Excerpt from Korea: Notes from the Edge

Winter

The bus pulled out of the terminal in Busan at seven in the morning. I felt as if we were slipping down the Gyeongbu Expressway like a paintbrush down a white wall. The road had barely any curves at all. We’d made this journey a couple of times on the KTX, the high-speed train that crosses South Korea, but the plan from now on was to save every last cent while we look for work. It was a five-hour journey to Seoul, with one 15-minute stop. At one of the stands selling food, Cecilia ordered a portion of jumokbap. I’ve developed a taste for these little balls of rice wrapped in a layer of seaweed, their centers filled with tuna and mayonnaise. The first time I tried them, my wife told me that jumokbap were common in the refugee camps after the Korean War. Fast food that was easy to prepare, perhaps because at the time the recipe was just rice with some salt. But I wanted something greasy to chase away the winter’s chill, so I chose the local version of a hotdog: a frankfurter on a long stick, encased in a spongy mass of cornmeal batter. As I took the first bite of my hotdog, I noticed the temperature up on a screen. It was like hearing a sentence being read out in court. It was 15 degrees below zero.

I was wearing my uniform for this silent battle against the cold. Woolly hat, two pairs of long-johns, knee-high boots, jacket, coat, and, in case that wasn’t enough, an undershirt made from a special fabric, a gift from my mother-in-law. It’s amazing, it clings to your body like a piece of women’s underwear. The important thing is that it fulfills its function perfectly. The problem was my legs, which every now and then suffered from horrible biting sensations. I’ve never been bitten by a dog, but I assume the feeling must be similar. As I smoked after finishing my sausage, I remembered something a veteran of the Korean War had told me five years ago, during my first trip to this country. It was a story I had written about before. Sergeant Yu was waiting for me at the end of one of the many alleyways in the district of Eul Ji-ro, the area of Seoul where you go to buy tiles, piping, mirrors: everything you need to do up an apartment. He was wearing a cap with the coat of arms of his regiment on it, a belt with a commemorative buckle, and a strip of blue leather at his neck that served as a tie. I had contacted him via a government organization set up for ex-combatants. I wanted to bring something full circle, to speak to someone who, over 60 years ago, had been on the same snow-covered ground Danilo Ortiz had stood on, a veteran I met a decade ago. Ortiz formed part of the contingent sent by the Colombian government in 1951 to fight in the Korean War. He spent half of the three years the conflict lasted with a radiotelephone over his shoulder, and the rest of the time in a prisoner of war camp run by the Chinese. I remember that he had a blue tiger tattooed on his forearm and was shy in a slightly serious way. That morning in the bus station, with the cold attacking in waves, I thought once again that Yu and Ortiz had quite a lot in common. Both had been born in small villages and had joined the army very young, after finishing school. Poverty had pushed them into the ranks. They had both formed part of a communications squadron. Yu had lost the tip of his left index finger in the war; Ortiz his right eye. When the fighting had ended, Sergeant Yu had been about to lose his toes, frozen by minus 15 degree temperatures, but a North Korean prisoner had saved them by spending...