Author goes to Korea's darkest corners for mystery stories

The cover of "GI Confidential" by Martin Limon

By Jon Dunbar

Author Martin Limon has taken his readers to some of Korea's shadiest corners. Last year's book "The Line" brought us right up to the demarcation line at the Joint Security Area where South and North Korea confront each other. His latest book, "GI Confidential," doesn't get that close to the edge, but it still delivers some pretty substantial twists.

Limon's stories of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) criminal investigators George Sueno and Ernie Bascom provide a vivid look at the Korea of the past, the way he remembers the country from his service here in the 1960s and 1970s. His characters visit real places across Korea, supported by a colorful cast of characters with names such as Kill and Strange.

Sueno and Bascom's adventures, of which this is the 14th published novel, often involve an A-plot and a B-plot, as their superiors give them conflicting orders and send them on fool's errands and black market patrols, all the while demanding the investigation results that they want. But this one goes a step farther, bringing in a C-plot which ends up overshadowing the other two storylines.

This time around the two CID agents are investigating a string of bank robberies possibly committed by foreigners, with the guidance from above that the military really hopes they direct suspicion away from the USFK. Meanwhile, they're dogged by a tabloid-style reporter who embarrasses them in print and unintentionally puts a target on their backs for the bank robbers to take their shot.

The third plot isn't explained in detail in the introduction to the book. The detectives are ordered to set aside the bank robbery investigation, obviously a big mistake, and investigate a racy photo published by the Overseas Observer taken at a military base north of Seoul. But what appears to be a fairly routine allegation of sex trafficking unfolds into something much, much wilder and more consequential for the whole nation.

Some of the major plot points that won't be spoiled further are based on historic events that unfolded during the writer's own service in Korea in the 1970s.

Martin Limon

"Sometimes I think of myself as the Forrest Gump of Korea," Limon told The Korea Times. "I was there for the release of the USS Pueblo crew, the shooting down of the EC-121, the shootout when Park Chung-hee's wife was accidentally killed, the assassination of President Park himself and…on the night Chun Doo-hwan took over."

Although Limon never served as a CID agent, his experiences certainly influenced him as a writer and instructed some of the plot points of this book in particular.

This book makes use of his three months working for Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that reports on matters concerning the U.S. military. Limon got to see a lot of the Korean countryside and edited English language news stories, many of which were about GI-on-Korean crime.

"I had no inkling that one day I'd be writing mystery novels on that subject," he said. "If I had, I would've paid more attention."

Also during that time, he interviewed an elderly Dr. Frank Schofield, a Canadian veterinarian who had lived in Korea from 1916 to 1920 and became involved in Korea's March 1 Independence Movement against the Japanese occupation. The movement even gets a shout out in "GI Confidential," a pleasant coincidence in time for its 100th anniversary ― although the circumstances of its reference are less than pleasant.

Meanwhile, the tabloid making life hard for the protagonists is named the Overseas Observer, but characters often call it the Oversexed Observer for its lurid content. According to Limon, it's based on the Overseas Weekly, whose Asian edition ran from around 1966 to 1975 covering stories too racy for Stars and Stripes; it had a similar reputation and nickname to its fictional counterpart.

"GI Confidential" contains passages set in Itaewon, the main hangout for soldiers stationed in Yongsan, as well as the Samgakji area to the west, which in those days served the segregated African American personnel. His description of these areas, and others across Korea, as teeming with prostitution and poverty, may be hard for Korean readers to recognize or sympathize with, but that is the seedy world his detectives patrol.

As the Yongsan Relocation Plan is redeploying U.S. military presence south to Humphreys Garrison in Pyeongtaek, Sueno and Bascom's world is disappearing. And that may be a good thing.

But even after Yongsan Garrison becomes Yongsan Park, and Itaewon completes its transformation from military camptown to global food destination, what came before should not be forgotten.

And Limon's books are the perfect way to memorialize Korea's past struggles.

Why nobody has considered adapting his work into a TV show, miniseries or movie franchise is beyond me.

"GI Confidential" is available on Amazon.

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