The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [33]
The most profound impact of the shooting, however, was to remove the influence of the first lady, who had been highly popular among even those who feared or disliked her husband. Yook Young Soo (Korean women keep their maiden names after marriage) had been Park's second wife, or third if one counts a common-law liaison in the late 1940s. She had come from a prominent family and was graceful, physically attractive, and articulate-all the things he was not. She had been a check and balance for her husband, a sounding board and humanizing influence. Following her death, Park became even more isolated, withdrawn, and remote.
Ten weeks after his wife's death, Park wrote in the diary that he kept,
Already into the last week of October! The dying fall holds only loneliness. In the garden the chrysanthemums bloom, beautiful, peaceful, as they did a year ago, but the autumn leaves, falling one by one, only make me sad.
Mun Se Kwang was convicted of attacking the president and killing his wife and on December 20, 1974, was hanged in Seoul prison.
On August 15, 1975, the first anniversary of her death, Park wrote in his diary:
A year ago on this day around 9:45 A.M. you came downstairs dressed in an orange Korean dress and we left together for the ceremonies. You were leaving the Blue House for the last time in your life.
This day a year ago was the longest of my life, the most painful and sad. My mind went blank with grief and despair. I felt as though I had lost everything in the world. All things became a burden, and I lost my courage and will.
A year has passed since then. And during that year I have cried alone in secret too many times to count.
THE UNDERGROUND WAR
Three months after the assassination attempt on Park, a South Korean army squad on a routine patrol discovered steam rising from high grass in the southern part of the demilitarized zone, about twothirds of a mile south of the military demarcation line that marks the border. Hoping to find a hot spring, a soldier poked his bayonet into the ground, which gave way to a widening hole, revealing the top of a reinforced tunnel about eighteen inches below the surface. As the soldiers began to probe further, they were interrupted by automatic weapons fire from a nearby North Korean guard post. They returned fire before breaking off the engagement. The incident of November 15, 1974, was the first clash of arms between the two opposing armies in twenty months.
Further exploration revealed a sophisticated underground construction about four feet high and three feet wide, with walls of reinforced concrete, complete with electric lines and lighting, areas for sleeping and weapons storage, and a narrow-gauge railway with carts for excavating soil. The U.S. Command calculated that about two thousand troops could be sqeezed into the tunnel from its source, about two miles away in North Korea, to its planned exit south of the DMZ, and that additional troops could be put through the tunnel at a rate of 500 to 700 men per hour. Suddenly American and South Korean forces faced a threat of surprise attack from beneath behind their forward defense lines.
North Koreans are masters of tunneling, a practice they developed to a fine art when protecting themselves against American air power during the Korean War. Late in 1970 and early in 1971, five attempts by North Korean forces to tunnel under the south fence of the DMZ had been detected, usually from areas not under direct American or South Korean observation. These were small tunnels, which military experts concluded had been dug by reconnaissance personnel in an effort to observe southern positions.
In November 1973, a year before the discovery of the steam rising from high grass, the search for tunnels was redoubled when a sentry in the southern part of the DMZ heard a faint tapping beneath his feet in the early morning, as if someone were knocking softly at a door. Although