Burma in Limbo - Part 8

U Nu on Time's Cover.

BORN on 25 May 1907 Prime Minister of Burma U Nu was well over forty in early 1950s and he was becoming wiser and veering towards right in his political orientation after years of ruling Burma. 

He used to be a closet Communist or at least a Socialist just a few years ago. Victory to Communism; Defeat to Burmese Communists - was what he yelled out at departing Than Htun on the very day CPB was expelled from AFPFL in December 1946.

Maybe he was well aware of the old adage ‘If one is not a Communist at 20 one is heartless but if one is still a Communist at 40 one is brainless’.

He was really sick of blatant corruption rapidly eating away the fortunes from the state-owned enterprises. And basically almost all large-scale economic enterprises in Burma were state-owned after years of overzealous nationalization as a legacy of Aung San and his leftwing extreme-nationalists. This translated extract is what he wrote in his autobiography Saturday Born.

Ambushed on Ledo Road (1972)

Winding Ledo Road.

I WAS only 16 and wasn’t even a sworn-soldier yet when our training platoon of army recruits was ambushed by KIA (Kachin Independence Army) on the famous Ledo Road in mid 1972.

As an extension of Burma Road from Lashio in Burma to Kuming in China the Ledo Road was built by the US Army during the Second World War to supply China from India through northern Burma. The whole east coast of China then was under Japanese control and the Chan-kei-sheik’s besieged Government in Yunan survived mainly on the American supplies coming through the Ledo Road. 

We were on the Ledo road at about 20 miles south-west of Myitkyina to collect two truck loads of firewood for our Company’s kitchen. The normal household fuel kerosene was too expensive for the big kitchen of our mess and it had become one of our regular jobs almost every other week since the very week we brand new recruits were taught how to handle the German-designed locally-made G3 rifles.

Since the native Kachins used slash and burn shifting cultivation there were a lot of cleared fields filled with charred and fallen trees by the roadside within few hours drive from Myitkyina where our Infantry Battalion was stationed.

Basically what we had to do in a firewood detail were to arm ourselves to teeth, take a truck or two down the Ledo Road, park them roadside, walk into the hilly bush, locate good-size partly-burnt tree-trunks among the waist-high stumps, saw them into manageable lengths, and carry the logs on our shoulders back to the trucks.

Ledo Road and Burma Road (1942).

Extra meat ration and a can of sweetened-condensed-milk for everyone in the firewood detail was very attractive even for the back breaking job of carrying heavy logs on our shoulders up and down the hillocks back to the trucks waiting on the muddy Ledo Road. And we didn’t know that the local militiamen of KIA were eagerly watching our regular trips into their territory.

Every firewood detail was always led by the sergeant of our recruit Company. A veteran of twenty years our Sarge had an excellent nose for smelling the imminent danger. I was nearly two months in the battalion boot camp when Sarge picked our recruit platoon of twenty for another firewood detail. That was to be the day I would never be able to forget the rest of my life.  

On the Ledo Road

In the early morning well before dawn that day we had a breakfast of boiled-split-pea and sweet tea. We then collected our rifles and ammo from the battalion armoury and left town in two eleven tons Hino TE-11 trucks. All twenty of us led by our sergeant and one corporal were in good mood as we hadn’t been out of the battalion compound for nearly two months then.

The happy mood turned into a stinking fear after we stopped just before the jungle at the local army post which informed us that KIA was hot in the area we were heading. Sarge was noticeably worried but he decided to push ahead with the trip since we were fast running out of firewood. So we kept on driving deep over the hills covered with lush green forest.

Ledo road was a notoriously winding unsealed dirt road snaking through the thick jungle over the rugged hills towards the concentrated land of jade mines down south-west. In some areas the road rises more than two thousand feet from the sea level and winds through tall teak forest. From time to time, the road comes out of the jungle onto the cliff edge and opens to a vast view of distant jungle under the bright sunrays of rising morning sun in the East. From back of the open trucks we could see large stretches of heavily forested land below.

On some stretches of the road Sarge took the precautionary measures and we were forced to dismount. Then we had to walk in single line behind the slowly moving trucks if Sarge thought here was a good ambush spot typically an uphill bend with dense forest covered hill on one side and steep cliff dropping off on the other side. But nothing happened on the way in and we reached the target site.

The team of four men who had prior experience with long two-handled saws started sawing the good-sized tree-trunks on the ground into about 8 to 10 foot long logs. And the rest of us started carrying the logs back to the nearby trucks. We had our G3s slung across our back as the security situation didn’t allow us to leave our guns in the trucks.

Natives on Ledo Road.

We had a lunch break at noon and our lunch was the rice and hard-boiled duck-eggs we brought along. The corporal shot a jungle-chicken and cooked a large pot of delicious chicken stew with plenty of wild chilli in it and made that lunch quite enjoyable. 

We continued working the whole afternoon and by the late afternoon we had both open trucks filled with firewood logs to the roof-frames. At about 4 or 4:30 we headed back to the battalion compound in Myitkyina.

On the way back hungry and exhausted we all sat atop the logs unwilling to climb down and walk at the spots deemed dangerous. But just before the last dangerous stretch of the winding road only about five miles from the army outpost Sarge riding the first truck suddenly stopped his truck right in the middle of the wide road. Our truck also came to a sudden screeching stop just behind the first truck as Sarge jumped out of the cabin.

He was waving his hands hysterically and ordering us to come down onto the ground. “Get down, you lazy sons-of-bitches, get down!” with a worried frown on his face he angrily forced us down from both trucks as we were initially reluctant to come down from atop the logs.

“Your stepfathers are waiting to slaughter us! Get down, get down,” he just kept on yelling angrily at us until we reluctantly obeyed. “Line up behind the trucks, single column, keep a distance, don’t fucking bunch up together,” he barked out orders and we ran and formed single column lines behind each truck.

Another shot of Ledo Road.

He was excitingly yelling that he just saw the silhouette of armed men on one of the hilltops ahead against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. The low sun was well behind us and the tree lines on the crest of distant hills ahead were clearly visible even with the naked eyes. He obviously did see a small group of men silhouetted on the horizon atop the crest of a cleared hill.  

“Didn’t you see them on the hills? Move your fat arse off the truck. Get down,” he even abused the corporal still comfortably sitting in the cabin of second truck. “Cock the guns! I repeat, cock the guns. Keep the Safety Catch on Safe,” yelled Sarge as he cocked his own .30 American carbine. That was the very first time he ordered us to load and lock our G3 automatic rifles outside the battalion shooting-range.

“Do it, you little sons-of-bitches, don’t touch the bloody triggers yet, keep your little fucking fingers away,” he was always very meticulous about safe handling of our automatic weapons. Absolutely no accidental discharge of firearm in my unit, that was his proud motto and we were forced to strictly adhere to it.

Whenever we came back from an armed duty we were to fall in single file, unload our guns, and clear the bullets from the chambers as a standard procedure before returning the weapons to the battalion armoury.

Now in the middle of evergreen jungle the enemy had unknowingly exposed themselves and given our overly-cautious Sarge a strong reason to seriously prepare for the imminent ambush. He’d been alert and alarmed the whole day since the men from the army outpost warned him in the morning.

It was really confusing for us recruits and we were all scared stiff. But as he ordered us I cocked my rifle by pulling the bolt handle on the left side of the rifle all the way back till it was locked in. I then forcefully slapped the locked bolt handle with my left palm to release and chamber a fresh round from the 20 round magazine.

Every recruits from our platoon followed me and the hard cocking sounds of 20 G3s disturbed the silence of the surrounding jungle and forced a few startling birds to fly off from the nearby trees. I made sure the safety catch was on and then slung the gun strap around my neck. With left hand supporting the wooden barrel guard and right hand gripping the pistol grip with finger on the trigger guard I was ready to walk behind the second truck I just jumped down from.

Sarge and half of the platoon followed the first truck. The corporal and the rest including me were behind the second truck which was now slowly moving at a good distance behind the first truck. But once Sarge was out of our sight the stubborn corporal refused to walk and climbed back up into the cabin and sat beside the driver. 

Slow and steady I had to walk at about twenty yards immediately behind the truck with the rest of the recruits behind me in a long single line. We were on a long uphill bend with a high sloping hill on our right and a rather steep drop on the left.

Ambushed

Soon, the first truck and the line of men had disappeared around the long uphill bend. Then without any of us expecting the truck right in front of me drove over a huge mine planted on the road by KIA just before we came along. Sarge later said it could have been an anti-tank mine leftover from the last big War.

“Boom, ka-boom, dang, dang, dang,” simultaneously with the extremely loud boom what I saw of the massive explosion was the huge orangy flash of flame coming out from underneath the truck and forcefully throwing the heavy truck into the air up to my eyes level.

The huge explosion with a deafening noise was blinding and the high-pressure blast wave alone threw me violently into the air and knocked me down unconscious onto the ground. And one of the flying logs dropped on me across my chest as I lay unconscious on the wild grass on the road edge just before the drop. I didn’t even know how long I’d been knocked out. 

But when I came to and quickly regained clear consciousness I found myself lying flat on my back not far from the drop with the gun at my side and its carrying strap still hanging around my neck and a good-size log on my chest. I saw the mingled wreckage of still burning truck lying on its side by the edge of the wide road and scattered logs on the ground all around me. 

Burmese Army Trucks.

Right in front of me just a mere 20 yards away was a huge crater from the mine explosion in the middle of the road. The overwhelming chest pain forced me to stay on my back. But in my head something was telling me to get up and be prepared for the aftermath of the explosion.

I slowly managed to push off the log resting heavily on my chest and then tried to get up but only able to kneel on the grassy ground as I was suddenly overwhelmed by a severe chest pain again. On my knees with the heavy rifle still dangling from my neck by its strap I tried to look around for the others. 

I could partly see the bloodied body of the driver in the crumpled truck cabin amidst the still billowing smoke. It was so eerily quiet I thought everybody was dead. Then I saw a movement across the wide road from the corner of my eyes. I turned my head to right and instantly I was horrified by the most terrifying sight possible for a sixteen-year-old brand new soldier.

Baptism of Fire

The ambushing militiamen had already climbed down the brushy hill and three of them were just coming out of the jungle edge only few yards away from the right shoulder of the road. I could even see the blood-shot whites of the eyes of the front man and his grinning beteljuice-stained black teeth. 

He had an old .303 rifle in his hands but the others were just armed with stubby Kachin swords. They were all young Kachin men. They might have thought that we were all dead and so coming down to strip the arms and ammo off our bodies as their usual guerrilla practice.  

.303 Lee-Enfield Rifle

Just for an instant I immediately froze with unimaginable horror, but my survival sense unexpectedly kicked in after a short moment. I had been in a life-threatening fight once before when a homeless boy tried to stab me in the Rangoon Central Station. The difference this time was that they did have a gun and so did I. 

I unslung the rifle from my neck and held it in both hands. I had even forgotten my chest pain and quickly managed to get up and level the gun at them. That also surprised them as they didn’t expect to see a young Burmese soldier survived and stood up and now pointing a dreadful G3 at them. 

Luck was still on my side as the scattered logs on the road and its wide shoulders had slowed them down. Otherwise they could have quickly reached and slaughtered me while I was painfully trying to get up from the ground. 

The one at the front lifted his rifle while other two with swords stopped on their tracks. I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Just the slight resistant on my trigger finger. Immediately I remembered the gun was cocked but the safety catch was still on as Sarge had ordered us. I panicked and fumbled around the left side of gun and managed only to push the catch down to semi-automatic.

The G3 safety catch had three positions clearly marked in German: S (Sicher) for safe, E (Einzelfeuer) for semi-automatic, and F (FeuerstoB) for fully-automatic. I took aim again and fired a single round. It was so close the bullet went through the chest of the first one who also was trying in vain to take a shot at me. 

BA63 or G3 Rifle

I saw a small piece of dirty shirt on his front torn off and disappeared real fast into the bullet hole on his chest. I also saw the sudden blast of flesh and blood behind him as the 7.62 mm caliber bullet exited and vanished into the tree ferns on the edge of the jungle, cutting down a few small branches and many leaves on its way to oblivion.

He didn’t die instantly like I used to see in some war movies. The penetrating bullet had stopped him but he didn’t fall straight away. Stood there stunned he looked down at the small bullet hole on his chest and then painfully dropped onto his knees. On the ground on his knees, he looked up at me with unbelievable surprise in his blood-shot red eyes. 

Kneeling on the ground he then looked down again at his bullet wound as the dark blood was now slowly seeping out and trickling down onto his chest. He tried to look up at me again, but his awful gaze went right through me as his eyes were now horribly sightless and a trickle of blood started coming out off his mouth. 

I guessed he died at that instant. With his mouth gaping wide his body fell sideways to his right and hit the ground like a fell-down tree trunk and the lifeless body lay there grotesquely on the side. He lay dead there in almost foetal position with the rifle still firmly in his dead hands. Then his bent legs slowly stretched right under my eyes as if the life inside of his body was spent. Dark blood seeping out of his chest onto the ground hardened by the tyre tracks started forming a small pool underneath his body.

Stunned, the other two turned around and tried to run back into the jungle. Gaining enough confidence from getting the upper hand over them, I pushed down my gun catch to fully automatic and fired all the rounds from the magazine. With heavy recoil, the rifle shook in my hands and the bullets flew all over the place. 

But a few of them found the backs of the fleeing men and felled them in a few seconds time. Seemed like I didn’t see anything clearly at that time with the background of deafening loud bangs from my G3. Only visible things coming into my sight were the spent brass cartridges flying out of the rifle one after another and dropping one by one on the ground right in front of me at a short distance from my right foot. 

Both were sprawling dead when the magazine was emptied and the gun had stopped its violent shaking in my hands. Blood and guts were all over the road and the unfamiliar smell of torn flesh and the overpowering stench of cordite almost overcame me. 

I just stood there with the still smoking rifle in both hands, the butt between my right elbow and body and the barrel pointing down with finger still on the trigger, blindly staring at the bloodied sight of three bodies on the road right in front of me. Then the uncontrollable trembling came out of the blue and I wept. I was overcome by a deep sorrow and a strange anger at the same time. 

A Burmese soldier armed with G3.

Sarge and his men from the first truck came back down around the bend and saw what just happened and some recruits started shooting wildly into the bush and the bodies on the road. One stray bullet dangerously swished past my left ear and jolted me out of the terrible state of strange emotional effects. 

“Stop, stop! Stop shootings! Fucking motherfuckers, they are all dead!” Sarge yelled at them and the shooting suddenly stopped. Then he strode up to me and asked, “Are you okay? Did you empty the whole bloody magazine? What exactly happened?”

Trembling from the near death experience and unable to answer him I stood still at the same spot. It took a few minutes for Sarge to calm me down. Amid the billowing smoke and heavy stench of cordite only then I realized how close I came to meeting my maker. 

“The blast, Sarge, knocked me off. When I came to, those three men were almost on top of me. Lucky, I managed to shoot them first. Are they all dead now?” I tried to explain briefly to Sarge. “Yeah, they sure are. No one survives G3 bullets in such a close range.”

   

Apart from the driver and the corporal killed in the truck by the land mine explosion no one else was hurt. It wasn’t a huge ambush as Sarge’d expected. Only a few opportunistic militiamen armed with a WW2 tank-mine taking an enormous risk and staging a surprise ambush. Probably they knew that we were just a recruit platoon. 

Thanks to Sarge we were walking so far apart from each other the explosion didn’t harm any of us the recruits. I didn’t dare to think of the ugly outcome if we were all riding on the truck when it hit the landmine. Sarge had narrowly avoided the massacre of his whole recruit platoon. And my quick reaction had saved my own life and probably others.

The recruits walking far behind me were so hopelessly scared they just crouched on the ground and pissed in their pants. Some even shat. They didn’t even see immediate aftermath of the explosion. 

Having heard the explosion and gunshots from the distance a section of men from the local army outpost came out later and they pushed the wreckage down the drop, cleared the road, and collected the bodies. 

Their corporal even applied some sensationally hot ointment onto the bruises of my chest and bandaged it. Later we just walked for a while and then all jumped onto the remaining truck and came back. 

That was the last of our firewood details. Two unfortunate deaths and the battalion also lost one valuable truck and at least 8 tons of log as free firewood. We brought back another 8 tons of firewood, enough for our kitchen till our boot camp was over. 

Burial of Our Fallen

Late at that night back in our barracks Sarge called me to the Company Office and surprised me by giving me a half-empty bottle of army rum and asking me to drink right there right out of the bottle. I took a sip direct from the bottle and it burned my throat. 

The rum was too strong and also so bitter since it had anti-malaria medicine Quinine in it. To prevent getting malaria from the infested jungle we recruits were lined up with a tin-mug full of water in our hands and given a couple of quinine pills to take right there under the watchful eyes of the duty corporal once a week on every Friday. 

But regular soldiers were given a weekly ration of at least two bottles of army rum heavily laced with quinine. With a store full of army rum bottles our Sarge and all the corporals were drunk most of the nights. It was the main reason most Burmese soldiers ended up being problem-alcoholics for rest of their natural lives, I reckoned, from the army-supplied free rum. 

Sarge then let me go back to our barracks where I finished the bottle in the dark and fell into a numbing sleep. Next day my platoon was allowed to sleep in as a reward for what we went through.

Myitkyinar Map.

Two days later we had to bury our dead at the town cemetery. For the burial I and a small group of recruits were sent to the Myitkyina Hospital to coffin the dead. The mortuary had no cold-room or body-refrigerators and the bodies of our corporal and the truck driver were on the sticky tiled-floor rotting. 

The doors were wide open to let the smell out and the flies were all over the place and the corpses were covered head to toe with maggots and the horrifying smell was totally unbearable. We tried to cover our noses with small army towels but the middle-aged Captain supervising us had stopped us from doing just that. They were our fallen comrades and we shouldn’t be disgusted by their remains was what he fanatically yelled at us.

We filled the two cheap pinewood coffins with plenty of quicklime and after the bodies were inside we covered them also with generous amount of lime powder filled to the rims. It partly killed the smell for us to carry the coffins and place it on a Dodge-drawn gun-carriage. 

The whole of our battalion and some units of other two battalions from the town followed the cortege from the mortuary to the cemetery and we buried our dead at the town cemetery with a full military honour and that tragic episode was over.

Our arm-patch for Burma Army
northern Command.

But sometimes I still wondered whatever happened to the bodies of the three young Kachin men I killed. One corporal just said that their bodies were simply thrown over the cliff edge and might be rotting on the jungle floor by now. For most of us it was normal to treat our dead with respect but not theirs. 

I seriously believed they might be the natives from that area and their families might be missing them. Maybe they didn’t even know that their loved ones were dead and still looking for them. 

Sarge just simply told me not to think anymore about them. Once on the front line I wouldn’t even remember after a good night sleep how many I’d just killed the day before. That was exactly what he told me when I asked him at the cemetery. 

Only one good thing out of that terrible encounter was that they started treating me with awe like a hero and nobody, not even the Corporals, dared to yell at me or hurl abuse no more. I was already blooded even before finishing the boot camp. In a rifle company a blooded solider is the only soldier!

(That was the horror of never-ending Burmese civil war which has so far killed over a million people since the independence in 1948. Two from the Burmese side and three from the Kachin side killed on that faithful day were just a very small count making eventually that huge death toll over the years.

The Baptism of Fire section from my book "Song for Irrawaddy" was based on this deadly encounter. Please check the book out and read the first chapter as the Preview at this link.)

Saving Buddha from a LA Nightclub (2)

(This article is the translation of AhShin AyeThaKa’s post from the YeMinHtun’s Blog.)

IN the busy kitchen of one of the biggest Asian restaurants in the second most populous American city of Los Angeles a young Burmese Sushi-chef YanMyoAung is quietly saying the Buddhist prayers while rolling his Sushis. 

People around him might have thought he’d gone mad or become a rare Buddhist fanatic since he wouldn’t stop saying the prayers all the time. He said the prayers non-stop while driving to and from work, shopping in the supermarkets, and cooking meals at home. So much so that his throat became extra dried and his tongue got real hot.

Saving Buddha from a LA Nightclub (1)

(This article is the translation of AhShin AyeThaKa’s post from the YeMinHtun’s Blog.)

IN the busy kitchen of one of the biggest Asian restaurants in the second most populous American city of Los Angeles a young Burmese Sushi-chef YanMyoAung is quietly saying the Buddhist prayers while rolling his Sushis. 

He now believes the only means left to achieve his noble wish is to pray to his Lord Buddha. Unlike other young men his age his wish is neither to get rich nor to marry his sweetheart. He has had a wish unusual and noble for his age and his situations. That noble wish came into his young mind one night in last August.

The restaurant he works for is a huge one seating over 300 and serving all sorts of Asian food one can possibly imagine. He is one of the Sushi rollers in the Japanese food section. In that faithful night in August he felt like going to the nightclub while he was back at home after work. He isn’t the type who enjoys drinking and partying and nightlife and he hasn’t had that feeling for a long time now.

Chun Doo-Hwan and Kang Min-Chul

South Korean President Chun Doo-Hwan.

October 9 in 1983 didn’t begin like any other normal Sunday in Rangoon. I had to work that day as we had to prepare for a big ministerial meeting for foreign equipment purchases.

I was then working for Burma Irrigation and our office was at 8 ½ mile on Prome Road near the Rangoon Airport. I arrived at the office about eight in that morning and I was in the middle of doing some paperwork when the sonic boom of faint but definitely huge explosion basically alerted me at about 9 or 10 in the morning.

Pondering what the hell that ka-boom of explosion was about I rushed out of office and saw a crowd gathering in the outside corridor. Everyone there agreed the explosion was from a distance and we all then went back to our work as if nothing had happened. 

Only back in the office I saw the today newspaper ‘The Working People’s Daily’ on a desk and glimpsed the news of South Korean President’s visit on the front page. But honestly I didn’t even vaguely connect the loud explosion with Chun Doo-Hwan the visiting President from South Korea.

But that evening the rumors of his death from the bombing at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum were the talk of the tables at every teashop the popular gathering place for the idle Burmese men. Only then I remembered the faint boom of explosion this morning. The news of the assassination attempt and his lucky survival were in all the newspapers next day. 

And within a couple of days the captures of North Korean Commandos were on the newspaper front pages. And the sorry face of our dictator Ne Win seeing off Chun Doo-Hwan sadly at the Airport was repeatedly broadcasted on the Government-controlled TV. As if our government was deliberately apologizing to the people of South Korea.

Contrary to their usual ways of delaying tactics and secretive styles the newspapers and Radio and TV, all government owned and operated, were amazingly frank and surprisingly prompt in reporting immediately the unfolding events of the bombing and the aftermath. This account is what I still remember and can recall of that tragic events in 1983 together with some material I found from other sources more than 30 years later.

Chun Doo-Hwan’s Visit and the Bombing

Military-ruled Socialist Burma was the first leg of Chun Doo-Hwan’s presidential tour conceived and planned by Chun’s Foreign Minister Lee Beom-Seok. A cornerstone of Lee’s policy was to establish ties between South Korea and the so-called Non-aligned nations and thus Chu Doo-Hwan’s 18 days six nation trip also included India and Sri Lanka. Burma was one of the founding nations of Non-aligned movement.

The ill-fated journey in 1983 October was also designed to burnish Chun's image back home as a true leader for he wasn’t really popular among the people since seizing power by force after the 1979 assassination of President Park Chung-Hee and winning the indirect elections in 1980. The blood of hundreds and hundreds of protesting students slaughtered by his troops in the Kwangju Uprising in 1980 was still fresh in peoples’ memory. Chun really did need a break then.

On that faithful Sunday in quiet Rangoon the presidential motorcade was running a few minutes late for the wreath-laying ceremony at the Martyrs' Mausoleum by the beaming Shwe Dagon Pagoda. The rest of his high-power delegation was already there lining up together with the Burmese hosts in the grand hall of the Mausoleum for his arrival when the ear-splitting explosion ripped through the one-story building and blown up the roof skyward. The ceiling completely collapsed and within few seconds the orderly scene of diplomatic gathering was transformed into bloody mess.  

The huge blast apparently caused by the bombs hidden in the mausoleum's high ceiling had killed 19 and seriously wounded 48. Among the 16 leading South Korean officials killed there were Seo Seok-Jun the Deputy PM, Lee Bum-Suk the Foreign Minister, Kim Dong-Hwi the Commerce Minister, and  Suh Sang-Chul the Minister of Power resources.

Chun’s motorcade was nearly there on the Mausoleum driveway when the bomb went off. The presidential motorcade was turned away from the Mausoleum gate. The President cut short the journey and flew back to Seoul with his wife that afternoon. He was seen off at the airport by Burmese dictator General Ne Win himself. On the TV footage Ne Win appeared to be apologizing him all the way onto the stairs of his Korean Airforce Boeing.

This translated extract (edited) is from the radio interview given to the "VOA Burmese - Commanders & Soldiers Forum (036) and (037) (November 26, 2010 and December 03, 2010)" by Htun Lin who was then a private serving in Third Platoon of First Company in IB 90 of Burmese Army Rangoon Command.  His battalion then was assigned for the outer security of Presidential delegation in Rangoon.

“Our battalion IB 90 then based in Thanlhyin Town across from Rangoon was responsible for the security of Rangoon. In October the battalion received an order to be standby for the outer security of Chun-Doo-Hwan’s delegation especially for the October 9 wrath-laying ceremony at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum.

We had to move to Rangoon and camped temporarily at the Saya-San Hall in the Kyaiksan Ground and we cleared the routes travelled by Chun-Doo-Hwan’s entourage.

Bombed Mausoleum in Rangoon.

On 9th October we heard the huge explosion while we were having breakfast in our camp. First we didn’t know it was from the Martyrs’ Hill. But it was really loud. Immediately we received the radio message and we climbed onto the trucks and headed for the Martyrs’ Hill.

We saw the carnage at the Mausoleum when we got there. Apparently the bombs were hidden in the ceiling and so the roof collapsed and the heavy I-beams fell down onto the people in the hall below. Many were crushed by the falling I-beams and horribly killed.

What I knew then of the deaths were 4 staff members from the South-Korean Embassy and 13 from the visiting delegation and 4 from the Burmese Foreign Ministry. We stayed there till the nightfall.”

All the army battalions in Rangoon and the neighboring townships were now mobilized and two rifle battalions were heading straight for the large compound of North Korean Embassy within an hour from when the bombs went off at the Mausoleum.

Siege of the Embassy and Massive Manhunt

South Korean Delegation at Rangoon Martyrs Mausoleum.

Hundreds of armed troops from Third and Fourth Burma Rifles had surrounded the North Korean Embassy compound almost immediately after the bombing and prevented anyone from entering or leaving the huge compound for weeks till the whole bombing thing was unraveled by the army and the intelligence apparatus.

Radio and TV had started broadcasting to keep the people alert and alarm and to look out for the terrorists from possibly North Korea. Thousands of people militia Pyithusit from the villages of the neighboring townships were also mobilized as the largest manhunt in Rangoon history was launched. This translated extract (edited) also is from the radio interview given to the "VOA Burmese - Commanders & Soldiers Forum (037) (December 03, 2010)" by ex-Private Htun Lin of Burmese Army. 

“In the morning of October 10 we were sent to the Rangoon general Hospital for the inner security of North Korean prisoner Major Zin-Mo who was already captured by the Burmese boatmen in the waters of Pazundaung Creek. He was the leader of the commando team and he was then receiving emergency surgery in RGH for his wounds.

Apparently the three men North Korean Commando team was separated into tow teams as they tried to reach the waiting ship in the nearby sea which was only about 20 miles downstream from Rangoon. The boatmen saw Zin-Mo in the water and tried to grab him as the radio was repeatedly alerting the people of Rangoon and nearby townships to watch out for the North Koreans and capture them.

But Major Zin-Mo exploded a couple of hand grenades on his body in an apparent suicide attempt and he badly wounded himself and some of the Burmese boatmen in the process. At 10 in the morning that day we transferred him to the No. (2) Military Hospital (on U Wisara Road by the Cantonment Park).”

By then Burmese army had known very well that there were still two North Korean Commandos at large near the area Zin-Mo was captured and concentrated their massive search and capture operation involving the whole local populace on that small area by the Rangoon River.

This translated extract (edited) also is from the radio interview given to the "VOA Burmese - Commanders & Soldiers Forum (037) (December 03, 2010)" by Htun Lin who was then a private serving in Third Platoon of First Company in IB 90 of Burmese Army Rangoon   Command. 

“In the early morning of October 11 we had to report to the No. 1 BOC (Base Operations Command) inside Cantonment Park and we were asked to fall in. Only ten including me was selected as a special commando section and they drove us in a Hino TE21 truck to No. 502 Airbase at Mingaladon. The truck had no roof tarpaulin and we all got really wet as it was raining heavy.

We ten kamikaze had to fall in beside two Huskie helicopters on the runway. Our section leader was Second Lt. Maung Maung Aung. A group of senior officers then arrived. Colonel Myo Nyunt the Deputy CO Rangoon Command, Colonel Nyi Sein the CO BOC (1), Lt. Colonel  Ohn Myint the Battalion CO, and  Captain Kyaw Soe the Battalion IO.

They wrote down our names, PSNs, addresses, parents’ names, and blood groups. They also asked our preferred next of kin for our benefits if we were killed. Then Colonel Myo Nyunt gave us the last speech ordering that we must find the enemy, diligently search every inch of that land they were hiding in, and capture them alive to redeem our country’s pride.

He ordered that to get enemy alive not even wounded we must sacrifice our lives if we need to. The enemy must be captured alive. After that they in one Huski and we in the other we flew to the area where the North Koreans were last seen. On the way the Huskies circled the Shwedagon Pagoda three rounds for us.”

VOA Anchor Ronnie Nyein.

What Burmese kamikaze soldiers didn’t know then was the two North Koreans, Captain Zin Kee-Chu and Captain Kang Min-Chul, were already found once and Zin Kee-Chu was killed and Kang Min-Chu had escaped during the struggle in which some of the police and the local people who captured them were killed or wounded. This is what former private Htun Lin said to the interviewer Ex-Lieutenant Thoung Nyein (now Ronnie Nyein of VOA Burmese) who has anchored the Commanders & Soldiers Forum segment of VOA Burmese.

“Only when we arrived we knew the place was Thakhutpin Village in Kawmhu Township of Rangoon Division. Near the village was a long embankment along the Rangoon River and since the helicopters couldn’t land in the paddy fields or on the embankment we all had to jump down from the hovering Huskies.

We then cleared the village. The enemy was no longer in the village as he’d fled into the paddy fields just outside the village. Only then we were told the whole story.

Two North Koreans had been found wandering just outside the village and the villagers reported them to the police detachment at the village monastery. The policemen chased the two, captured them, and brought them back to their camp.

The two had Burmese-style bag on each of them and the policemen tried to search the bags. The North Koreans pretended to cooperate with the police and Zin Kee-Chu started pulling stuff out of his bag. First a pile of money came out and while the policemen were temporarily distracted by the cash he then pulled out a hand grenade and detonated right there.

Their hand grenades had short 1 second fuses unlike our M-36 hand grenades with the longer 4 seconds fuses. So the explosion was immediate and some policemen and Captain Zin Kee-Chu himself were killed there. Kang Min-Chul escaped with a grenade in one hand and a pistol in other hand into the nearby paddy fields while firing back at the chasers.

The policemen radioed our battalion and now we were there to catch the North Korean Commando.”

By then the whole area had been completely blocked by the navy, army, and Pyithusit the local people militia. Naval gun boats were motoring up and down in the nearby Rangoon River while the airforce helicopters were hovering above. And the wide area of paddy fields was completely encircled by the thousands and thousands of armed soldiers and armed people militia.

Encircling was so tight not even a field rat could crawl through the line of armed men standing shoulder to shoulder in the green fields of young paddy.

They could have just shot and killed the lone North Korean now hopelessly trapped but the order coming down from the very top of the army chain of command was absolutely clear. They wanted him alive, not dead. And so the ten Burmese kamikaze soldiers were selected and sent inside the siege-circle to catch Kang Min-Chul alive.

This translated extract (edited) also is from the radio interview given to the "VOA Burmese - Commanders & Soldiers Forum (037) (December 03, 2010)" by ex-private Htun Lin who was then part of the select section of Burmese soldiers sent in to grab Kang Min-Chul alive.

“The day was October 11. We ten went in the rice paddy and trampled every inch of the field and searched for the North Korean the whole day. At dusk we had to stop the search to rest for the night and we resumed the search again at dawn.

It was the early morning of October 12 when we found him. He was hiding in a naturally-formed large ditch draining rain water down from the fields to the Rangoon River. He was sitting in the water completely filled with floating water-hyacinths and we found him anyway even though he was out of sight and hard to be seen.

Once we found him in the ditch we ten had to line up abreast on the bank close to him and reported back to the officers waiting behind us. According to our platoon leader Second Lt. Maung Maung Aung the immediate order from Col. Nyi Sein the CO BOC (1) was to wait for the arrival of the elephant gun so that we could shoot him with tranquilizer darts, of course with reduced drugs in it.

So we just waited there for about ten minutes till another order came in again. This time it was direct from Col. Myo Nyunt the Deputy CO Rangoon Command and he ordered us to rush in and manhandle and overpower the North Korean as the army top brass was now waiting by the radio and they were getting real impatient.

So our Cho Oo the most senior private and the deputy section leader ordered the leftmost three men of our line to prepare for the immediate attack. The three were Nyunt Han the married one from the HQ Company, and Than Htwe and Thein Naing the bachelors from our Third Platoon First Company.

They dropped their G3 rifles on the ground and moved up one step ahead towards the North Korean. Cho Oo then clapped once and yelled out ‘Start’. The three shouted ‘Tiger’ aloud and ran to the North Korean who immediately threw a hand grenade at them. With the loud noise of explosion the area was suddenly covered by a huge smoke ball and we could clearly see our three were dead on the ground as the smoke disappeared in the river breeze.

Then Cho Oo ordered another three to prepare for the second attack. The three now were me, Myo Naing, and another one I can’t recall his name now. We laid down our rifles and stepped forward as the three before us did. When the order to attack came we yelled out ‘Tiger’ aloud and rushed forward. Luckily the North Korean was already wounded and he had no grenade left in his hands when we jumped him in the swampy waters of the ditch. So we got him alive and breathing.”

Apart from losing his left hand below the elbow and various flesh wounds all over his body caused by the flying shrapnel of his own hand-grenade young Kang Min-Chul had recovered fast from his wounds and ready to be interrogated by the notorious Burmese Military Intelligent Services (MIS) within few weeks.

Kang Min-Chul’s Confession

North Korean Commandos.

The leader and the eldest of the North Korean Commandos Major Zin-Mo might be the toughest nut to crack for the Burmese interrogators-cum-torturers of MIS. He had already lost both arms, left leg, and one eye but he wouldn’t open his mouth other than saying his name and rank in the North Korean People’s Army.

No amount and frequency of water-boarding and other brutal tortures could loosen his tongue as he was willing to sacrifice his useless life for his motherland and the Great Leader Kim Il-Sung. He already tried once by blowing himself up when the Burmese boatmen tried to capture him in the waters of Pazundaung Creek.

But the young Kang was a totally different story. On his hospital bed he broke down a few times and cried quietly as if he was emotionally affected by the care he received from the Burmese doctors and nurses. He finally spilled the beans and coughed so much that MIS didn’t even need Zin Mo’s confessions anymore. This was the translated and edited extracts of the summary statement of his confessions to the MIS interrogators.

“My name is Kang Min-Chul and my rank is Captain in the Korean People’s Army of Democratic People republic of Korea. I was born in an unknown small village in the Hwanghae province. I belong to the secretive Commando Unit called the Orphan Unit - 124.

It used to be manned exclusively by the orphaned sons of fallen soldiers from the 1950 war. But it is now manned by the young men taken from their home at very early ages. I was taken from my mother at the age of about two and since then I have never seen her again and I also do not remember her name and the name of my home village.

The unit location is a top secret military base in the same Hwanghae province and last 20 years there we were never let out of the base and we have absolutely no contacts with the civilians especially the females. I had never spoken to a female person or been spoken by one in my life before here in Burma.

What we only knew and did before I ended up here were all military discipline and Commando trainings after trainings for our sole mission to assassinate the enemy number one, the President of South Korea.

We three commandos landed in Rangoon from a North Korean cargo ship picking up tons of broken-rice from Rangoon Port. We spent our first few nights here in the house of military attaché in the North Korean Embassy compound. On October 7 we visited the Martyrs’ Mausoleum near that huge golden pagoda to scout the target site. We decided the ceiling was the best place to hide our bombs to cause maximum damage to the visiting delegation from South Korea.

In the night of 8^th October 1983 we left the embassy compound and came to the Mausoleum. The security there was non-existence and only a civilian guard was there sleeping in his little guard-house by the gate. The whole area was absolutely deserted and dimly-lit.

Bombed Mausoleum in Rangoon.

We climbed into the narrow space between the high ceiling and the roof. And we placed and wired three large explosive devices with the large quantity of C4 plastic explosives provided by the Attaché. The explosives were there already at the embassy when we arrived as they were delivered in the diplomatic air-pouches.

The devices were placed at about 2 meters apart from each other to cover the whole length of the long hall in front of the marble tombs of General Aung San and his ministers assassinated just after the Second World War. Remote-controlled detonators were fitted and we climbed back down into the hall below.

As we’d decided before we walked up to a small hillock by a large depression at the foot of the Pagoda and waited in the bushes till the morning. From there we could clearly see and observe the Mausoleum entrance and the large square outside the main hall. Most important for us was the site was well within the detonating rang of our radio transmitters.

At about 10 in the morning most of the delegates and their Burmese hosts were there first and then a large black car with motorcycle outriders arrived. When the presidential bugle   played the Last Post we detonated the bombs but only two worked. Still the damage was done as the middle of the one storey building had collapsed and the huge fire and smoke had covered the site.”

As Burmese had correctly guessed the involvement of North Korean agents and immediately sent two Burma Rifles battalions and quickly sealed the North Korean Embassy on Prome Road the Commando team was forced to abandon their original escape plan of returning to the embassy.

Their Plan B for the escape was another North Korean cargo ship now waiting for them at the area where the Rangoon River meets the sea.  The sea is only about 20 miles from the site and so they started their journey through the gauntlets of Burmese troops and the paramilitaries now quickly mobilized and eagerly searching the areas for them.

Burmese are dark-skinned brown people. So the fair-skinned yellow Koreans stood out in the Burmese crowd. Very soon within few hours in the daylight they were spotted by the public and the mob attacks had followed them wherever they went. And finally they were forced into taking the waterways towards the sea and eventually one was captured dead and other two alive. This is the continuation of Captain Kang Min-Chul’s confession to the Burmese MIS. 

“I was thinking of killing myself when the soldiers were trying to capture me alive. But somehow I couldn’t manage to do that. Then they brought me to the hospital and fixed me real good. I lost only my left hand and it bothers me a bit but I am fine now.

They didn’t torture me or mistreat me in any way. I know the reason was that I opened up and told them everything they wanted to know even about myself. While I was in hospital something completely unexpected happened to me. The nurses were so nice and kind to me that I started realizing there amazingly is more in life than military trainings and drills and assassinations.

I still remember I used to have mother and sisters. I can’t remember their faces but when I see the smiling faces of Burmese nurses caring me and also the kind faces of their matrons I think they remind me of my sisters and my mother. Some goodness is still in me and I do not want to be hateful and aggressive no more.

We were to commit heroic suicides instead of being captured alive and interrogated. Both Major Zin-Mo and Captain Zin Kee-Chu had done exactly that. And I’d had plenty of time and opportunities to do just that but I couldn’t force myself.

Deep inside I still wanted to see my mother again before I die.”

After a secret show trial inside Insein Prison Burmese promptly hanged tight-lipped Major Zin-Mo. But Captain Kang Min-Chul was given only a life sentence. According to the MIS officers handling him our old Ne Win had a strange affection towards the young North Korean and decided to let him live. Ne Win had also refused to send him to South Korea against Chun Doo-Hwan’s repeated demands.

And so our Kang Min-Chul had lived comfortably almost forever in a specially-built prison inside the infamous Insein Prison in Rangoon till his death.

The Longest Serving Prisoner in Burma

Kang Min-Chul was once the longest-serving prisoner in Burma. He enjoyed the rare privilege of living in a small private house with a tiny garden surrounded by high barbed-wire fence. He learned to speak Burmese fluently and nearly lost his mother tongue. He became a Buddhist and meditated daily. As North Korea had always refused to acknowledge his existence and South Korea would hang him for his terrorist acts he had nowhere else to go but stay in the Burmese prison.

In 2006 Chung Hyung-Keun, a member of South Korea's Grand National Party and a former employee of South Korean intelligence agency KCIA, sponsored a bill to bring Kang Min-Chul to South Korea. South Koreans had finally dropped all their demands to punish Kang Min-Chul many years after his horrible crime. But it was too little too late for the heroic son of both Koreas.

 

Dead Kang Min-Chul.

Kang Min-Chul died of liver cancer on May 18, 2008. Hepatitis is so widespread in Burma once one had been to a prison one would get the dreaded liver disease and the painful sclerosis would follow and eventually the fatal liver cancer. He was almost 50 and never married.

On his hospital bed dying he confessed to a caring-nurse that he had never fallen in love but he wanted to so that he knew what love was before he was gone forever. According to the same nurse the last word he murmured before he took his last breath was ‘uh mu ni’ – mother.

May his tortured soul rest in peace!

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                   (This video is of the aftermath of explosion in Rangoon Martyrs' Mausoleum.)

------------------------------------ Update on 15 May 2012---------------------------------------
President Lee Myung-bak has begun a visit to Burma, the first South Korean leader to do so in 29 years. The last time was President Chun Doo-hwan's trip in 1983 that was marred by a terrorist bombing by North Korean agents that killed 17 South Korean officials.