Girls Learn to Shoot to Kill on S. Korean Island

For teen-age girls on the tranquil island of Baekryung, life revolves around school, gathering sea cucumbers and learning to shoot to kill with an automatic rifle.

This idyllic little outpost, a haven of sweeping sandy beaches, crystal seas and sweet air is a forward post in South Korea where many inhabitants expect to measure their lives in minutes should the North Koreans ever come.

There is little concession to gender. Men, women and children are trained and ready to fight side by side with the Republic of Korea Marine Corps garrison on Baekryung.

Unlike their counterparts elsewhere in South Korea, the teen-agers of Baekryung Island are on the military reserve list.

“The training differs slightly but here the girls have to know how to use the gun, and they also receive nursing training,” a marine officer said.

There is no excuse for ignorance, for being unable to handle a weapon. The nearest relief point is 95 miles away in the west coast port of Inchon. This is farther than Pyongyang, capital of hard-line Stalinist North Korea, 90 miles northeast.

“We know that we would be the first ones under attack by the North Koreans. But it doesn’t scare us. We know what Communism is all about and how scary it is. If they attack, they would have to fight the whole village,” said Kim Soon Hwa, a housewife in her 50s.

“Here, should there be a war, the people on this island believe it’s their duty to fight the North Koreans. It’s not just the job of the marines stationed here,” the marine officer said.

Tension here is as great, if not greater, than on the Demilitarized Zone, the heavily-fortified strip of no-man’s-land dividing rival North and South.

“On the DMZ, they can see the North. Here there is the sea, and we don’t see the enemy. That’s more frightening because we have to always be on full alert as we don’t know when and what could happen,” the marine said.

For the ordinary marine, the tentative crawl toward North-South detente has not meant any easing of tension.

The Koreas signed a historic treaty of nonaggression and reconciliation in December, raising hopes that one day peace would come to the peninsula.

But immense difficulties remain.

“We don’t see much difference. We hear progress is taking place, but we have to be fully prepared,” another marine said.

“They (the North Koreans) are Communists. On one hand they talk of peace, but on another they prepare for war,” a South Korean navy spokesman said.

The North Korean banner once fluttered over Baekryung.

At the end of World War II, the Soviet army advanced to the 38th Parallel before halting at the request, and to the relief, of the United States.

But what was intended to be only a temporary division of the peninsula hardened into permanency after the Yalta Conference in 1945 divided Korea.

The Soviet Union, occupying the 17.5-square-mile island, not unreasonably handed it over to its client state North Korea.

For three months, arguments raged until, bowing to South Korean insistence backed up by cartographic evidence, Pyongyang acknowledged the island stood just a shade south of the 38th Parallel. Baekryung was relinquished to the South.

For some North Koreans, the island has proved a refuge, absorbing those who fled from Communism in the early years before the borders were sealed.

“I wait for the day when I will be able to go back to my homeland in the North,” said Kim Chan Shin, who was 5 years old when she fled with her mother from her hometown in Hwanghae province.

Kim said she believes she still has relatives in the North but has no information on them now.

“I don’t know if they are dead or alive,” said Kim, a pastor’s wife, in her North Korean accent.

But there are also native islanders, born and bred there and anything but complacent about the North Korean threat.

Since 1988, the alarms have sounded 11 times warning the island’s inhabitants that North Koreans had crossed into South Korean waters.

“Some were North Korean fishing boats which crossed over by mistake. But most of the time it was the North Koreans crossing deliberately to see what we would do,” the marine spokesman said.

The cat-and-mouse game never lasts long. As soon as they have provoked a response, the North Koreans have, up until now, turned their boats for home.

By South Korean standards, the 4,800 Baekryung islanders are a prosperous lot.

“We go out fishing to catch abalone and sea cucumbers. And in one day, we can catch about 900,000 won ($1,140) worth at least,” a fisherman said of his vessel.

But despite this prosperity, the young especially are gradually leaving. “If the students are bright and we want them to be well-educated, we have to let them go,” Kim said.