Cold Feet in an Armed Camp

As I sit down to write this column, I very carefully adjust a reading lamp over my left shoulder, not wanting to create an international incident and send the Olympic Games into panic.

I am careful because my room here in the Olympic press village, where I am writing this, overlooks the main entrance to the compound. Directly across the street from me, atop a 16-story building, two armed soldiers stand lookout, pacing the rooftop.

Maybe they are nothing more than spiffy uniformed rent-a-cops, but my two roommates and I prefer to think of the two figures as our own personal anti-terrorist snipers.

I don’t want to accidentally shine my reading light out my window as if flashing some kind of secret signals into the early-morning darkness. Who knows the level of paranoia up on that roof?

Not that there is any pervasive fear or simmering panic among people I’ve talked to here. But let’s face it: These are the 1988 Olympic Games and Anti-Terrorist Maneuvers.

If anyone deserves a gold medal over here, it’s that SWAT team of Korean soldiers who have learned to rappel down from the roof of the Olympic Stadium upside down, like combat-ready spiders. Talk about rhythmic gymnastics.

Before the fact, these have to be the most terrorism-conscious Olympic Games ever. In the ancient days, the Olympics were an opportunity for a temporary cease-fire in regional hostilities. Now the Olympics are a worldwide excuse to riot, rumble, rattle the sabers and circle the wagons.

This happens to be a time of extreme international touchiness, and the Olympics have become the perfect world venue for making a point, whether it’s whose athletic shoes are best or whose terrorist-group grievances are most acute.

So covering the Olympics as a sportswriter becomes, if not a dangerous and ungodly stressful assignment, at least unusual duty. One day last week, preparing for this trip, I logged the following incidents:

--I am at the Times office downtown, discussing packing with a co-worker, who suggests taking Pepto-Bismol. Another co-worker chimes in sarcastically, “How about a bulletproof vest?”

--I get a business phone call and the small talk comes around to my impending departure for Seoul.

“I’ve been there,” my caller says brightly. “You’ll love it, Seoul’s a nice city. (Pause) Just wear a bulletproof vest. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

--As happens every day, two or three people give me this year’s most popular Olympic send-off--”Good luck.”

I assume they are not referring to the Pulitzer Prize competition.

--I pick up a copy of USA Today and see a teaser headline: “North Korea says it won’t use sabotage or military to disrupt Olympic Games.”

What do we expect them to say? I picture a North Korean secretary buzzing her military boss on the office intercom.

Secretary: “An American newspaper is on the line, sir. They’re taking a poll. They want to know if we plan to use sabotage or military to disrupt Olympic Games.”

Boss: “Uh, ask if we can get back to them on that.”

--Late that night, I settle down with my wife to watch television. Comedian Robin Williams is on a roll.

“It’s nice to have the Olympics in a country that’s been under martial law,” Williams says, then mimics a fan’s voice. “Oh, look, here comes the Olympic torch! Damn, they hit it with a water cannon.”

Then he mimics a TV announcer’s voice, “Now it’s time for the uneven tear-gas toss.”

I have heard that every commercial flight into Seoul will be equipped with an armed sky marshal. I have read a report, subsequently refuted, that American and Canadian officials thwarted plans by suspected Croatian terrorists to assassinate Soviet bloc athletes at the Calgary Winter Games. I have read that Carl Lewis is receiving death threats and that even his shoe company can’t ensure his safety.

I have read of a preseason roster of potential troublemakers, everything from protesting South Korean college students to the dreaded Japanese Red Army. No. 1 on this chart, with a bullet, are the North Koreans, whose southern neighbors are throwing a monster Olympic party and they didn’t get invited. They are said to be in a snit.

So as I was winging from Los Angeles to Seoul, there was the dim awareness that I was leaving the turf of the double-A Crips and Bloods and heading to the bad-guy major leagues.

At the Seoul airport, the man who inspected my luggage had a small poster tacked on the wall at his work station. The poster features mug shots of half a dozen known members of the Japanese Red Army. I thought to myself that someone will cash in on the Games by coming out with terrorist all-star bubble-gum cards.

All this, I suppose, prompts the question: Why are we here? Why are athletes, fans and journalists being brought together in this volatile little corner of the world? Why not Switzerland, or Alaska, or Australia?

Did we choose Seoul just to show the bad guys that the peaceful folk of the world will not be cowed?

A lot of people will be at least mildly surprised if this Olympics comes off incident-free, as did our L.A. Games. Before leaving Los Angeles, I phoned Las Vegas to see if the bookmakers were posting odds on the possibility of terrorist disruption of the Games.

“We’re not quite that cynical,” said Russ Culver of the Golden Nugget Race and Sports Book, laughing. “We are cynical. I know of a bookmaker in Chicago who put out an over-under line on the number of bodies that would be dug up from under (mass murderer) John Gacy’s house. But I don’t know of anyone taking that kind of bet (terrorism) on the Olympics, even privately.”

The South Koreans are working hard to create a friendly atmosphere here, a show of military force with a light touch. Checkpoint Charlie, or whatever they call the gate just outside my window, is manned round the clock by a half dozen soldiers in green berets. They seem more alert and friendly than intimidating. I have seen only three or four soldiers in the village armed with M-16s.

All’s quiet here in Seoul. So far, the anti-terrorists are kicking the would-be terrorists’ butts.

But the specter of trouble will not go away from this Olympics. It will flit about in the background, like a thug lurking in the shadows of an alley.

As I wrap this up, I look out my window, across the street and up to the guardian angels in their rooftop crow’s nest. One of them scans the horizon with binoculars.

I recheck my reading light and wonder if there’s any way to send ‘em up some coffee and doughnuts.