re close?” Ernie asked, meaning In-ja and my son.

“Impossible to say.”

“Right,” Ernie said. “You don’t know where they are, and if you try to find them you put them both in danger.”

“You think they’d hurt the boy?”

“Probably not,” Ernie replied. “But he’d be left without a mother.”

I nodded, knowing from experience how painful that was. My mother died when I was a toddler. My father disappeared into the endless murky sea known as Mexico. I’d been brought up by the Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles, moving from foster home to foster home. When I turned seventeen, I joined the Army.

Ernie stared out to sea. A blue KNP sedan sat parked near the beach, not too far from our jeep.

“They’re watching,” Ernie said.

“I know.”

He sighed. “You need to let it go, Sueno. In-ja and Il-yong have made a life without you. Not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice. Now it’s up to you. You can wallow in grief forever or you can suck it up and get on with it.”

“Get on with my life?”

“Yeah. With somebody else.”

“You mean Leah.”

“Whoever. That’s up to you. But someone. You’re not like me. You’re a homebody, a one-woman man.”

Beyond the vast bay in front of us, small islands dotted the horizon.

“You want some haemul-tang?” I asked. Ernie stared at me blankly. “Fish soup,” I translated.

“Before we hit the road?”

“Yes,” I said. “Before we hit the road.”

“You’re on,” Ernie said, patting the envelope in his pocket. “I’m buying.”