They call Korea the Land of the Morning Calm. It is a historical term, referring to the whole peninsula, not the two bits with which we are familiar. It has been anything but calm in my experience in that part of the world, and that is why I went to bed early.

Twelve time zones away on the Lion island of Singapore, two men with outré haircuts were about to meet, and there might (or might not) be something significant to report when the encounter was done.

The first time I woke in the morning calm it was under a pool table in the officer’s club of the US Army’s Haialea Compound near what we knew as Pusan, ROK. It was a leftover name from a very long war in which the UN forces had almost been expelled from the newly-freed nation.

The story was that the former Japanese overlords had a racetrack there back in colonial times, but my immediate challenge had been the military curfew that snapped shut at Midnight, leaving no legal means of getting back to Fleet Landing for further transportation to the ship. Which is to say that I slumbered on the sticky carpet while a few squadron buddies determined, in their military judgment, that the commission of Grand Theft Auto of an Army Captain’s car really was the way to go.

The stale beer smell has been long washed away from my hair and those clothes are long gone, so I count myself lucky. I think the NCIS is still looking for the guys who took the car, and that was almost 40 years ago to the day.

Anyway, that was a port visit in 1978. There was not yet the Korean economic tiger that would emerge in the 80s and 90s. That was before the practical jokers at the Bureau of Personnel decided to move me to Seoul, to the Army headquarters at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul. That was 1980, and things became suddenly very personal and real. And not at all calm.

It was not a particularly busy fourteen months that followed in the USFK Alert Center, if you ignored the incursions and infiltrators, the non-stop propaganda barrages at those of us the North termed- charitably, I thought- as “Lickspittle Running Dogs.” Not to mention the ROK domestic Kwangju Massacre or the subsquent military coup. Or the constant tunneling under the DMZ and the landmines or the rest of the daily litany of more pedestrian outrages.

You can be assured I was relieved to leave the Calm behind at the end of my 14-month one-year tour. The experience had tremendous impact. I accepted orders to Pearl Harbor, decided to take my life out of the emotional deep freeze, and get on with things.

In Hawaii, we were concerned mostly with the Main Enemy, the Soviets. They had the nuclear capability to quickly and effectively ruin our day. But of course the Koreans were always in the background. It was unavoidable, and there were necessary military consultations and exercises with our allies in the Far East that kept us current on the issues.

The only time I didn’t worry much about the DPRK was when they threw me to my own tour in BuPERS. I resolved that no one was going to do a 14-month, one-year-tour while I had the desk, and that was my priority. If I had to send other hapless junior fish to enjoy The Calm, they were going to know to the day when they could escape back to The World.

That was a sacrament according to our Army buddies. I decided to honor it.

Once safely ensconced inside the Beltway. I thought I had left The Calm behind. There were other conflicts be alarmed about, the fall of Great Empires and those sorts of things. So it was with some consternation that I found myself as the travel agent for the House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence.

It was a strange experience but a lot simpler story than it would appear. The principal was one we sailors knew as ‘kumshaw.’ That is the term derived from the Chinese practice- human, really- of trading things that don’t actually belong to you for things you want but are controlled by other people who also don’t technically own them. It is interesting, and why people serve in the Government. The pay sucks, but the perks are sort of unbelievable.

As the Navy intel representative, and armed with a valid authorization letter from the relevant committee Chairman, I could whistle up jets and make hotel reservations at the most exclusive hotels on earth. I bonded with one Congressman in particular and his staff while doing Haiti stuff, and wound up planning and escorting one of his eight trips to the DPRK. I still see the Congressman on the television a lot when Morning Calm issues are hot.

At the time, the Administration was interested in normalizing relations with our former foes in Vietnam, and was using the issue of our Missing in Action to advance the cause. So long as we were in Rangoon, Saigon, Hanoi and Hong Kong anyway, the Congressman asked me to contact a North Korean diplomat from the UN mission in New York.

Which is how, several weeks later, we wound up in a vast conference room in that building on the square in Pyongyang they always show with rockets and goose-stepping troops. The lights to the huge room were not turned on, and our hosts did not appear to notice.

While our ostensible purpose was talking about our MIAs, this is what ultimately became the shake-down known as the Agreed Framework that would trade light water reactors to the North in exchange for abandoning their nuclear aspirations. That was the last time we attempted to de-nuclearize the peninsula.

Two or three quick points on how things work in the Stepford Kingdom:

Many of the 8,000 US MIAs aren’t missing at all. Since the bulk of heavy combat (prior to the Chinese incursion) occurred in what is now the North, many Americans were buried by the US Army Graves Registration Service, since we controlled the ground (at the time). The locations were neatly plotted (unlike Vietnam). It was only supposed to be a temporary interment, after all.

Our POWs who died in captivity are interred near the camps where they were held, and I once had to learn the distinctive signature of burial places on overhead imagery.

And of course they wanted us to pick up the tab for the Korean Delegation’s hotel. It is what they do. The escort officer who had accompanied the previous delegation to the DPRK advised me to have ready cash- “$10,000 worked for me,” he said. “Dollars. Just in case.”

I made a note to that effect on the trip itinerary: “Stop at bank.”

Strange place. Anyway, the President was going to meet with the other guy with the strange hair-do in the hours here in DC when the powers of darkness are exalted. Which is all of them.

When my eyes opened just after four, I surrendered to curiosity and padded out to the living room to turn on the flat screen and see what had happened in Singapore.

I was relieved to discover hat everything was just fine. Documents had been signed. Everyone commenting on the events- including the President- had the giddy euphoria of being awake for the last 25 hours.

Peace just might be at hand.

There are many uncertainties. Many, many details yet to be worked out. There is a certain air of optimism in the air. This could be very good.

Having been to this particular rodeo before, and been successfully hornswoggled, I have my doubts but will remain calm. I will believe the North’s nukes are gone when there is proof.

Copyright 2018 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com