Chung Soon-duk, the last communist guerrilla to be caught in South Korea, laments her "pathetic mess." Her right leg is missing, and her left side paralyzed from a stroke. She is hospitalized and wheelchair-bound.
Yet when she recalls her days as an "anti-American unification warrior," the 70-year-old woman brims with bravado. She belts out old rebel songs, pumping her arm -- the only limb she can use -- to the beat.
"Comrades, shoulder your rifles. It's time for battle. Blizzards hit hard, but our hearts are boiling with hot blood. We have orders, comrades, orders to search for the enemies."
Her life on the run ended in a shootout with police in the rugged Chiri Mountains on Nov. 12, 1963 -- 10 years after the Korean war. "Disoriented communist bandit caught!" read headlines at the time.
With her arrest, South Korea finally declared an end to drawn-out operations against peasant "partisans" who fought the pro-US government in Seoul long after the war. For Chung, the war never ended.
"All my life, I have been a unification warrior who struggled to free the fatherland from the Americans," she said from the hospital in Incheon, west of Seoul, where she now lives.
Released in 1985, Chung was a disabled outcast, disowned by her family for her tainted past. Police followed her and she held only menial jobs. She associated with former rebels, but the last of her comrades were allowed to go to the North in 2000 and welcomed as heroes.
Chung was barred from joining them because South Korea returned only "unconverted" guerrillas. Faced with miserable prison conditions, Chung had signed a letter disavowing communism in hopes of getting better medical care and a reduced sentence.
Now Chung regrets signing the paper. All she has left are her rigid beliefs and hatred of Americans. She calls reports of hardships in North Korea exaggerations and justifies the North's suspected development of nuclear weapons as defensive.
She blames the division of the Korean Peninsula on US troops who occupied the southern half, while the Soviets took over the north to disarm Japanese colonialists at the end of World War II.
Chung's saga began shortly after she married at 16, when North Korea invaded the South in June 1950. Her peasant husband, Sung Suk-jo, collaborated with North Korean troops who promised "liberation" from landlords. He was among thousands of leftists who took up arms in the thick forests and jagged ravines of the Chiri Mountains when the tide of war changed.
Chung fled, too, and found her husband, but married couples were not allowed to fight in the same unit. She last saw her husband in January 1952 sitting before a bonfire in a snow-covered field. She heard later that he died in battle.
As the war dragged on, she learned to read and write, worked as a cook and nurse and was promoted to deputy platoon leader, raiding police stations and ambushing South Korean police rangers, called simply "dogs" by the rebels.
By 1955, most Chiri Mountain guerrillas had been killed or surrendered. Remnants fought on into the 1960s, though they had no communication with North Korea. Police hunted them but also distributed leaflets promising leniency if they gave up. Chung's parents, coerced by police, roamed the hills pleading through a loudspeaker: "Soon-duk, please come down the hill and surrender!"
Chung's unit dwindled to herself and two men, but they continued to elude capture. According to police records, Chung and one of her comrades, Lee Hong-yi, were scrounging for food in October 1962 and got into a scuffle with a villager who tired to snatch Lee's loaded carbine.
"I shot the villager in the leg. We went on to kill his wife and his brother and his brother's wife. We burned down their homes," Chung recalled. "They were pawns of American imperialists trying to turn in fellow compatriots. I have never killed innocent villagers. I have no regrets."
That December, Chung's other comrade Lee Eung-jo, then 53, was wounded as police tracked the fugitives. Chung said she was unable to carry him and finished him off -- at his request and in "the true spirit of comradeship."
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion