My latest Korea Times article is a review of "Tiger Season: A Novel of Korea," as well as an interview with the author, Gojan Nikolich, who was kind enough to answer a series of questions. I really enjoyed the novel. There have been a small number of novels by former US soldiers about the world of US base camp towns in Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, but Tiger Season stands out above the others. Another I remember was an engaging-enough story, if featuring too much of the 'soldier and sex worker with a heart of gold' for my tastes, but ultimately was incredibly disappointing due to its abrupt ending. That's most certainly not the case for Tiger Season, which is very carefully constructed, as I note in my article.
Below are the (lightly-edited) original responses to my questions. Many thanks to Gojan Nikolich for allowing me to post these:
"When I Was There:
I served my Korea tour as an E5 Sergeant with the 2nd Infantry Division in 1970-71 at Camp Howze (Bongilchon) and Camp Casey (Dongducheon), where I worked as a military journalist/public affairs specialist and as editor of the 2nd ID newspaper. I traveled frequently on army reporting assignments and also as a stringer for the Tokyo office of Pacific Stars & Stripes, where the division newspaper was composed and printed. I wrote about and attended meetings at Panmunjom as part of my public affairs job, so that’s where I gathered some of my personal impressions for the book. This was during a busy period of DMZ/North Korean activity following the 1968 release of the Pueblo crew.
Personal Experience:
It wasn’t difficult to take advantage of my own history for a book like this, but I hope it’s been adequately disguised. The fiction of probability is often truer than the truth.
In 1970 I was involved in a patrol jeep incident along the DMZ that was similar to the one depicted in the book — both the crash off the cliff and the injuries of the main character. After spending several months in hospitals in Seoul and Busan, I too searched for the mystery farmer/guardian angel who mysteriously happened to call in a rescue helicopter. Sadly, I was never able to thank him. I’ve had a big soft spot in my heart for Koreans ever since.
During my hospital rehab, with nothing else to do, I scribbled my thoughts about Korea’s strange camp town world into a notebook that ended up packed away and forgotten for 50+ years in a box that I didn’t discover until a few years ago when I was cleaning out my garage. Those notes sparked memories, so I used the fictional vehicle of Eddie Profar, Jia the courtesan, Yevgeny Lee and the tiger to tell the story.
I’m glad I was an old geezer before I wrote about Korea. The younger version of me couldn’t have done it properly.
Research:
My research for this project was selective and based on what would drive the narrative and the plot, so a scholar I am not. I used creative license to put certain historical facts into perspective and tried to be aware of Korea’s evolving attitude regarding the history of US military camp towns. Until a few years ago, the subject of sanctioned post-war brothels along the DMZ was largely ignored by the US public and media, although the Korea Times has written about the military border town controversy quite extensively. Much of my research was to get a sense of Korea’s refugee crisis during those early months of the war and to explain how this was affected by the US Army’s “Pusan Perimeter” during the late summer of 1950. This is the time when Jia and her family attempted to flee south from their village.
Why 1968:
I set the book in 1968 because that was the height of the so-called “Little Korean War” (1966-69), and this seemed to provide me with all the ingredients needed to introduce the reader to the neglected tension of those times. This was also the height of Korea’s camp town era. I wanted to tell that tale and relate it to the controversial (and under-reported) Cold War aftermath of the Korean War itself. I also felt that someone should talk about the refugee and orphan history of many of the women who were recruited involuntarily into the kijichon world.
True Or Not:
• To my knowledge, nobody who negotiated at Panmunjom ever wore a catheter, although many of us discussed how this might offer a certain advantage during long summer arguments with the North Koreans, who always seemed reluctant to get up and use the bathroom during their marathon Panmunjom meetings.
• Yep, I once attended a mandatory lecture and graphic slide show during which we were told about the consequences of catching VD.
• The outdoor DMZ propaganda broadcasts were introduced by the Park Chung Hee government and the DJs at AFKN did occasionally contribute parody musical stunts, though this wasn’t encouraged and didn’t happen with the frequency that I suggest in the book.
• Soldiers on duty at night on the DMZ loved to bullshit each other, so I’d heard about ghost-story talk of a roaming tiger loose out on the ice of the Imjin River. I imagined how this would put a little extra jump in your step while working at night along the fence.
* The vibe at the camp’s nightclub was as described in the book.
* The train trip from Busan to Seoul, including the Korean family that shows kindness to Eddie and gives him food…that was true and I made the same trip after I was released from the hospital.
Writers I Like:
I’ll read anything from the most trashy, pulpy thriller or cowboy western to the best of all the 19th century Russians to Faulkner and Hemingway. Charles Portis is a favorite. Anything by Cormac McCarthy, Vonnegut and Don DeLillo. Murakami is another. I actually read much more non-fiction than fiction and keep re-reading the writers I’ve always liked."
As a follow-up to his answers I asked about a few more topics, and wondered if the 2ID newspaper he worked for was the Indianhead, to which he answered, Yes, and included some clippings, "along with the Indianhead newspaper masthead, just to give you a sense of the general vibe of what was being written at the time":
"The Army brass pretty much left us alone, though they would occasionally insist on a positive PR twist to a story that might favor official military policy. This was to be expected. However, being in our early twenties, we’d play a cat and mouse game and sneak in reporting with subtle references that GIs would fully understand. For some unknown reason, they allowed me to write a free-form opinion column (“Smoke Signals”) that sometimes got me into trouble. I once mocked the 2nd Div commanding general for building an expensive duck pond and pet duck shelter behind the HQ building. The company CO called me on the carpet and ripped into me to never write something like that again…or else.
"A few months later they gave me a medal for writing exactly that kind of stuff, much of it pretty amateurish in hindsight. The US Army operates in mysterious ways.
I recall that there was a cooperative back-and-forth story pickup arrangement with Stars & Stripes in which some soldiers were attached as staffers out of Tokyo or 8th Army in Yongsan. My stringer stuff got used, bylined and not, and sometimes the Indianhead would contribute reporting as part of a S&S compilation story. The wire services and Army Times would also use our material, especially photos. I’d re-write and edit certain reporting to submit to S&S while I was in Tokyo every two weeks to lay out and print the division newspaper.
Regarding The 1971 Race Riot:
Yes, I remember that event but was traveling out of the area when it happened. I went into the hospital in late January 1971 following my injury, so was out of the entire news loop for a few months.
Yes, the GI clubs seemed to be generally divided based on the category of music they played, by race, and according to the unwritten rules and preferences of the “business women” and the bar owners. There were many exceptions, however. Some clubs catered to older NCOs, some skewed toward officers. Some to African Americans. I remember one club that only played country music and so attracted those customers accordingly.
The Army often put clubs off-limits for a variety of reasons, including for discriminating against black soldiers. Mostly it was because a club had too many drug use reports from the MPs or if their bar workers exceeded accepted VD rates. The newspaper would announce off-limit clubs. I remember a general feeling of underlying tension that prevailed some nights in the village outside of Camp Casey — Tongduchon, known as “TDC” and now spelled “Dongducheon.” TDC was the largest camp town along the DMZ at that time. Most of the streets were barely paved. This was the tail-end of the 1960s civil rights era in the US, so most everyone was aware of the racial issues at hand since we’d already experienced the same unrest back home, especially if you came from a large city. On a one-on-one basis, I had the sense that the races worked together routinely well on the DMZ itself (at guard posts, together on patrols, etc) and I don’t recall individual conflicts other than when there were organized public events like the Yongiugol “rally.” Again, that’s my general memory of things. I think if something dramatically stood out that I would recall it with more clarity.
Regarding Marijuana:
I don’t remember anything ever tightening up regarding the smoking of weed, though it was officially verboten. You could easily get a big fat paper bag of grass for about $10 from any number of sources: a Korean houseboy at the barracks, a shop owner outside the front gate at Camp Casey or directly from one of the girls at a club, who would expect a tip for the convenient middle man service. The main hard drugs used at the time seemed to be Meth and Seconal.
Itaewon:
I personally never visited Itaewon, which was a long and inconvenient bus ride away. The DMZ area, though only about 40 miles from Seoul, was considered to be in the boonies and anyone stationed in or near Yongsan was thought to have a cushy Korea tour assignment. Whatever I knew of Itaewon came from someone else’s stories. I do remember it being considered more expensive than the local village club district. I believe that all the camp town club districts operated under similar un-written rules of conduct for GIs. The camp town culture was similar everywhere and had been honed and perfected since the 1950s.
Below is an answer to a question for those who have read the book, since it's certainly a spoiler.
Eddie’s Final Phone Call:
Yes, the young woman who return’s Eddie’s call was his daughter. I kept it vague and left it up to the reader to speculate if he realized this or not as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror having his heart attack while the phone rang. I like to believe that yes, he knew…but it was too late, of course. His daughter is among the visitors at the hospice.
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