Volume 34, Number 1 · January 29, 1987
Korea: Shame & Chauvinism
By Ian Buruma
Prison Writings
by Kim Dae Jung, translated by Choi Sung-Il
University of California Press, 333 pp., $22.50
On a cold day this last November Colonel Schreuders returned to the spot where Chinese troops wiped out many of his men one early morning in 1951. Schreuders belonged to the Dutch battalion defending a bridge in Hoengsong, a small town about eighty miles from Seoul. The battle, forgotten by almost everybody but the survivors, cost seventeen lives, and the town was destroyed. Hoengsong is now a prosperous-looking place with supermarkets, cinemas, and fashion boutiques. The memorial to the Dutch commander who was killed by a hand grenade minutes after his guard shouted, 'The Chinks are coming, look out!' lies in a playground. The colonel tried to find familiar landmarks with his old army map. He found none, apart from the lone steeple of an old church, which had been pulled down only days before he arrived. A South Korean veteran of the Dutch battalion made the motions of firing an imaginary gun. 'I shot a lot of enemies here,' he said to the colonel, who did not appear to remember the man. A priest rang the bell in the steeple. A few children played with a plastic machine gun in the playground. A US Army tank battalion rolled through the town for regular maneuvers, and helicopters made dives for the river bank.
Review, 7835 words
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