The Military Policeman Who Beat Me, Decades Later
Two men trapped under the same harsh discipline—and an apology that came eventually
This happened after my first overnight leave in the army.
On my way back to the base, I got caught in a bad traffic accident. Traffic came to a complete stop. There were no cell phones back then, so there was no way to call the base and explain what had happened. I could only sit there and wait.
In the end, I arrived ten minutes late.
I was a brand-new private and had no idea how seriously the army treated lateness. Discipline was brutal in those days, but I figured I had a perfectly good reason. I'd get yelled at, maybe do some push-ups, and that would be the end of it.
That was about as bad as I imagined it could get.
Instead, the moment I reported back, I was taken to the military police. My offense: failing to return on time.
Military police? Over ten minutes.
I was terrified. And I couldn't understand how this could be happening when I'd been stuck in an accident. My mind started imagining all kinds of terrible possibilities.
The MP building turned out to be a military prison.
There were rows of cells with metal bars, each with a soldier sitting stiffly inside. The place was completely silent under the fluorescent lights. The silence made it even more frightening.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
Thankfully, I wasn't put in a cell.
Then, without warning, a wooden baton came down on the side of my neck. The MP standing in front of me kept hitting me there.
My neck. Of all places.
I knew how vulnerable the neck was. One bad hit could leave me paralyzed for life. The fear was worse than the pain.
I had never been so terrified in my life. All I could do was pray that the beating would stop before I was seriously injured.
It felt like it went on for half an hour. It probably wasn't that long in reality, but that's how long it felt to me.
Then the master sergeant supervising us stepped out of the room. The MP who had been hitting me followed him, and the beating stopped.
I was left alone.
What was going to happen now? Was something worse coming?
A moment later, the same MP came back in—alone.
I froze. Round two, I thought.
I didn't know what would happen. These were the same hands that had just been beating me, and now he was speaking to me as if nothing had happened.
Then he apologized.
He told me he hadn't wanted to do it. He said he'd only been following orders and didn't have a choice.
A few minutes earlier, he'd treated me like I wasn't even a person. I'd never experienced that kind of humiliation before, and I knew I would never forget it.
So how was I supposed to believe him now?
But when I looked at him, he really did seem sorry. There was something gentle about his expression, and his voice sounded sincere.
I took a breath and sat up a little straighter.
"Where are you from?" he asked.
"Seoul," I said, my voice still shaking.
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
I told him that I'd gone into the army after graduate school and was already married.
He looked surprised, then laughed.
It was hard to believe this was the same man who had been beating me only minutes earlier. He was genuinely warm and easy to talk to.
Then he told me about himself—how far he'd gotten in college before enlisting and how he'd ended up in the military police.
We talked like that for a while—me and the man who had just put me through the most frightening experience of my life.
That night, back in the barracks, I couldn't sleep.
My body hurt, but my mind hurt even more.
I couldn't understand why I'd been punished so severely without even being given a chance to explain what had happened. I kept going over it in my head. Eventually, the tears came.
When I thought about how much longer I still had left in the army, all I could do was sigh. I tossed and turned until dawn.
About a week later, I was taking a break during training when I heard a sound behind me that made me freeze.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
That sound.
It was the sound MPs made when they walked—the chain of small balls inside a spring housing sewn into the cuffs of their trousers clicking against each other.
It was the same sound I'd heard when I was taken to the MP building, and while I was being beaten.
Then the sound stopped right behind me. A hand landed on my shoulder.
I turned around. It was him. And he was smiling.
"How've you been?"
He asked as if nothing had ever happened between us.
I told him I was doing fine, and we talked for a little while. Then he said he'd see me around and walked away.
I just nodded. I couldn't bring myself to say, "Let's meet again."
Part of me knew he meant well. But my body still remembered what had happened.
After that, we kept running into each other. Usually, he would spot me first and come over. I'd hear that familiar clinking sound before I even saw him.
At first, that sound still made me nervous.
But every time we talked, a little more of my fear went away. Eventually, the sound that had once filled me with dread began to feel almost comforting. It meant that someone familiar was coming over to say hello.
One day, he asked if we could take a picture together. I said sure. Afterward, I felt the wall I'd built between us come down a little more.
Eventually, I asked him the question I'd been carrying with me all along.
"Why was I punished so brutally?"
"The army's just a bunch of young guys with guns..." he began, then trailed off.
He explained that if discipline broke down, accidents could happen. Desertion could create even bigger problems. That's why they came down so hard on lateness. The rules had to apply to everyone, with no exceptions.
I could understand the reasoning. But even as he explained it, I could still feel that baton against my neck.
Not long after that, he told me he was being transferred to another unit. I wished him well, and meant it. I hoped he would finish his service safely.
Still, when I said goodbye, I think I kept one door in my heart closed. The trauma hadn't completely gone away.
Looking back through the distance of decades, I feel pity for us both.
He was holding the baton, and I was taking the blows, but neither of us had chosen to be there. We were two young men caught in a system neither of us could control.
I can't change what happened, and I can't pretend it didn't hurt. But over the years, I chose to remember him not simply as the man who beat me, but as the young man who came back, apologized, and tried to talk to me.
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