Yin Yang Tattoo

by Ron McMillan

  I drained the coffee cup, signed the tab and walked out into the pre-dawn cool.

  With over ten million inhabitants, a million-plus vehicles, hundreds of thousands of oil and coal-fired heating systems and a ring of factories around its perimeter, the city of Seoul never sees too much in the way of fresh air. Before the sun rose and the traffic revved up and the factory chimneys cleared their throats, there was an illusion of clarity about the city skies.

  I used to live not far from here in a flat that backed onto a high school music room that students invaded before dawn, throwing open the windows next to their pianos and hammering out scales and arpeggios with robotic precision. It took me a long time to realise that I was the only person in the neighbourhood who took offence at this, and after that I used the thundering pianos as my alarm clock. It was around this time that I developed a liking for early morning walks.

  At the exit of the Hyatt car park I stood on what for me was once a well-trodden path. Turning right, I crossed the near-empty road and headed west towards a gateway to the inner-city parklands of Nam San. Pedestrian traffic was already beginning to pick up, sociable clusters of elderly men and middle-aged women chatting happily, brightly-polished hiking boots clumping in near-unison.

  Many carried empty plastic containers tied together in bunches. Decades before them, their parents or grandparents had hiked the same trails up Nam San’s flanks, water containers slung from wooden yokes balanced across their shoulders. Now, their descendants made the same daily pilgrimage to the same hillside springs to replenish their stocks of ‘yak su’ – literally, ‘medicine water’. Many of them hailed me with a cheery good mawning. I returned the greetings, minus the good cheer.

  Jung-hwa and I often took morning walks together hand in hand, conduct rebellious enough in conservative Korea to turn heads in disbelief or distaste or a combination of the two. I loved those early mornings when we would stroll slowly side-by-side, either in relaxed silence or talking at length about anything that came to mind, frequently making each other laugh until tears coursed our cheeks. Only now did I recognise those times for what they represented. I was in love.

  Near the peak of the small mountain, we usually left the trail and perched on a favourite rocky overhang and watched the sunshine bleed its way through the murk that shrouded the eastern horizon.

  I sat on that rock now as the changing sky announced the imminent arrival of the morning sun, polluted air softening and filtering the light in the warm orange glow that looks so good on film. I took my old rangefinder camera from the belt pouch where it lived and fired off a couple of frames. Somewhere in a dusty file cabinet in London I knew I could find shots that would differ only in the number of high rise buildings growing into the skyline of a city that was evolving more rapidly than strangers to Korea could possibly conceive.

  The deep rumble of the early rush hour gathered tenor as I departed the rocky perch and headed for the east end of the city. After the better part of an hour I left behind the rocks and trees and found my way down into a part of town that has been a marketplace for centuries. Named for the giant vaulted gate that once provided access to the city from the east and which now sat necklaced by incessant road traffic, Dongdaemun – East Gate – Market took up entire city blocks, hundreds of choked alleyways and narrow back streets overflowing with everything you might ever need, and a lot more besides.

  Before I reached the market, Seoul’s ever-changing face delivered one of its little surprises. I knew this area well, and the thoroughfare that was Chongyechun inspired dark memories of overcrowding and pollution. When I was last here it was one of the most vivid visions of urban hell I ever enjoyed exploring, and I was a regular in this part of town, camera forever at the ready. At street level, pavements overflowed with everything from coat hangers to caged animals, and bristled with pedestrian shoppers, men pushing wheelbarrows overloaded with cargo and motorcyclists carrying more of the same. This went on in a fog of smoke from coal briquette burners that street-level shopkeepers and stallholders huddled over, and petrol and diesel fumes from noisesome vehicles clogged on two levels. Between the pavements were at least six lanes of traffic stuck in the permanent gloom of another four roaring lanes of overhead highway supported by giant concrete pillars and beams. To cross the street on foot meant negotiating the steep, uneven steps of steel pedestrian bridges that squeezed under the dirt-clogged expressway, and picking a track through an ad hoc arrangement of vendors who claimed a share of the bridge to spread their pathetic wares on tarpaulins and old blankets.

  The transformation between that hellish, decade-old vision and what spread out before me now was the sort of thing that can only be achieved in places like Korea, where the combination of all-powerful officialdom and infinitely flexible rules and regulations allow stark transition to happen almost overnight. A few years earlier, a city mayor with sights set on higher political office declared his intention to revive Chongyechun by tearing down the expressway and ripping up the road that for decades had hidden a tributary of the Han River. I had read of the plan, but was completely unprepared for the transformation.

  The overhead expressway was gone save for a couple of concrete supports that towered like giant, grey capital ‘T’ symbols of darker days. The supports plunged beneath road level into the reclaimed stream that more than a century ago gave the street its name. I used to watch men with overloaded bicycles dice with fume-belching traffic in the permanent shadow of an overhead highway. Now, couples walked hand in hand and took photographs of each other next to a smooth-running stream.

  Some things are thankfully more resistant to change, and beyond the all-new Chongyechun, Dongdaemun Market was exactly as I remembered it. Seoul street markets are strictly departmental, each alley or roadside presenting a parade of near-identical wares. In turn, strips of tightly packed stores peddled camping equipment, hill-walking boots, sportswear, army surplus uniforms, light bulbs and lampshades, false limbs, herbal medicines, plastic piping, tools and ball bearings from microscopic to cannonball-sized. Even at this early hour, the market hummed with life.

  Tourist brochures paid minimal lip service to Dongdaemun, and in the middle of the day the occasional foreigner paced its main roads, mouth agape at fly-encrusted open-air meat stalls or grotesquely crowded pet shops, tiny wire cages full of dogs piled high on pavements.

  At this early hour it was in the back streets, sheltered and protected from Seoul’s incessant road traffic, that the real Dongdaemun thrived. Wiry unshaven men struggled under wooden A-frame backpacks loaded impossibly high with stock, and jostled for space with hand pulled carts packed with building materials or boxed shoes or multi-coloured rolls of fabric. I slowly padded the narrow alleys, all senses wide open to a part of the big modern city that somehow maintained its spiritual links with the Korea of old. This was a land whose communications stretched back through the ancient Manchurian trade routes to the pan-Asian Silk Road that for centuries connected the Korean peninsula to China and beyond. Never mind that now, nearly everything on sale in Dongdaemun was made in Korea for, on the outside at least, Koreans were immensely proud of their manufacturing prowess. Foreign-made goods were there if you knew where to look – and in sufficient demand that they fetched a significant premium on the ever-booming black market.

  Rounding a corner I came to an alley stuffed with pojang-macha, mobile restaurant stalls set up around elaborate hand-powered carts. I was hit by the smell of food broiling over coal flames, the peculiar Korean aroma that is a potent mix of garlic, sesame oil and any three or four of a dozen preparations of fiery red chilli peppers. I hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon, and the women stall-holders, ever on the lookout for fresh custom, called out to me good-naturedly, so I sat down at one tiny stall. My new hostess’s friends yelled out at her, ribald remarks about the foreigner choosing her because she was the youngest and prettiest, for she was strikingly attractive in an undeniably street-hardened way. Her body language welcomed me.

&
nbsp; ‘Pego-payo ajoshi?’ Are you hungry, Uncle?

  ‘Pego-pa chukke-seo.’ I’m dying of starvation. She laughed, hand over her mouth, and I heard unabashed giggles following my response as it passed along the alley.

  I ordered a bowl of spicy fish soup and savoury rice cake in a hot red sauce, and sat nursing a glass of barley tea and enjoying the attention of the stall-holders. Among the blue-collar classes, even in the big city, there was still a refreshingly innocent curiosity about outsiders, a native hospitality free of the sometimes poisonous preconceptions of the more educated, self-assured city types. I was a foreign guest, able to communicate with them in their language, and so they worked hard to make me feel welcome.

  ‘Ody-seo-o’sheosoyo? Miguk saram imnika?’ The slow voice came from a small man across the stall. Where do you come from? Are you American?

  ‘Anniyo. Yong-gook saram imnida’ No, I’m from England. In Korean, England and Britain are the same word, Yong-gook. The little man leaned heavily on one elbow, the remains of a cheap meal scattered in front of him. He wore a soiled white undershirt with ragged holes under the arms, an old army webbing belt bunching filthy khaki trousers several sizes too large for him.

  He explained he was a rubbish collector, and that his work was already done for the day. The stall-holder told him to stop pestering me, but I silenced her with a wave of one hand that told her he was no bother. He responded by barking out an order in a voice that could be heard at the other end of the market:

  ‘Woman. Another soju glass over here.’

  Even at breakfast time it would be rude not to share his soju, Korea’s potent rice wine that is made from potatoes and tastes like vodka. I took the glass with two hands and held it the same way as he poured me a shot, smiling at my understanding of the niceties of giving face.

  By the time the third shot glass-full had warmed my throat I felt just fine.

  ‘Yong-guk shinsa. Dipshida,’ shouted my host, whom I now realised was seriously drunk. English gentleman. Cheers.

  English gentleman. At least it had a better ring to it than Scottish murder suspect. As I looked around, my gaze fell upon a baleful stare untouched by curiosity. A man in a rumpled blue suit. A couple of hours ago I bumped into him on the Nam San pathway when I clambered back from the rocky perch. The blue office suit was totally out of place on a mountainside at dawn, but at the time I thought nothing of it, and plodded into town without once looking back. Now he sat ten yards away watching me.

  I bought another bottle for my new friend and settled my bill and, after much shaking of hands and passing of grand compliments, tore myself away from the attentions of the stall-holder who cheerfully waved me off. I walked straight past Blue Suit, and out of the corner of my eye saw him slap a banknote on the counter top and jump to his feet. Five minutes of zig-zagging through tight alleys later, he was still on my tail. He was not one of the cops who had accompanied Kwok last night, but that meant nothing. I felt the soju kick in, and decided to lose him.

  I knew these streets as well as any I had ever been in. Years ago, Jung-hwa and I spent afternoons in a nearby yogwan, a back street inn that rented rooms by the night or by the hour. It took me only two minutes to get there, and as I paused suddenly outside its low entrance-way, I looked back to see my pursuer pretend to admire a window full of laboratory glassware. Two steps into the traditional courtyard, and I was delighted to recognise the same matronly ajumoni who had owned the inn all those years ago. She threw up her hands in genuine delight, and I was overcome with guilt that I was not here to rent a room. When I quickly told her I had a problem and I had to slip out the back way she sought no explanation but shepherded me towards the gate with a maternal pat and a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘To-oshipshiyo.’ Come again.

  The tiny back lane was deserted. I jogged to the nearest main road and shouted down a taxi.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The taxi pulled up outside the Hyatt and the moment I put foot to pavement my radar locked onto a shadowy threat. There was nothing clever about this. Spend enough time on the streets of faraway cities where you might as well wear a neon hat that screams ‘Foreigner – Soft Target!,’ and before long you develop a security instinct that triggers the moment any person’s track alters to intersect your own.

  I was still smarting from failing to pick up on the bastard who followed me all the way from the hotel to Dongdaemun, so when the dark shape appeared in my peripheral vision, I spun and bolted – straight into a uniformed doorman. I cannoned off his hip in an ungainly pirouette, went over on my ankle, and to a chorus of bystander oohs and aahs, head-butted the taxi door on my way to the pavement. No points to Brodie for dignity.

  The dark suit was quicker than the doorman. Even before I looked up he leaned over me, big hands reaching, callused knuckles speaking of long hours spent in the martial arts dojang. I braced myself for the vice grip, the arrival of uniformed reinforcements and the public humiliation of handcuffs. I screwed my eyes closed in anticipation of pain, but all I got was a fraternal hand on one shoulder. I opened my eyes again.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I could have slapped myself. It was Chang’s chauffeur, the big guy who met me at the airport and later drove us to dinner the night I met Miss Hong. Onlookers broke out in relieved chatter as he helped me to my feet and growled a few words in Korean at the hovering taxi driver, who quickly thought better of complaining about what my forehead might have done to his car door. The big man spoke to me again.

  ‘Mr Chang says please come to my office.’ It sounded like he was reading it from a phrasebook. Only as I brushed myself down and followed him to the Mercedes did I realise that he had said nothing about bringing my equipment. When I slid into the front passenger seat, he looked bemused. Koreans don’t sit up front with the chauffeur. Koreans don’t bother much with seat belts either, but I reeled mine out and clicked it into place as the driver woke up the big V-12, fired us out of the car park and punched a Mercedes-sized slot in the frantic morning traffic.

  He drove with the practised ease of a professional who spent much of a long working day in dense traffic. Smoothness and confident arrogance in equal measure are the true assets of the big city chauffeur; this guy never missed a gap, however small – and where there was no gap he made one. When a battered taxi cut across our bows to make an insane late exit from the expressway, my man hardly let off the gas and kept his hand away from the horn. As a dozen other car horns raged, I took my foot from the footwell where it had lunged involuntarily for the brakes, and said in Korean, ‘Crazy sonofabitch.’

  Chang’s driver nodded in silent agreement, eyes sparkling and shiny skin tightening across high Mongolian cheekbones, accentuating his badly-set nose.

  At K-N Towers the sight of the Chairman’s Mercedes nosing onto the narrow rampway scared a rushed salute from the security man in the glass cabin as we accelerated beneath the barrier, spiralled downwards, rubber screeching, and pulled into a reserved space. Before I even reached for my seat belt another uniformed figure held open my door and pointed me towards a private elevator. Inside it, the guard used a key to access the only floor available before he stepped backwards and saluted the doors closed.

  The lift rushed skywards fast enough to make my ears pop, and I hardly heard the muted ping as the doors opened into a private hallway, where the same middle-aged PA who dealt with me yesterday bowed a forced welcome.

  ‘This way.’

  At the heavy wooden entrance I watched her do the trick with the security pad and swing the big door inwards.

  Chang was sitting in the same seat he had occupied when I walked out on him the day before, and he showed no signs of having spent much of the night dealing with the police. Schwartz sat in the other seat next to Martinmass the banker, who had divined a third matching armchair from somewhere. The man seemed incapable of hiding his feelings, and right now he looked on the verge of blowing a gasket.

  Chang waved me to a straight-backed wooden chair that towered
over the low coffee table, which bore only three cups. The pretence of politeness was gone.

  ‘We spoke yesterday about the importance of the GDR to my company.’ It was not a question, but a statement.

  My plan was to stay calm. ‘I am facing a murder charge, and you want to talk business?’ So much for the plan. Schwartz looked at me with undisguised contempt.

  ‘Shut up and listen.’ He was enjoying this. Martinmass cracked his knuckles. Chang spoke again: ‘I am in a very difficult position now.’

  Not as difficult as mine. Or Miss Hong’s.

  ‘I had nothing to do with – ’

  ‘Korea does not have the tradition of tabloid journalism that exists in your country, but things are changing here, and any connection to this nasty business of yours could have very damaging consequences.’

  My nasty business.

  ‘Do you really think I killed her?’

  ‘Some say I have already done more for you than you deserve.’ Schwartz and Martinmass nodded in unison. Chang went on:

  ‘I convinced Detective Kwok not to put you under arrest – ’

  ‘I appreciate that, but – ’

  ‘Let me finish. I am trying to protect the K-N name, but if you are found guilty – ’

  ‘I didn’t do a thing to Miss Hong.’ I was shouting. He waited to be sure my outburst was over.

  ‘If you are found guilty, it will not only damage my company, but it will cast a bad light upon me personally.’

  ‘What about me? I am innocent.’

  ‘Your guilt or innocence is of no interest to me. My only concern is K-N Group, and at the moment that means the successful implementation of the GDR.’