A blue flash of death
It was early on a hot summer morning. Red balsam flowers blossomed on one side of our courtyard, and thick, old willow and sycamore trees stood along the street. I was seven years old, but I remember the moment clearly, as a frantic neighbor burst into our living room with the words, “War has broken out! The North Korean army has crossed the 38th parallel!”
Apprehensive residents gathered in the alley in groups of two and three. I had been getting used to settled life in the South, but when the North Korean People’s Army launched their invasion, our short respite was over. Everyone was frightened, government reports mingled with rumors, and no one knew for sure what was going on.
What happened was that the South Korean interim government packed up and moved to the city of Daejeon, 90 miles to the south of Seoul. The government ordered the South Korean army to blow up the Han River Bridge, the only bridge across the Han River on the south side of Seoul. They expected North Korean troops to arrive in Seoul soon, and they had no means to protect the city. Their strategy was to prevent the communist army from crossing the river. They could do little or nothing to help the city’s residents, who were crying out for Seoul’s defense.
Two days later, my mother woke up at dawn and began packing our clothes in a bundle. Awakened by the rustling noise, I kept my eyes shut and listened to her conversation with my grandmother. “We have to seek refuge,” my mother said. “After the communists get here, they’ll kill us.”
“I know they are bad,” my grandmother responded, “but do you think they would treat women harshly?”
“If they find out we have escaped from the North,” my mother reasoned, “they probably will kill us on the spot.”
On the evening of June 27, 1950, two days after the start of the Korean War, Seoul residents streamed out of the city’s ancient neighborhoods under a gentle summer rain. The more they realized that they were not the only ones seeking to escape, and that they all had to cross the same bridge, the more serious and desperate they became. This was war. My grandmother, mother and I joined the exodus with our bundle, following the throng moving toward the Han River Bridge. When its dim shape appeared in the dark, something told me to stop, and I grabbed my grandmother’s skirt. She stopped in her tracks, and my mother turned and asked her, “Mother, what’s wrong?”
Grandmother looked up at the sky and then glanced down at me. Then she turned her head again in the direction of our house. “Soon-jeong may come,” she said with a steady tone, speaking of her son, my uncle. It seemed senseless to turn around when everyone else was fleeing the city, but she was firm. “Let’s go back in case he does.”
My mother understood. The three of us made our way back home, fighting the crowds. When we got home, I spread out my blanket and lay down to sleep, but it was not long before I was awakened by the noise of a three-quarter-ton truck. Its headlights illuminated our room as the door suddenly burst open. There was my uncle in his military uniform. My grandmother and mother gasped sighs of relief and hope. I thought to myself, “We can leave now,” and felt at ease.
“Hurry,” he barked. “We have to move now!” Uncle Soon-jeong, based in the army headquarters as a military medic, was aware of the progress of the war. As soon as he heard that the South Korean army was preparing to destroy the Han River Bridge, he requisitioned a truck and sped to our home, knowing his family was in danger. He had left the truck with its engine running in our foggy alley. We climbed in with our already-packed bundle, and he drove toward the bridge. In the pre-dawn hours, crowds of refugees were swarming there from all directions, creating total chaos.
We moved forward at a snail’s pace on the congested street. As an army officer, my uncle had the official pass necessary to take a vehicle across the bridge. Honking the horn, he inched the truck through the crowd. Held in my mother’s arms, I clung to her and gazed at the people fleeing their homes, their fear and confusion increasing by the minute.
As soon as we had crossed the bridge, my uncle shouted, “Get down in your seats!” As I squeezed down on the floor at my mother’s feet, a huge explosion behind us shook our truck. There was a blue flash and a deafening sound. My uncle set the emergency brake and turned off the engine. Together we jumped out of the truck and clambered down into the ditch at the side of the road. I turned my face to the bridge and witnessed the next explosion. I saw a light like a demon’s burning eyes piercing the night. Countless civilians as well as soldiers and policemen who were crossing the bridge were thrown about like plastic toys, flying everywhere, cast into the river below. For us, a few meters proved to be the difference between life and death. Our lives had been spared.
I closed my eyes, and many thoughts flashed across my mind. Why would anyone start a war? Why did innocent people have to die? Why is God permitting such pain and suffering? Who can bring an end to this madness? I could not conceive of any answers. When I reopened my eyes, I saw that the bridge was cut in half. The military had accomplished its mission, at the cost of hundreds of lives. What remained amid the corpses, the screaming wounded, and the dazed survivors, was an ugly skeleton of steel, smoldering in the dark.
• • •
The Han River Bridge was blown up at 3:00 a.m. on June 28, 1950. Even though the South Korean government had announced that it would defend Seoul, it severed the only link to safety, even before the North Korean People’s Army came into the city. Hundreds of people, fleeing the city, were killed. Amid this desperate crisis, through the help of my uncle, my life and the lives of my family were preserved. At that critical moment, God guided me and protected us from danger.
Even today, whenever I cross a bridge over the Han River, I see that blue flash and hear people’s agonized screams echoing as if they still are burning in hell. My heart aches at the sound. At a young age I directly witnessed the horror of war and experienced the wretched life of a refugee. The simple and innocent were killed like flies. Children who had lost their parents were crying and wandering in the streets. I was only seven, but I became so serious that war has to vanish forever from this world. It took place 70 years ago, but my throat still tightens when I recall the night the Han River Bridge fell.
• • •
Left by my uncle, who had to return to military duty, barely able to keep ourselves in one piece, my grandmother, mother, and I walked and walked on unfamiliar paths heading south. Once in a while we got a ride in a passing car. Presenting a document as to my uncle’s position as a medic, we finally gained shelter in a refugee camp for military families.
As the tide of the war shifted, on September 28 we returned to Seoul. The South Korean military had driven out the communists and reconstructed a passable bridge across the river. We lodged in an empty house, one that the soldiers from the North had occupied, to which the owners did not return.
Then the tide of war turned again. Half a million communist Chinese troops invaded Korea across the Yalu River. On January 4, 1951, the South Korean army again abandoned Seoul, and we again had to escape. This time we were able to board a train for the families of soldiers, and we safely arrived in the city of Daegu.
The day-after-day sights and sounds of our year-long wilderness course from the North to the South defy description. I saw countless dead bodies—adults, children, victims of freezing, starvation, disease and battle. My family and I also teetered on the brink of death, but somehow, throughout this journey for survival, I felt God was with us. There was a greater power protecting our family as we escaped the North and found refuge in the South. Heavenly Parent gave me more than a sense of meaning and value. He provided me with a scale by which to measure my purpose in life.