“A US National on a Joint Security Area (JSA) orientation tour crossed, without authorisation, the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” the UN Command said on Twitter.
“We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our [North Korea’s People’s Army] counterparts to resolve this incident.”

The above two brief paragraphs are the news this morning, and disrupted the normal Writer’s Section production cycle. I was on a Panmunjong Orientation Tour 42 years ago. I had just reported to US Forces Korea, a grand title that uplifted the Headquarters of the 8th US Army to a strange organization that by turns fancied itself as a “Combined Multinational United Nations Supreme Headquarters” that was naturally tilted toward the Republic of Korea where it sat in Seoul, and the elements of the alliance that had fought an old war to a draw long before.

Well, not that long ago then. One of the older manuscripts jumbled in the hard-drive of the laptop is a thing called “The Snake Ranch Papers.” It is not quite as old as the one we finally got printed last year, which was the result of a promise made to publish a great sea story of the last Japanese battleship’s voyage to Bikini Atoll for the Operation CROSSROADS atomic tests. The one about Korea was written on the spot in Seoul, beginning in May of 1980.

This is another in those strings of coincidence. In another and much smaller string of addressees, some stories from friendships made nearly half a hundred years ago have been popping out. We were merrily attempting to put together the elements of how our lives came to be, and it caused us to delve back to the unsettling words written by our group long ago.

The Korea book is filled with the energy of inadvertent youth, and the experience of living in a foreign land under two or three sets of military leadership: Ours, the ROKs and Theirs. At the time, the ROKs were experiencing an uneasy transition in leadership. The North Koreans were implacable, and one of the rituals of serving in the Land of the Morning Calm was a trip up to the DMZ- the “Demilitarized Zone,” which wasn’t, technically, to see the face of the Enemy.

I have attached three pictures taken on a sunny afternoon in May, 1980. The long pale building with troops in front is the actual Joint Security Area. In exactly the middle of the interior is a long formal conference table. When discussions are held between North and South, they are at that table with the parties aligned facing one another. Inside that building there is a picture of soldiers against the interior wall. The one looking from inside are looking back at the conference table where you can see from the position of the flags on the table that I am still safely in The South. I took the picture and then walked two steps into The North.

That apparently is exactly what the American soldier did yesterday, and the Northerners grabbed him. It is sort of a striking memory, the first of two times I crossed the DMZ. It is sort of odd, since the second visit was at the invitation of the Northerners and cordial in tone. This first excursion- I think I walked around the conference table and spent something like a minute or two in The North- could have been my first fifteen minutes of fame as a political prisoner.

It would have changed a lot of things in this life, you know?