From Ranger to IT

  A Little Comfort During My Days as a Private I was always hungry when I was a private. Hungry for food, yes—but especially hungry for something sweet. Looking back, I still don't know why Choco Pie, something I barely ate before joining the military, tasted so incredibly good. One bite, and it felt as if the hardships of military life simply melted away. Choco Pie is a Korean snack made of soft cake layers and marshmallow filling, all coated in chocolate. I loved that feeling so much that I wanted to keep the whole thing to myself. Maybe that was why so many soldiers hid Choco Pies in their personal boxes. Food wasn't allowed in the barracks because of the risk of attracting mice. If we were caught, we could be made to run around the parade ground for an hour carrying our full packs and rifles. Still, nobody seemed willing to give up their Choco Pies. And even after taking that risk to hide one, you could still end up having it stolen. Once, I reached into my personal box and...

  Safe today, Safe tomorrow Ranger training takes place in the mountains, which means it demands real nerve. Of all the courses, the ones that involved crossing  between peaks or rappelling down them brought out a special kind of fear. So I let trainees with a fear of heights sit those out and do PT instead. A small mistake up there could easily turn into a matter of life and death, and if it did, my assistant instructor and I would be the ones to answer for it. And "answering for it" meant exactly one thing: military prison. To keep that from happening, I went over the safety rules more times than I could count, and I made a point of never forcing anyone through. Even so, something unexpected always seemed to happen. The One Rope Bridge was one of those things. The One Rope Bridge Course The One Rope Bridge is a course where trainees cross a mountain gap along a rope about thirty meters long. They wear a harness clipped to a double safety line, so even if someone slipped, th...

A Golden Retriever in Doberman’s Clothing. During my service, I was a ranger instructor for American soldiers. I spoke some English naturally; the army decided I was qualified to yell at Americans in the mountains. At first, I was happy about it. I figured my English would improve while I was in the army. Then I saw the training grounds. My happiness disappeared. I couldn't imagine surviving there. The job was pretty much the opposite of who I was. The army was already crawling with guys in their early twenties, and the ranger course was the kind of place where you had to have enough testosterone to power a small city. It was also dangerous. One wrong move could lead to a serious accident, or worse, so everyone had to stay tense from beginning to end. And the instructors were expected to be intimidating. We were supposed to have enough presence to make trainees nervous just by standing there. Discipline was everything. Kindness was, apparently, not part of the curriculum. The first...

I still remember that day vividly. The sky was clear, and there was no training. We lay on our barracks platform bed, nursing a week's worth of exhaustion. Then the word came down: there was going to be a little get-together. When we got to the dining room, there was makgeolli, a Korean rice wine, spicy braised chicken, sausages, and snacks someone had brought from the PX. Alcohol, in the army. We were all fired up. A few drinks in, the tension loosened, and before long, between jokes, someone brought up the platoon leader. Getting beaten for no reason. Punishment drills. The insults, the humiliation. How doing something well just meant more work got dumped on you. How he'd seize on the smallest mistake and tear into you for it. One story led to another, until we were practically competing over who'd had it worse. L said nothing. That was strange. If anyone had stories to tell, it was him. L was the platoon leader's orderly. Washed his uniforms. Shined his boots. Ran to...

  It was during free time after dinner. Three privates said they were going to bed early. They said it was the platoon leader's order. "They look tired," he said. It was strange. He was not the kind of man who did favours for his men. Being tired was a reason to get yelled at, not a reason to rest. But it was still too early to be surprised. When the platoon leader came in for roll call, he accepted a few quick salutes, shouted, "Everyone, get to bed," and walked out. On any other night, that would have been when we all boarded the train to hell. He would walk from one man to the next, picking at the smallest things. Our boots weren't lined up properly. The folded underwear wasn't stacked to the right height. He would find something—anything—and keep at it until he lost his temper and started shouting. Some nights it started with our boots. Other nights, the fold on our blankets. It didn't matter what—he'd find something, and it always ended the ...

Three Shouts Between Life and Death This happened when I was serving in the military as a Ranger instructor for U.S. soldiers. The American soldiers camped out in a valley at the Ranger school. There were more than thirty courses, ranging from PT and basic obstacles to mountain obstacles, and none of them could be called easy. On top of that, the training was dangerous. What worried me most wasn't the training itself, but safety. On some of the courses, one small mistake could lead to a serious accident, so I repeated the safety instructions again and again. The most dangerous course was called "Slide for Life."  In this exercise, soldiers rode a metal cable about 150 meters down a hillside, dropped into a pond, and then swam to shore. It was a tough course. The hill itself was about the height of a ten-story building, so simply standing at the top could be psychologically overwhelming.  Soldiers with a fear of heights were allowed to do PT instead. But in fact, the most ...

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 imagin...

I went into the army later than most. While other guys came in after their freshman or sophomore year of college, I showed up after finishing grad school—married, no less. So soldiers years younger than me outranked me, and they called me "old man." Being the oldest rookie in the unit made me an easy target for teasing. I'd just been assigned to my unit when the order came down: report for Team Spirit training—the joint U.S.-Korean military exercise. I'd been pulled out as an interpreter. Barely settled in, and already being shipped off again—the thought of adjusting to yet another new environment put me on edge. On my first day at the training site, I was wandering around checking out the base when someone called my name. I turned around—a friend from college! "Hey! Long time no see. You're here for Team Spirit too, huh?" Seeing an old friend there, in uniform and in the middle of a war exercise, felt strangely like meeting up on a real battlefield. He...

Just yesterday, I wasn't here. And yet here I am now, in a strange place, among strangers, tense and waiting only for orders. This is a military training center. There are countless young men here, including me. We all wear roughly the same expression—tense faces, stiff postures. An awkward air hangs over everything. Our first assignment was sewing. Each of us was given a uniform and told to sew a numbered name tag onto the chest. Chaos broke out. The thread won't go through, I've never even held a needle—that kind of thing, from all directions. On top of that, we weren't given nearly enough time, so everyone grew flustered. Fingers pricked by needles, thread tangling. Luckily, I am fairly good with my hands, so I finished neatly. I looked at my name tag—straight, clean. I felt a small lift of pride. Maybe I'd get praised for it. But the instructor only glanced at it and walked on. Then he pointed at the trainee beside me and told him to do it again. Pass if you do ...