Visiting Uijeongbu
by During the summer of 1986, a friend and I visited Uijeongbu, near the DMZ in northern South Korea. It was a memorable-enough visit, especially in retrospect. For one thing, I later discovered that the US military base in that area was named for a Medal of Honor Winner from Wisconsin, my homestate. For another, it provided the backdrop for my two-scene play, “Borderline,” a melodrama set in 1980s South Korea.
For many years, M*A*S*H, that richly sardonic television view of civil war in Korea (1950-53), though it related more feelings-wise to the Vietnam War (1963-75), graced U.S. network and cable channels. It still can be seen in syndication, and is just as good now as when it was first broadcast. 
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The mythical home for that series’s 4077th unit was Uijeongbu, South Korea, close to the 38th Parallel, dividing North and South Korea. Today, Uijeongbu is also home to Camp Red Cloud, named for Hatfield, Wisconsin-born/Ho-Chunk Medal of Honor winner Cpl. Mitchell Red Cloud, who died near Chonghyon, Korea on Nov. 5, 1950, killing a slew of Chinese troops, and protecting his unit’s retreat. In La Crosse, we have a park named for him.
Born in La Crosse, I worked as a journalist in Seoul from 1984-87, and my son, Matthew, is half-Korean, though he was also born in La Crosse.
By summer 1986, I’d not yet met my future wife, my son’s mother, but I was dating Jinny, an appealing Ewha University graduate. (Ewha is the world’s largest all-women’s university.)
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Both of us worked weekdays, so we dated weekends, and sometimes would go on daytrips from the capital.
One Sunday, we took the bus to Uijeongbu. One place we visited was a bar-restaurant. The song “King of the World’ played, and Jinny asked if I felt I was King of the World. I said not exactly, but that it was nice sitting with her. We passed an hour or two chatting, and then walked the streets a bit. Jinny said there was a military base nearby (Camp Red Cloud, it turned out), but I don’t recall if we saw its partitions. I do recall Uijeongbu seemed a somewhat quiet, yet vital city by day.
Image by WanderingSolesPhotography via Flickr
We eventually boarded our bus, and headed back to Seoul, a modest jaunt, southerly and away from the DMZ. I dated Jinny a few weeks’ more — then met my future wife.
Sometimes when people hear I lived in Korea, they’ll ask if I was in the military. I say no, I was a journalist there. More importantly, I helped conceive my son there. Matthew recently enlisted in the U.S. Army, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he were stationed in South Korea at some point. He wants to be a medic, and I hope, regardless of his assignments, he remains healthy enough throughout.
The two Koreas continue playing dangerous games with each other, and it would be nice if North Korea ‘simply’ liberalized its military-state. With the United States at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we don’t need a Korean heat-up, too. (The two Koreas never signed a peace treaty.) If the Obama Administration truly believes in using more diplomacy around the world, let’s discover a diplomatic way to end our wars successfully. Perhaps the United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, born in Korea, and someday my son Matthew, too, will assist further in that process.
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And I hope someday, too, my own visit to Uijeongbu will contribute at least modestly to peace, as well. A few years’ ago, I wrote a two-scene play about that area, which might see the light of day. Its title is — ‘Borderline.’
David J. Marcou is a father, writer, photographer, editor, and clerk in Wisconsin.
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