From the Fatherland, with Love, page 32
“Maezono Yoshio, I am arresting you on charges of immorality, financial misconduct, and illicit personal enrichment,” the police officer said, reading out the arrest warrant. As the officer took him by the arm and was about to handcuff him, a man with a shaved head clattered up behind them. He was dressed in a running shirt, pajama bottoms, and sandals with white socks, and he was carrying a shotgun over his shoulder. Bowing his head and repeatedly apologizing, he squeezed between the policemen to reach Maezono. Seeing the shotgun, the cops stepped back to make way for him. Maezono and the skinhead exchanged a glance, and Maezono spoke to the officer with the handcuffs. “We’ll go with you, but could you call those guys off?” he said, indicating the Special Police. The shotgun-toting skinhead kept bowing and apologizing obsequiously, but he was sweating and seemed thoroughly wired, as though he’d been taking stimulants. Maezono drew closer to the cop, presumably to shield himself from the guns leveled at him.
The NHK cameraman took a couple of steps forward, trying to get a shot of Maezono’s face. Seeing this, the skinhead shouted, “Hey, back off, willya!” He unshouldered the shotgun and aimed it at the cameraman. Instantly Tak, who was standing diagonally to the left behind Maezono, raised his Kalashnikov and fired two shots. Orange flames spouted from the barrel, and Yokogawa felt he’d actually seen the slugs drill into the side of the man’s head. A gaping hole appeared there and the skull exploded, spattering brains, bits of which stuck to Yokogawa’s face. Some of the brain matter got on the TV camera lens as well. The cameraman lowered the camera to clean it, then froze when he looked down and saw what was left of the man. A chorus of garbled cries came from the police cordon. The man had lost the upper part of his head, but he didn’t die right away. He was still holding the shotgun, his fingers twitching, and the remaining half of his face shook from side to side, wobbling the roe-like remnants of his brain as blood flowed onto the ground. Yokogawa was trying to get rid of the stuff on his cheek, then suddenly sank to his haunches to puke. At the edge of his vision he saw the KEF escort Maezono to the MAV, but he couldn’t stop throwing up.
4
IN OHORI PARK
April 5, 2011
CHOI HYO IL returned to the Sea Hawk Hotel with a sixth felon in custody. As he entered the reception area, he found to his surprise that the artificial temperature produced by the air conditioning no longer bothered him. Previously, from the time of his arrival with the advance party, he’d felt uneasy whenever he set foot in the place, as though it made him unable to feel the contours of his own body. He was better adapted to the bracingly chill air of the Republic. If the hotel air didn’t seem to trouble him now, it was mainly because he was feeling proud of the way he’d performed as captain in the newly established Special Police.
The arrest of the felons had begun at 2:00 a.m., and Choi had brought in half-a-dozen culprits by the end of the morning. After the first few arrests, the Special Police had split into two squadrons, with Choi leading one and Pak Il Su, who had already detained four people, the other. The KEF’s reconnaissance section had compiled a list of 169 prime targets; half of these were to be taken into custody within the seven days before the last reinforcements arrived. The current pace—ten arrests over a half-day period—was a little slow. Most of those on the primary list lived in neighborhoods fairly close to the camp, the command center having decided that unfamiliarity with more remote areas made efforts there too hazardous.
Inside Choi’s MAV, the felon Omura Kikuo, apparently a frequent visitor to the hotel, boasted to his prefectural police escort that two years before he had held a party for eight hundred guests in the reception hall. “That’s really something,” the policeman said, frowning uncomfortably. Along with his colleagues, the officer knew just where Omura was heading—the detention center—and just how he would be treated there. Omura was a socialite and one of the richest men in Fukuoka. He was wearing a three-piece suit of plain but clearly expensive material, a red silk necktie, carefully polished leather shoes, and tortoiseshell glasses. The prefectural police may have felt a measure of pity for him, but they must also have derived some satisfaction from knowing what lay in store for someone whose earnings exceeded theirs several thousandfold. A fat and sixtyish physician, Omura had been the first in Fukuoka to incorporate his hospital, along with an affiliated nursing home. He had subsequently racked up huge profits and had been a major financial contributor to both the Democratic Party and the now defunct Liberal Democratic Party. As was noted in the arrest warrant, he was suspected of padding insurance claims, evading taxes, bribing politicians, and charging illegally high fees for the treatment of such rare diseases as asymptomatic HIV infection and distinctive lymphangioma.
The two KEF officers responsible for rooting out offenders had used the resident-register codes and supplementary information to identify the top taxpayers in Fukuoka: owners of upscale condos and villas in prime locations; purchasers of gold coins and bullion; high-level clients of securities companies; individuals with substantial insurance policies of various kinds; holders of private overseas bank accounts; major contributors to charitable organizations and NPOs; heavy financial backers of political parties; travelers to overseas destinations flying first-class or using individually chartered planes; big-spending credit-card users; owners of imported luxury cars, large motorboats, yachts, and light aircraft; members of upscale golf, tennis, and yacht clubs; and high-paying patients of medical facilities outside the insurance system. The occupational and financial backgrounds of these people were then investigated, and with the help of the municipal and prefectural police a roster was drawn up of those suspected of tax evasion, bribery, or illegal transactions. For two reasons, the provisional headquarters had prioritized the arrest of ordinary criminals over political ones: firstly, because it was imperative to seize their assets; secondly, because any effort to ferret out ideological opponents was considered premature.
Choi first took Omura into a small room inside the banquet hall and had him put his seal to a document stating: “I, Omura Kikuo, Felon #10, willingly submit to interrogation by the Koryo Expeditionary Force.” Next came a rudimentary medical examination—temperature, blood pressure, pulse, gastrointestinal, and cardiac condition—to see how well he would stand up to grilling. It was important not to allow detainees to die of shock before they had provided needed information. The prefectural police officers had left the room once the assent form was completed. Now alone with the Koreans, Omura for the first time looked uneasy and asked whether an interpreter was needed. Choi gave a curt reply, saying in faulty Japanese that being able to conduct the interrogation necessarily meant knowing the language. Omura smiled in relief at this. Here’s a rich man who’s never known a hungry day in his life, thought Choi, and he’s the only one with a grin on his face. But he’ll soon forget that he ever knew how to smile.
They went down to the parking area in the lower basement, taking the emergency stairs. The air was cold in the dimly lit stairwell and filled with the dusty smell of concrete. From behind the wall separating them from the parking area came faint, disjointed groans and whimpers, and whenever Omura caught the sound, he would stop and look inquiringly at the men accompanying him. Choi caught a whiff of a jasmine-like scent. Here was a man who on the verge of being arrested and taken away had put on a womanly perfume. His gray hair was parted in the middle and smoothed down on both sides. His forehead and cheeks were ruddy, belying his age. The surface of his gray jacket was as smooth as satin, without a single wrinkle, his cufflinks were made of pearl, and on his ring finger, its short, plump shape resembling a bananito from India or Australia, was a broad wedding band. The rim of his wristwatch, its black dial softly glowing, was encrusted with jewels.
In the Republic, bribes were paid in the form of watches among corrupt Party members and bureaucrats. Seiko products were on sale in foreign-exchange shops for dizzyingly high prices, but Choi had never seen the likes of this timepiece and could well imagine the amazement that it would cause back home. Omura’s living room had seemed like something out of a royal palace. The carpet was so thick that it seemed to swallow Choi’s boots, and in the display cabinets were brands of whiskey and cognac quite unknown to him, along with rows of glasses of various sizes and shapes. From the ceiling hung an apparently antique chandelier of frosted glass. This man, thought Choi, knows nothing of the sort of punishment that causes you to scream involuntarily—pain so intense that you don’t even know you’re screaming.
Warrant Officer Ra Yong Hak led the way, running down the stairs before knocking on a steel emergency-exit door and announcing that they had brought in Felon #10. The door opened, and Ra motioned Omura to enter. Once inside, he froze. What was once a parking lot with spaces for sixty vehicles had been turned into a detention center, with grille partitions made of timber or galvanized iron. The cells were barely two meters square, and each was equipped with a waste bucket and a single blanket. At present only nine were occupied. The whimpering that Omura had heard came from a cell at the back; reverberating off the concrete floor and walls, it was like the distant yelping of a dog. A guard was beating the back of an inmate’s hands with a whip made of pig intestines lined with copper wire. Inmates were not permitted to move. Except when sleeping, eating, or relieving themselves, they had to sit cross-legged, hands on knees. After an hour in this position on the hard floor, a man felt pressure on his lower back and pain in his leg joints, but if he relaxed his posture, a guard would give a whistled warning; after two repetitions of this offense, the aforementioned punishment would be imposed. The skin would crack from the whipping, and as the nerves in one’s hands are just above the bones, the pain thus inflicted was excruciating. Frequently the lashes resulted in carpal fractures.
Five separate cell blocks ran parallel to one another, separated by passageways about a meter wide. Each contained fifteen to twenty cells with shoulder-high partitions made of sheet iron obtained from scrap merchants. They were open at the top. Grounded in cement to support the cells were wooden braces, against which thick plywood was nailed to form the back wall. A door in the front turned on a hinge and was opened with a key releasing a bolt lock. The blankets were half their normal size, having been cut in two, and there were no pillows. The prisoners wore only thin cotton bathrobes and rubber sandals.
A man could be seen tottering along a corridor, dangling a waste bucket from his hand. This was Felon #9, a lawyer in his late sixties by the name of Otsuka Seiji. He had worked in a broad range of organized-crime syndicates, instigating and supervising money-laundering as well as tax evasion and had made quite a fortune for himself. Arrested by Pak Il Su of the second squadron, he now found it his duty to collect all nine buckets and take them one by one to the toilet next to the elevator. But after many hours in the cross-legged position, his right knee and ankle were swollen purple; unable to walk properly, he was dragging one leg and making very slow progress. The stench from the bucket drifted across the entire parking lot, and a guard thundered at him that if he allowed even a little of the contents to spill, he would have to clean it up with his own robe. Like a boy who’s been scolded, the man began sobbing as he trudged on. His shoulders were shaking, his head waggling back and forth as he wiped the tears with his free hand.
Next to the emergency exit stood a large shuttle bus, with all the seats removed, converted into an induction station. Its windows afforded a view of the cells and their abject inmates, showing how unlikely they were to make an escape. Two guards stood rigidly at attention and saluted Choi. Omura had gone pale but was still struggling to maintain his dignity. Inside the bus he was ordered to undress. Next his hair was inspected, then his mouth, and finally his rectum. His three-piece suit, pearl cufflinks, gold wedding ring, jewel-encrusted wristwatch, and tortoiseshell glasses were all confiscated. He was told that failure to obey any and all directives would result in a beating, with blows from guards trained in taekwondo and gyeoksul inflicting bone-penetrating pain, and that recurring disobedience would result in more drastic punishment. Finally, Omura was handed his prisoner’s clothing—an unwashed hotel bathrobe, reeking of sweat and other body odors. Deprived of his glasses, Omura had difficulty getting his arms through the sleeves. Within a day, all trace of his “dignity” would be gone.
Choi sent Ra back to the campground to continue preparations for the arrests to be made that afternoon. He then made his way over to the interrogation room next to the parking-area elevator, eager to know the results of the questioning. The room, which had once been an administration office, was about three meters by four. Ropes and wires dangled from the walls, and in the middle was a small table, onto which a metalsmith’s anvil and a vice were bolted. Next to these lay a blood-smeared pair of pliers and a hammer. A blue vinyl tarp covered much of the linoleum floor, and against the wall stood two soldiers holding staves with blackened points.
Only felons were being held here on B2, the building’s lowest level. The hostages—all able-bodied males aged fifteen or older—including hotel employees, guests, and some of the drivers commandeered by the 907th Battalion—were confined to the guest rooms on the twenty-second floor. KEF soldiers had emptied the B2 parking lot, breaking into all the vehicles, hot-wiring them, and driving them to the campground, leaving only the shuttle bus behind for its intended purpose. The prison-guard squad, in the language and spirit of the Republic, had soon begun to refer to the facilities for the hostages as chodaeso (“guesthouses”) and the space on B2 as the kwanliso (“administrative center”—the official name for prison camps).
Instead of his camouflage battledress, Choi was in regular army green, with a band on his right arm identifying him as a member of the Special Police. At the sight of him, the guards sprang like taut strings to attention. His accomplishments were well known among members of the 907th Battalion. He had been promoted to captain after his role in the occupation of Fukuoka Dome. As one who, unlike most in the KEF, had actually been involved in military action, he was regarded with a certain awe. In 1995, he and his comrades had crossed into the South and there killed a number of puppet regime soldiers and civilians. And in 1998, he had participated in an exchange of gunfire with enemy troops on an uninhabited island in Kyonggi Bay.
And yet the determining factor for Choi was not the extent of one’s first-hand experience but rather one’s training in rapid response. Such training involved marching in formation and responding instantly to the instructor’s commands: dive to the ground, fire from a prone position, reload, jump to your feet, shift direction and march, now hit the dirt again… Sometimes the training sessions went on for two days, with only a two-hour rest in the middle. Accumulated fatigue could play havoc with your ability to react to a changing situation. You neglected to adjust the sights on your weapon, forgot how much reserve ammunition you had, lost sight of the enemy, or failed to confirm your location and shot at your own comrades. As the very essence of combat preparation for the Special Operations Forces, rapid-response training meant rehearsing a string of actions until they became so deeply ingrained that the body was able to perform them automatically. And you had to perform them to perfection, like a precision instrument, whether it was day or night, in any environment and all extremes of weather.
When Choi came into the room, he asked Lieutenant Ri Su Il, the officer in charge of police interrogation, whether Felon #6 had provided the names of the asset managers and bank-account holders. Ri was a native of Sepon, Kangwon Province, near the Demilitarized Zone. In 2008 he had been transferred from Defense Headquarters to the 907th Battalion. With his rimless glasses, the twenty-seven-year-old had the air of a scholar, but his résumé included an eighteen-month stint as the leader of a sniper platoon on the DMZ. He was an expert in interrogating and indoctrinating enemy spies and political criminals. He informed Choi that they were finished with Felon #6 and that Felon #7 was now cooperating with the confiscation of his assets. He pointed to a powerfully built figure sitting on a chair, putting a thumbprint to a form. The purpose of referring to the inmates by number rather than by name was to deprive them of their identity as well as their property and thereby to nip in the bud any form of resistance.
Felon #7 was the boss of an organization dealing in illegal waste disposal. He was indeed a giant of a man, but since being brought to the administrative center, forced to wear a filthy hotel robe, and subjected to half a day with the guards, he was now as meek as a wether. He had tried to sign the document, but since the skin on both his hands was split open, he found it difficult to hold the pen. The assets he was forfeiting were scattered in numerous accounts (more than ninety million yen in one, thirty million dollars in another), along with nearly a billion yen in stocks and bank debentures and a collection of antiques that included swords, porcelain, and scrolls.
Ri Hui Cheol, the deputy commander, had decided that owing to the complex legal procedures involved, real estate would be exempt from confiscation. Furthermore, given Japanese public opinion in this regard, the family members of the felons would not be held culpable. This had rankled with Choi, for when a crime, whether political or not, was committed in the Republic, the punitive net was spread over three generations. Both Colonel Han and his deputy insisted that as the Japanese wouldn’t understand such a practice, regarding it as retrograde, it would cause needless hostility to apply it. Choi and his fellow commando Kim Hak Su had both expressed contrary opinions, but they were overruled. The purpose of the three-generation principle was not simply to inflict collective punishment and to reinforce the ruling system through fear, but to encourage people to respect and understand the importance of their ancestral lines. The idea that the occupiers, the KEF, should give any consideration to the feelings of the occupied was incomprehensible to Choi.
