30 Miles from the North Korean Border - A US Military Childhood (455)

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1:02Flynn:But there were times where it was absolutely terrifying as a little kid. There were times where I was of the opinion that maybe I'd wake up in the middle of the night and there might be a North Korean soldier standing over me. Flynn describes life as a U.S. military child just 30 miles from the North Korean border during the 1970s. The political landscape of the time was tumultuous, marked by significant events such as the assassination of President Park and a number of serious border incursions and incidents. Flynn reflects on how these events affected his understanding of the world around him, even as a child.

1:40He recalls the fear instilled by air raid drills and the constant presence of military operations, which painted a stark picture of being within artillery range of North Korea. Despite the challenges, Flynn cherishes the friendships formed with other military families and the shared experience that came with living on post. The camaraderie among children of service members created a sense of belonging, even in a transient lifestyle. From a young age, Flynn was exposed to the vibrant Korean culture, participating in school field trips and learning the language. These experiences fostered a deep appreciation for the culture and the people of Korea, which he recounts with fondness.

2:21The contrast between carefree moments of childhood and the underlying political climate adds depth to his narrative. I'm delighted to welcome Flynn to our Cold War conversation.

2:33Flynn:Both of my parents are from South Carolina here in the United States and my father attended Clemson University. At the time it was a military school. He graduated in 1954 and accepted his commission in the United States Army. He and my mom got married in October of 1954. And as soon as they got back from their honeymoon, he went to Korea for the first time. So he was in Korea from November 1954 until November of 1955. He had, as you can imagine, and he had a few assignments. One of them was at the Pentagon. In between when I was born and obviously when they got married, they had three other kids.

3:17They were born in Oregon at Umatilla where there's a huge chemical nerve gas depot there.

3:23Flynn:My dad did a couple of tours in Vietnam and upon his return, went to Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. And that's when I came along. My family likes to joke around and say that they obviously missed each other with me being the result after getting back from Vietnam. My siblings are about 12, 13, 14 years older than I am. So that's the joke. Oh, yeah. Elder siblings. Always a nightmare. Always a nightmare. Did he talk much about what he saw in Korea? He didn't talk about it much other than a lot of times they would forage for things like fresh meat and things like that.

4:06Flynn:They would pheasant hunt. He did say that it was still very much, I'm not going to say it was an active combat area, but there were still people taking pot shots at each other. And so it was still maybe not hot, but warm. How about Vietnam? Did he tell you much about what he was up to there? Yeah. He did later in life. Initially, he was part of the Ordnance Corps. And when he originally went over for his first tour, was involved with the normal things that you would think somebody would be involved with the Ordnance Corps. Munitions, making sure that supplies were correct. He spent some time out in the field.

4:46Flynn:His second tour was a departure from the first. He had an office in Saigon, and when he did open up about these things later on in his life, he described his counterinsurgency. The pictures that we have from him in Vietnam for the first tour, he's always in fatigues and things like that. For the few pictures that exist from his second tour, it was always a Hawaiian shirt and that kind of thing. From my understanding of it, he paid for information in Saigon. and for people who were playing both sides of the street, both giving information to the United States and South Vietnamese government. And at nighttime, they were working for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.

5:32An odd situation, but that's really all he had to say about it. Fascinating. So effectively, your first posting is to Korea in 1976, I think. What was your first impression of Korea? Because you would have been about six, seven years old then, wouldn't you?

5:54Flynn:Yes, I would have been. So before we were in Korea, we were at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey and went from Picatinny Arsenal to Yongsan Army Garrison in South Korea and Seoul. My first impressions were, it was like any other army base that I'd lived on. We had lived at the Davenport Munitions Depot in Iowa, and then had gone to Picatinny Arsenal in Jersey. So I really didn't see a whole lot of difference. Army soldiers, just that there were Koreans there. So there really wasn't any difference other than everything being self-contained on post, commissary, movie theaters, elementary school, high school, swimming pool, golf course, that type of thing.

6:42Flynn:It was, other than the schools being there, it really wasn't much difference. We arrived in late July of 1976. Korea is a very hot place in the summertime and a very cold place in the wintertime. I do remember it being quite warm. Did you get much time outside of the base and see the rest of Korea? We probably weren't supposed to do this, but we would often go outside the gate and never venture more than maybe 200 or 300 yards. And there are gates all around the garrison, but there was one specifically that I remember where there were a bunch of stores and things like that was very easy to walk through and it was a side street.

7:25Some of the busier gates, the one that connected the North Post with the South Post, which in the South was where all the residents were, where the schools were and that type of thing. And the 121st EVAC was there. The North side is where all of the office buildings were and that type of thing. So you did have to cross over a pretty major thoroughfare, like right in the middle of Seoul, Korea to get from one to the other. Being in elementary school, I think the Department of Defense schools did a really good job of showing us what Korean culture was all about. We did do field trips. We went to places like the Korean Folk Village.

8:06We went to places in Seoul. We went to Daegu. so they did really do a good job of kind of exposing everyone to the language at one time i knew how to count to 10 in korean and still remember how to say hello and goodbye and thank you and you're welcome and that type of thing also getting us exposed to the food that was

8:30Flynn:something that was really interesting they really did do a good job of exposing us to Korea and the culture. What were you told about the political situation and the DMZ and the military side of things? As I mentioned, we arrived in late July of 76, and my parents were always very into current events and things like that. We essentially had one English-speaking radio station that was always on at the house, AFKN Radio. There was one television station in English, which was AFKN TV, which is Armed Forces Korean Network. And we received stars and stripes every day. And there was no such thing as the internet back then.

9:17And I would read the paper. I'm not going to necessarily say I understood everything that was going on. I'd start with the comics and work my way through it. But from the TV and the radio constantly being on, we had a pretty good, or at least I had a pretty good idea as a kid as to what was occurring.

9:35Flynn:So about three weeks after we arrived in Korea, that's when the axe murders happened at the DMZ. And that was really my first exposure as to what was going on. My parents didn't talk about what the political climate was. They didn't communicate any opinions about President Park, who was the president of South Korea at the time or anything like that. that was really never a discussion. It was a matter of knowing what was going on from hearing the radio and reading it in the paper. And when this happened, I've got an older sibling. She actually graduated from high school at Soul American. So I'm sure they had discussions about it, but with somebody six, seven, eight years old, that really wasn't a topic of discussion.

10:23And I did have questions about the Axe murders, which is a crazy thing that happened. There was a tree that was blocking the view of the DMZ. There were two U.S. Army officers that led a group of South Korean soldiers, and I'm going to use the term ROK or ROK, which is Republic of Korea. So if I say ROK soldiers, that's the differentiator between a U.S. soldier and an ROK soldier.

10:50Flynn:And obviously, because it's a demilitarized zone, you can't take weapons in there. And they were confronted by a group of North Korean soldiers, had their axes taken away from them, and they were actually murdered with their own axes. When that happened, that was my first wake-up call as to this being a dangerous place. And there were a number of things that occurred after that that really allowed me to form my own opinions about the country and the situation. Yeah, we'll dig into that. And I think one of the victims your dad knew personally. Yes, Captain Arthur Benefus. My dad knew him. He was accompanied by another U.S.

11:38Army soldier. He was a first lieutenant. His name was Mark Barrett. But yeah, my dad did know Captain Benefus.

11:49and as a result of that incident there was a follow-up operation paul bunyan can you just

11:54Flynn:tell me what that was yeah so three days after this occurred the entire and i remember this quite vividly the entire peninsula went on very high alert i believe they brought they they brought helicopters, B-52s in, F-4s, and a group of combat engineers entered the DMZ and cut down the tree that was blocking their view. One of the things that's very different in Korea, or at least it was at the time, than living in the United States is jet airplanes have the ability to break the sound barrier. So sonic booms were very common occurrences living in South Korea from the military planes doing patrols and things like that.

12:40Flynn:So they removed the tree and I guess that was it for a little while. Were you told about the plans if the North Koreans invaded? Did your parents say we'd be evacuated if anything happens or because you were so young they kept you in the dark. One thing that we did do quite often were air raid drills and blackout drills and things like that. I asked what would happen if we got invaded or if North Korea opened up on South Korea. Seoul's only about 30 miles south of the DMZ, so it's pretty easily reachable by even weaponry back then. My parents assured me that wasn't going to happen. Korea was a fantastic experience, but there were times where it was absolutely terrifying as a little kid.

13:35Flynn:And don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got to experience it. But by the same token, going through air raid drills and hearing about infiltrations and things like that, there were times where I was of the opinion that maybe I'd wake up in the middle of the night and there might be a North Korean soldier standing over me. So they really didn't talk about what the plan was. We would go south. But in retrospect, that was probably wishful thinking. I can imagine those fears, though, because as you say, during that period, there were infiltrations and probably the most infamous of them was the assassination of President Park in 1979.

14:24Flynn:Yeah, that was later on. So when we listened to AFKN radio in the morning, there were, and thinking back, I probably remember it happening a lot more often than it actually did, but there would be reports of North Korean bodies, soldiers' bodies washing up onto shore. There were a lot of infiltrations into South Korea by North Korean agents and soldiers. There There were people murdered by them. There were kidnappings. I think really the next big thing that happened would be the discovery of the third tunnel under the DMZ. That left a really big impression on me. And that was in October of 78.

15:07And it was one of those things where they had no idea that it was being dug under the DMZ. But when it was discovered, it was a real big deal in South Korea. And it was quite the topic of discussion. I remember it being in the news and on the papers and things like that. And don't let me give you the wrong impression. We're not talking about a tunnel like some gold prospector back in the 1800s. This was a huge paved tunnel that from looking back at it and in preparation for our discussion today, this is a tunnel that would allow the movement of 30 ,000 troops per hour under the DMZ. As you can imagine, a real big deal.

15:50But you also mentioned the assassination of President Park. Yeah. Leading up to that, the country was put under martial law because of student protests that occurred. And then he was assassinated in 79. But there was a lot going on in the news that led up to that. And I only knew that he had been assassinated, did not know who did it. Turns out that the head of the Korean CIA was the perpetrator. And what his motivations are, I don't believe are known today. But the country being put under martial law, that was also something that left quite an impression. Why was that? What was the political turmoil that was going on at that time?

16:34Flynn:So the way that I understood it is that there were two generations of Koreans there in the mid-70s. They were those who were old enough to remember the Korean War and everything that had gone on. And then there were those that I guess would be characterized as being of student age. And Sigmund Rhee was the president of Korea. I don't know that I used the term president, like democratically elected president. He was the leader of South Korea, staunch anti-communist. And then a couple of presidents after that was President Park, who I believe assumed control, I guess for lack of a better term, is it military junta.

17:17And there were a lot of protests in terms of the crackdowns that President Park had in South Korea. It was, I can't describe it as even approaching a totalitarian state because look 30 miles north if you want to see what a real totalitarian state looked like. But it was very much, he took over militarily. And there were a lot of student protests that started up of President Park and the government and the way the government behaved over there. There was not, dissension was not encouraged in South Korea amongst the civilians. and there were a lot of crackdowns that happened and things like that.

17:59And there were a lot of student protests and they built up over the spring and summer of 1979. And that's when kind of martial law was declared. Did it affect us on post? No, not really, but it was a topic of conversation. It's something that we knew that was going on. And then in the fall, President Park was assassinated by the head of the KCIA. We also talked about incursions and things like that. And from what I can make out during this period, there were things like small commando units of the North Korean army crossing the DMZ into South Korea, maybe five, six-man bands, that sort of thing.

18:44Yeah, there were. Not only did they cross the DMZ, but they do things like plant mines just over the DMZ in South Korea. Also, there were frogmen that would swim from North Korea and get into South Korea that way. When they were successful, killings and kidnappings were standard fare. And when they weren't successful, that's when you'd hear a news report about bodies washing up on shore. I guess they drowned in the ocean. There was also, this was right after we left, but there were even North Korean frogmen that were found in the Han River in Seoul trying to infiltrate. If these were kind of one-off things, then I probably wouldn't have had the feelings that I had when I was there, but it was almost constant, these types of incursions, provocations that were made by North Korea.

19:36It just seemed once a week there was something going on, either somebody taking a pot shot or shooting someone down or causing some type of a problem. I can imagine that sort of almost like a regular drumbeat of these incidents playing into your mind as a seven, eight year old. And yeah, I can understand that vision of you having a North Korean soldier standing over you in your bedroom. It seems very real or very possible. starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life so finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer for millions of businesses that tool is shopify shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 of all e-commerce in the U.S.

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22:32Flynn:Yeah, absolutely. That and during an air raid drill, just imagining what it would be like to have a bomb go off in your house or in your backyard in a common area or on the street or something like that. It was maybe watching all those war movies on Saturday afternoon. What a great idea in terms of showing the realism of bombs exploding, artillery going off. But being a little kid and having an active imagination, it was very real to me. At least the possibility was very real. Although my parents assured me that nothing would happen. And your friends are probably pretty similar with that. and you talk in the playground or whatever, and you almost wind each other up.

23:21With your father being a U.S. Army colonel, did he have extra security or not? No, I don't remember there being any extra security or anything like that. It certainly was nice being able to live in the embassy section of Post. Obviously, there were MPs at every gate coming on Post. there was an additional century like guard shack essentially when you came into the embassy section and there were mps that were constantly on patrol both on north and south post in jeeps blue light on it marked mp there was a there was definitely a security presence that was there but No, I don't think my dad was anybody extra special or anything like that.

24:10I was friends with the kids of the officer that he reported to, who was Major General, and I don't remember any additional security for them either. I think they had eight kids instead of one building holding two quarters. I remember them tearing down the wall in their quarters because they had so many kids. They just had an extra long one. That was the only difference. No additional security or no extra measures taken. When you weren't at school, did you do much sport when you were in Seoul? Yeah.