For James Bond, spying was an endless succession of glamorous women and dry martinis, but for a real-life South Korean commando who undertook secret missions in the reclusive North, life was far harder.
Now aged 59 and the father of three daughters, Yoon Kyung-chul spends his days fixing up old bicycles for a charity in downtown Seoul, the South Korean capital.
That is a far cry from the day in 1973 when the 21-year old Yoon was summoned for duty to go and infiltrate North Korea, which is still technically at war with the South.
Photo: reuters
“It was 4am and three men in black suits came to my house. I didn’t have [a] chance to say a goodbye to my family,” Yoon said of the day he was recruited for the South’s Headquarters of Intelligence Detachment.
It wasn’t an official conscription. Yoon wound up on an isolated mountain without a name tag or badge of rank.
Yoon said many of the men in his new unit were enticed by the 30 million Korean won (US$25,148 at today’s exchange rate) on offer to join.
The 21-year old was trained in demolition, long-distance hiking, shooting and knife-hurling under tough conditions that included beatings for poor performance.
“There was no leave. For more than six months in a year, dressed in North Korean army uniforms, we were trained. Many people died during the training and many were injured,” he said.
Although overt hostilities between North and South Korea were stopped with a 1953 armistice, both sides conducted low-level hostilities.
About 13,000 men were trained like Yoon through to the early 1990s and more than 7,000 who worked until the early 1970s have been listed as missing or dead, according to government data. Several hundred of them are believed to be in the North.
When Yoon left the special forces in 1976 after three years’ service, he found he could not get a job and, even worse, that his own country was monitoring his activities.
“I was neither a civilian nor a soldier,” he said.
A protest movement by the former military agents saw rioting in Seoul in 2002 when several hundred of them set fire to gas canisters, eventually winning compensation and government recognition of their work.
Even so, many people still consider the ex-servicemen to be gangsters or extremists and nicknamed them “canister men.”
They still attend protests and the adverse public reaction prompted Yoon and another ex-commando to open a free bicycle repair center, donating the cycles to schools and daycare centers.
Beneath a sign on the wall of his workshop saying “What have I done for the Motherland today?” Yoon and his staff labor on.
“We said to ourselves, let’s not use our fists anymore ... Then, we picked up bicycles on streets. Our goal is to donate 600 bicycles next year,” he said. “I need to get rid of my dark past and show something better to my daughters.”
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
A rash of unexplained drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey has left locals rattled and sent US officials scrambling for answers. Breathless local news reports have amplified the anxious sky-gazing and wild speculation — interspersing blurry, dark clips from social media with irate locals calling for action. For weeks now, the distinctive blinking lights and whirling rotors of large uncrewed aerial vehicles have been spotted across the state west of New York. However, military brass, elected representatives and investigators have been unable to explain the recurring UFO phenomenon. Sam Lugo, 23, who works in the Club Studio gym in New Jersey’s Bergen
RSS