The war came early one morning in June of 1950, and by the time the North Koreans occupied our capital city, Seoul, we had already left our university, where we were instructors in the History of Human Civilization. I joined the Korean Army, and Park volunteered for the Marine Corps—the proud combat outfit that suited his temperament. In a short time—because junior officers died very fast in the early phase of the war—we were trained and battle-tested, and we both became officers. We survived, but we were both wounded. The shrapnel of a mortar shell had grazed my right knee during the defense of Taegu, and a sniper had shot Park in his left arm in the mopping-up operation in Seoul after the Inchon landing. We both spent some time in the hospital, were both promised medals, and were returned promptly to our respective duties.

Park, who was then a first lieutenant, went back to combat duty somewhere on the eastern front, but I did not rejoin my antitank company. Someone in the Army accidentally discovered that I had been a university instructor and decided to transfer me to an intelligence unit. When I came out of the hospital in Pusan, I was sent to Seoul, where I was put in charge of a section in the Army Political Intelligence, and was made captain, temporarily, in due conformity with the table of organization.

In the second week of October, the United Nations Forces captured Pyongyang, the capital city of the North Koreans. We moved our headquarters to that city and established ourselves in a four-storied gray marble building. My office, which was on the third floor, looked across the street at what remained of the Central Presbyterian Church. This was a strange coincidence. It was Park's father's church; he had been its minister for nearly twenty years.

I knew very little about him; although Park was a close friend of mine, he had seldom talked to me about his father. Which was to be expected. His father had disowned him and, in turn, Park had denounced his father. Mr. Park was, according to his disowned son, "a man of fanatical faith," who had "harassed" him "day and night with his self-righteousness, with his exaggerated faith, and his obsession with his equally obsessive God." On the other hand, Park had become an atheist after his return from a university in Tokyo, and abandoned the Christian faith in which he had been brought up. I suspected that he would not have denounced his father had not Mr. Park told his congregation, one Sunday morning from his pulpit, that his son had gone over to the Devil and that he had asked the Lord His forgiveness for severing all earthly ties with his son. That was about ten years before the war.

Park was aware that his father was missing from Pyongyang; I had informed him of the disturbing news soon after I moved to the city, and I had done so in an unsettled frame of mind. I had come to Pyongyang in a good mood; for the first few weeks I was in a state of buoyancy, partly because of the exciting novelty of finding myself in an enemy city that our victorious army occupied, and partly because of the irresistible enthusiasm and affection with which the people of the city greeted all of us, their liberators. Many of my fellow officers were natives of Pyongyang and, in the midst of that delightful emotional chaos following the liberation, they were able to stage melodramatic yet heartwarming scenes of reunion with their families, relatives, and friends, or for that matter, with anyone whose face they recognized.

I had no acquaintances in the city, and sometimes I felt vaguely envious of these officers. It was at such times that I felt an urge to go to see Park's father, though I told myself I had not the slightest excuse for doing so. I thought of many reasonable ways in which I might call on him, yet when I imagined myself actually knocking on the door of his home and introducing myself as a good friend of his son's, I could not help feeling a peculiar sort of fright. Then I found out that the Communist secret police had arrested him shortly before the war; and when Army Intelligence let it be known officially that "an unspecified number of North Korean Christian ministers" was reported missing and that the Army "believed them to have been kidnapped by the Reds," I even felt relieved—shamefacedly, of course. So I wrote to Park about it at great length, but his reply contained nothing but irrelevant matters—just as I expected—things about his command, about his men, and even about his future plans, but not a word about his father.

Across the street the church bell clanged. I opened the window. From the white-blue November sky of North Korea, a cold gust swept down the debris-ridden slope, whipping up here and there dazzling snow flurries, smashing against the ugly, bullet-riddled buildings of Pyongyang. People who had been digging in the ruins of their homes stopped working. They straightened up and looked toward the top of the slope, at the remains of the nearly demolished Central Church, and then at the gray carcass of a cross-topped bell tower where the bell was clanging. They gazed at one another as though they understood the esoteric message of the bell. Some old women knelt down on the ground, and the old men removed their dogskin hats and bowed their bare heads.

The bell was quiet now. The people were back at their labor, working as silently and stubbornly as they had day after day. Ever since I arrived in the city, I had been watching these people. Occasionally, I saw them drag out of the debris some shapeless remains of their household goods or, sometimes, a dead body, which they would quietly carry away on a hand-pushed cart. Then they would continue digging in the crumbled mess of brick, boards, and chunks of concrete.

I closed the window and returned to my desk. The potbellied, rusty coal stove in the far corner of the room gave off plenty of heat, but I shivered as I settled down in my chair. It was as if a cold hand had stroked my nape as stealthily as the tip of a soft, soft brush.

Park's father was dead; I had just learned of his death from my commanding officer.

Colonel Chang, the Chief of Army Political Intelligence, had summoned me to his office on the fourth floor. Seated in his swivel chair behind his desk under a dusty chandelier, he did not show any sign of recognition when I stood before him. His subordinates were accustomed to the way he kept them waiting in his presence, sometimes for as long as five minutes. He was a stout man in his late forties, with a head as bald and shiny as a Buddhist monk's, and with a bulbous nose that dominated his straw-colored small face. He began rocking back and forth in his chair, and peered at me through his glasses.

The junior officers at headquarters were not inclined to take Colonel Chang too seriously, though they admitted he was a baffling character. Since it was standard procedure in an intelligence unit not to keep in the personnel file the record of its commanding officer, his past was obscure. Those who despised him said he had been a sergeant in the Japanese Army during the war in the Pacific; those who disliked him said he had been a notorious soldier of fortune in China; and those who did not care one way or the other said he was just one of those professional military men. No one seemed to know precisely how he happened to be enjoying the rank of a full colonel in such a young army as ours, though everyone assumed he was longing for a star.