My Grandfather’s Korean War Story (The Crisis)

It had been only a short while since the war broke out and the villagers were dragged off by conscription, yet the front lines had been pushed back so far that Jeolla Province had fallen. Since National Highway 1 ran right through the middle of the village, the world changed in an instant. The North Korean army arrived, and people wearing armbands appeared and gathered the villagers into a circle on the schoolyard. They shouted that from now on everyone would live well together. Meanwhile, someone died, and an ominous air hung over everything.

After a few weeks, the world changed again. The people with armbands and the North Korean soldiers vanished without a trace. It was a night not long after that. My grandfather was on his way back from a brief visit to the neighboring village. Those days were different from now. My grandfather was a young man, and the night was still lit only by moonlight and starlight. The season was summer. The only sounds were the chirping of insects and the croaking of frogs. Or so he thought…

Halt. Move and I’ll shoot.

He froze on the spot and looked toward where the voice had come from. Even though he had walked this road for twenty years, all he could see was darkness, as if it were unfamiliar. As the voice in the darkness ordered, he moved toward it. But there was still only darkness, and he could see nothing. Only when he felt something approaching beneath his chin did anything begin to come into view.

It was a bayonet.

Where are you going?

The owner of the bayonet was still nowhere to be seen, but it flashed through his mind that if he said the wrong thing here, or even hesitated for a moment, he would not make it out alive. But what was he supposed to answer? He had no idea when the North Korean soldiers had disappeared, so had the South Korean army returned? In any case, all that was visible under the faint moonlight was the bayonet. A bayonet?

I’m on my way to the people’s assembly.

The bayonet glinting in the moonlight had the shape of a triangular metal spike. It was not the bladed bayonet of the South Korean army, but the bayonet of the North Korean army. After a moment, the bayonet at the tip of his chin disappeared into the darkness.

Go on.

That was what the voice in the darkness said. And that was the end of it.

When day broke the next morning, the North Korean soldiers were nowhere to be seen. He never saw them in the village again. As if they had never been there at all.