honchos arrive: staff colonels from the 2nd Infantry Division, every one a full bird. Then, according to Brandy, Jill was forced to stand outside the front of the club, in uniform, and make sure no uninvited guests entered.
She didn’t like the duty. She didn’t like what was going on inside the WVOW. She didn’t like the additional business girls who were brought over by Pak Tong-i and other local businessmen. And she didn’t like the photographs that were shown to her later, photos taken secretly by Miss Kim Yong-ai. Photos of most of the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division engaged in various compromising positions with the Korean business girls who tended to be less than half their ages.
Actually, I’d heard of mafia meetings before. They’re a tradition in the U.S. Army. Staff officers get together during off-duty hours in an informal setting and exchange ideas concerning the best ways to improve operations in the division and the best ways to effectively implement the policies of the commanding general. Nothing wrong with that. But apparently the participants at the 2nd Infantry Division had lost sight of the original intent of the meetings.
Maybe a male MP assigned to the same job as Jill Matthewson would’ve laughed the whole thing off. Maybe he would’ve slugged down a few bottles of the free beer and grabbed one of the business girls for himself and pulled her into a back room when none of the honchos were watching. Instead of joining the frivolities, Jill had been forced to listen to the complaints of her friend, Kim Yong-ai. And witness her tears.
“She stripper,” Brandy told us indignantly. “Not supposed to be business girl. But honchos grab her while she dance. She say stop but they no stop. Pretty soon her clothes off, she on floor, and they do her same-same business girl.”
Ernie didn’t laugh although for a moment his eyes twinkled as if he wanted to. But quickly he realized that the distinction between a dancer and a prostitute was an important one, at least to the women involved. In a Confucian society, status and position in society is everything. And when it’s violated, especially when it’s violated by foreigners, the loss of face hurts almost as much, and sometimes more, than any physical abuse suffered.
You could bet that the young Korean business girls at the mafia meetings didn’t really want to be there either. Poverty and neglect had forced them into their world of shame. But at least when they walked into the WVOW, they knew what to expect. Kim Yong-ai, according to Brandy, was outraged by her treatment. But who could she complain to? Not Pak Tong-i; he was beholden for his living to the powers that be. Not the Korean National Police; they worked hand in hand with the honchos at the 2nd Infantry Division and certainly knew about, and maybe even participated in, the mafia meetings. And she couldn’t complain to the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police, they were the ones who had set up the party. Miss Kim Yong-ai had no one in the world to complain to. No one, that is, except Corporal Jill Matthewson.
I thought of the two thousand dollars Jill and Miss Kim had paid Pak Tong-i and I asked Brandy about it. “Did Jill ever mention money to you?”
“Money? No. I just know she pissed off. So was Kim Yong-ai.”
“So what were they going to do about it?” Ernie asked.
“I don’t know,” Brandy answered. “Next thing, they karra chogi.” They ran away.
What Brandy told us was something I should’ve figured for myself. It was a missing link that stitched a lot of disparate elements together, that showed us how Corporal Jill Matthewson and the stripper, Kim Yong-ai, and the booking agent, Pak Tong-i, and the honchos of the 2nd Infantry Division were tied together.
It had all the elements that so often lead to crime. Money: two thousand dollars that suddenly appeared to pay off Kim Yong-ai’s debts. Sex: the daily sexual harassment of an American female MP and the forced sexual degradation of a Korean stripper. Power: the wrath of the 2nd Infantry Division power structure that someone would have the temerity to disappear and cause them embarrassment. An embarrassment that rose not only as high as 8th Army headquarters but all the way to the United States Congress.
9
It was too dangerous to drive Ernie’s jeep back into the Division AO. The MPs would’ve taken note of the unit designation and jeep number stenciled on the bumper. Instead, Ernie left it in the care of a buck sergeant with grease-stained fingers at the Camp Red Cloud motor pool, promising him a free pizza dinner at the Papa-san Club upon our return.
Staff Sergeant Riley made us promise once more that we’d be back at 8th Army headquarters for duty Monday morning. “Tonight and Sunday,” he said. “That’s all the time you’ve got. If you don’t find Matthewson by then, you’re back in Seoul where you belong.”
We agreed. Then he nodded goodbye to Brandy and drove his sedan back to Seoul.
In front of the Camp Red Cloud main gate, Ernie, Brandy, and I waved down a kimchee cab. Brandy gave directions to a village east of here known as Koyang. We traveled on back roads, avoiding the MSR. Our goal was to dodge all 2nd Infantry Division checkpoints, to sneak back into the 2nd Infantry Division area of operations without being noticed.
Koyang was a small cluster of buildings, one of which featured the Chinese characters for sokyu-“rock oil”- overhead: a gas station. The little town also had a noodle shop and a transshipment point for produce. We climbed out of the cab, shivered in the cold February wind, and after we paid the driver, we watched him make a U-turn and speed back toward Uijongbu.
The shadows of quivering poplar trees began to grow long; evening would soon be upon us. Ernie and I checked our pockets. We each had about forty bucks on us, plenty to last us until we returned to Seoul Monday morning.
Brandy entered the noodle shop, chatted with the owner, and within five minutes another local cab pulled up, ready to transport us north to Bopwon-ni. Legal Hall Village. We climbed in and the little sedan sped north. The two-lane road followed a meandering valley. Fallow rice paddies spread on one side and elm-covered hills rose on the other. Swaths of snow clung to the hills although, since we’d arrived, there’d been no new snowfalls. Unusual for February. Atop many of the hills were burial mounds and atop one of them was an elaborate stone-carved statute of an ancient king of the Yi Dynasty.
“It’s like another world back here,” Ernie said.
I knew what he meant. Even though we were only some twenty miles north of Seoul as the crow flies, there was a mountain range between us and Seoul and smaller ranges of hills on either side of this valley. Few modern amenities existed back here. Telephone and electrical lines paralleled the road and that was about it. Gazing in any direction, one could imagine that he’d been transported back in time to the ancient kingdom known as the Land of the Morning Calm. The sun sank behind the hills to the west, darkening straw-thatched roofs.
There were few military installations in this valley. No U.S. bases and only one or two small ROK Army compounds specializing in communications. Although we were only fifteen or so miles south of the DMZ, we were tucked snugly between the two main invasion routes known as the Western Corridor and the Eastern Corridor. We were slipping into 2nd Infantry Division territory stealthily. And if the KNPs interviewed either one of our cab drivers, neither would be able to give them our entire route.
I still didn’t know how Brandy had hooked up with Staff Sergeant Riley. I asked and she told us.
“When you come look for me last night, taaksan trouble.” A lot of trouble. “All kimchee business girl, all GI soul brother, taaksan kul-laso.” Very angry. “Why I bring MP T-shirt Black Cat Club? they ask me. I say you not MP, you CID.”
I’m sure that calmed them down.
“So I go checky-checky KNP police station. Nobody outside. I wait. Pretty soon, GI car come. Not jeep. Not tank. Not big truck.”
“It was a sedan,” Ernie said.
“Right. So must be Eight Army. Skinny GI get out, crooked teeth, I go talk to him. He like me. He buy me drink before go in KNP station, pretty soon he tell me everything about you two guys, so I tell him I need to talk to you so he let me hide in back of GI car.”
“That’s Riley,” Ernie said. “Spills anything to a pretty face.”
“After a drink or two,” I added.
As we sped along the narrow country lane, we spoke freely, assuming that the driver couldn’t understand
