The Iron Sickle

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The man with the iron sickle entered Yongsan Compound on a Monday morning in the middle of October at approximately zero seven forty-five. This is the hour when the bulk of the Korean workforce rushes through the pedestrian entrance at Gate Number Five toward the hundreds of jobs they fill in the headquarters of the 8th United States Army in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

He must’ve shown an ID card.

Most of the Korean workers wear them dangling from lanyards or clipped to their lapels. A contract-hire gate guard checked the identification of every person shuffling single file through the narrow passageway, a chore he’d performed every weekday for years. Interviewed later, he admitted he didn’t have time to compare every card to every face. The crush of people was too great. So the ID card might’ve been a forgery or it might’ve been stolen, and there’s at least the chance it might’ve been borrowed from someone else.

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