Note: Continuing on from the previous installment.
It's clear that, right around here, no one was sure about the tone of the piece, anymore. It jumps back and forth from actually factual information to snarky bull!@#$. This is what happens when you have four or five different writers working on one document, and one overworked editor more or less rubber-stamping the whole thing while getting blown by one of Dr. Yesterday's sex midgets.
We think.
K is for Korean War
Korea isn't just one of the few places you can get soda that tastes like bubble gum. It's also the place where the future of Strategic Talents in the Cold War world was written out. And, more importantly, it's where SPYGOD really became SPYGOD, instead of who he was before.
Long story short? The Commies were evil, and, once World War II was over, stopped being our friends (so we could help defend them from the Nazis) and wanted to take over the world. Part of taking over the world was taking complete control of the Korean Peninsula, which they'd gone half and half on when the Allies liberated it from the Japanese. So, in 1950, a fat, evil Commie named Kim Il Sung got permission from the Soviets, and aid from the Chinese, and his soldiers swooped into South Korea to "unify the Fatherland."
The United Nations, being a powerless fraud, could only condemn it and ask for its members to do something. Fortunately, America intervened, because President Truman was a smart man who knew what happened when tyranny went unchecked. We sent troops in to help the South Koreans stop the commies, and figured it would be over soon, as long as the Soviets and Chinese stayed out of it.
But there a BIG problem! After World War II, the United Nations included as part of its Charter that member states should not use Strategic Talents in war. The spineless wimps at the United Nations were afraid that a superhuman arms race would happen, with everyone trying to make strategic talents, the same way everyone was trying to make atomic bombs.
Since no superpowered people could fight each other, like they did during the last war, this war was going to take a long time to end. So President Truman secretly sent a few Strategic Talents in, hoping they would find out that the Commies were using Strategic Talents, so America could send Mr. USA and the Liberty Patrol in to fight them. After all, if they we Commies breaking the rules, so could America!
SPYGOD led the mission because he'd been doing secret work in the Soviet Union, and had a good idea how to keep things quiet. But a bad thing happened. The Strategic Talents were ambushed and captured, and sent to a prison camp.
The Commies put them in special chains so they couldn't break free, and hurt them to try to make them tell what their secret plans were. None of the brave American superheroes would tell them the truth, so the Commies hurt them and used them for fun.
Soon there was only one hero left, and that was SPYGOD. He broke free, burned down the camp, and got away, but by then the Commies were almost all the way down the peninsula. Even worse than that, the Chinese and Soviets had complained to the United Nations that America was using Strategic Talents against people who had none. Now the North Koreans would have to use superpowered soldiers to make it an even fight!
America knew that the North Koreans didn't have many superpowered soldiers, because Japan had killed a lot of them during World War II. This meant that they would have to get them from the Soviets and the Chinese. And once the Soviets and Chinese sent their Strategic Talents, ordinary forces wouldn't be too far behind.
President Truman knew this could lead to another World War. He had to stop this from happening. So he went to the United Nations and told them that the Commies were lying. He said that America had been using Strategic Talents in Korea, but that the Commies had done it first. He used information that SPYGOD had gathered while behind enemy lines to prove it.
But President Truman made the Commies an offer. He said that he would pull out all Strategic Talents, and not allow them to return, if the Commies would make the same promise. This would mean the Commies would have to admit they'd been lying, so they refused. So America sent in Mr. USA and the Liberty Patrol, and the Commies sent their superpowered soldiers in to fight them.
The war took another eight years to end. This is because neither side wanted to do as much damage as they could. They were afraid that if they fought too hard, and went too far, someone might use atomic weaponry. So a lot of Strategic Talents on both sides were killed or seriously wounded, and the fast, back and forth advances of the first years of the war turned into the same kind of trench warfare that happened in World War I.
An Armistice was signed in 1958. This meant that the war was still going on because neither side wanted to admit defeat, but that no one was going to fight it, anymore. After the signing, President Eisenhower promised the American people that America would never be the first to use superpowered people in a war, but that we would keep them "in reserve" just in case someone else did.
This is why the Liberty Patrol was disbanded. This is why we have The COMPANY. This is also why Vietnam took so long and was never won. Ask your parents about that.
(ED NOTE: Wow, way to sound jingoistic there, Bob. Could we make this a lot less history-channelish and a lot funnier? This page is in dire need of Operation Snark Bomb.)
!@#$ You, "ED" - Bob
(You're fired, Bob. - ED)
(SPYGOD is listening to Chalkhills and Children (XTC) and having some soju and cheju cider)
Showing posts with label south korea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label south korea. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
9/1/11 - Talking with the President
(PHONE CALL BEGINS, 3AM EST)
OPERATOR: Hello, is this SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: It !@#$ well is, sweetie. Who the !@#$ is this?
OPERATOR: Please stand by to receive a call from the President of the United States of--
SPYGOD: Blah blah !@#$ blah. Put him on, !@#$ it.
POTUS: Hello, SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: No, this is his Asian stunt double, Fred. SPYGOD's out back smoking a cigar the size of a battleship. And you wouldn't believe who it's attached to.
POTUS: Um, okay. I don't think I want to know what that meant.
SPYGOD: Well that's why I'm in charge of The COMPANY, Mr. President. I go places you don't want to go, see things above your pay grade, and !@#$ them in the !@#$ with guns for America.
POTUS: I see. So there was some overriding issue of national security that necessitated your publicly urinating on the grave of General Park Chung-hee, last night?
SPYGOD: Well, no... not really, sir. Spending the previous two days !@#$ing !@#$ up in Incheon was an issue of national security. Peeing on that !@#$'s grave was just stress relief. And overdue revenge.
POTUS: *sighs* Okay, you know, this is not how I expected this call to go.
SPYGOD: If you called to hear me say the magic "sorry" word, sir, you are sorely mistaken. I regret nothing.
POTUS: You... regret nothing?
SPYGOD: That's !@#$ right.
POTUS: Look, I get a phone call telling me that the Seoul police found you roaring drunk, buck naked, and peeing on the grave of one of their national heroes--
SPYGOD: Actually, I was still wearing my high heels, sir.
POTUS: Look--
SPYGOD: The red ones that light up, act as backup phones, and spray eyeball-eating gas out the back.
POTUS: You know--
SPYGOD: Which, you'll be happy to know, were not used on the park police when they came by and did their honest duty. In fact, if you ask them you'll find I was a perfect gentleman once they explained the magnitude of my error.
POTUS: They say you tried to start a homosexual orgy--
SPYGOD: And the only people who think General Park was a !@#$ hero are all in their !@#$ 70's and dropping like flies. The man was a dirty !@#$ bastard who ran disappearance squads and put a rubber stamp on HONEYCOMB using their people as test subjects.
POTUS: Yes, I have read your initial report--
SPYGOD: They should be lucky I didn't eat half the bulgogi in town and take an elephant-sized !@#$ on his grave! Except I think it'd probably gain some weird kind of sentience and go eat a few buildings.
POTUS: SPYGOD...
SPYGOD: I mean, sometimes I think I hear my !@#$ screaming when I flush the commode. Have you ever had that happen to you?
POTUS: The President of South Korea is furious. I'm furious. The only reason the press isn't having a field day with this is because Libya is in the headlines, right now!
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet they are. Did you tell my friends in the other Company that they should have been a little more careful when they got into bed with Khaddafy's people? There's a reason we wear protection in this business.
POTUS: I've already had words with them.
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet you told them.
POTUS: Now that's just--
SPYGOD: You know I can hear them laughing right now, right? Something about a dumb-!@#$ moron who doesn't understand how this business works reprimanding them for taking any avenue they could in order to deal with a potential asset, in spite of his numerous shortcomings.
POTUS: Well, yes, the Director did mention that.
SPYGOD: Minus the parts about your being a dumb-!@#$, I'm sure.
POTUS: Well, what do you want me to say?
SPYGOD: The truth would be a nice thing, once in a while. But we know you have a problem with that, don't we, Mr. President?
POTUS: Oh, Jesus !@#$ Christ. That is it. I want your letter of resignation on my desk first thing tomorrow morning, once you sober up and make it back to D.C.
SPYGOD: No.
POTUS: No? What the !@#$ do you mean no?
SPYGOD: I mean no, Mr. President. I am not resigning. You will have to fire me.
POTUS: I thought I just did.
SPYGOD: No, you asked me to resign. That's something entirely different. That makes it sound like it's my idea, and then you can always say you're sorry to see me go. If you have to fire me, that's a whole different busload of prison fish.
POTUS: Not from where I'm standing.
SPYGOD: Then sit down a second, sir. Because then you have to say why. And then you have to explain why this particular excretory outburst from yours truly is any different from any other time I've whipped the glowing alien mansnake out and peed on something sacred. And then you have to explain to everyone, which includes your colleagues, your own intelligence agencies, the worldwide intelligence community, and, most importantly, the American voting public, why this was necessary. And what the blazing living !@#$ are you going to tell them?
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Yeah, that's what I thought. You can't tell them a god!@#$ thing because there is nothing. To. Tell. I get drunk, I get !@#$ up, I shoot guns at people who probably don't deserve it, I expose myself in public, and have probably done even more outrageous and inappropriate things than you and I both know about because my overworked but well-compensated COMPANY spin teams are so good that sometimes they can even reverse the !@#$ flow of time itself. And yet, if you ask most Americans about good old SPYGOD, they give me a glowing 95% approval rating almost every !@#$ time.
POTUS: Because you killed Hitler.
SPYGOD: Because I killed Hitler. Because I kept the commies from nuking us back in the Cold War. Because I fought SQUASH to a standstill, and beyond. Because I helped keep those idiot Jihadis from flying planes into buildings. Because when the Computer Hell Virus hit NYC, I was the one who held it off while Dr. Yesterday and his people found the way to stop it. Because when GORGON takes over a town, or HONEYCOMB pulls another science raid, or the Legion's in fine form yet again, I'm the one who rolls in and deals with their !@#$. Because I just blew up Outland, and stomped ABWEHR, and--
POTUS: After years of letting them slide. After years of sitting on your !@#$ and letting them get away with murder just so you could stop them from doing something worse.
SPYGOD: ... I know. It was the way we used to do things. I never liked it.
POTUS: You never liked it? Well that's good to know, SPYGOD. Now imagine me having to realize that I'd inherited that terrible history the moment I stepped into this position. Imagine me now knowing that I was partially responsible for all those deaths. When I read the report when I got into the Oval Office I had to not cry.
SPYGOD: Well at least you fought crying. Your predecessor just shrugged it the !@#$ off.
POTUS: You never did like him, did you?
SPYGOD: No, but I don't like you, either.
POTUS: Gee, thanks.
SPYGOD: The difference is I would like to like you, Mr. President. You seem like someone who actually thinks about things, once in a while. Your predecessor left that up to his cabinet. We all know how that went.
POTUS: We can't think of everything. That's why we have a cabinet.
SPYGOD: And you can't deal with everything, either. That's why you have people like me.
POTUS: And the other Company.
SPYGOD: Whether we can trust them to clean up after their own !@#$ mess or not.
POTUS: So what are you suggesting, here? I can't just let this slide.
SPYGOD: Mind control.
POTUS: What?
SPYGOD: I was under mind control. We'll blame someone disposable from the Legion. I'll go deal with him or her with extreme prejudice, probably well overdue. And then we can all laugh about it the next time we're at the UN.
POTUS: Are you... are you !@#$ing with me?
SPYGOD: In return, I won't say anything about the real reason you wanted me out of Ice Palace.
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Remember, SPYGOD hears all.
POTUS: So where's GORGON?
SPYGOD: ... we're working on it.
POTUS: I certainly hope so.
SPYGOD: Mr. President, back when we started The COMPANY, I promised the President at the time that we would, forever more, do our best to protect America from all threats beyond the scope of normal intelligence to handle. Maybe we haven't always been successful, and maybe some of the things we've done to do it have been questionable. But in the end we've done our best. I don't go for the whole 'history will judge us' bull!@#$ because it doesn't mean anything in the here and now, and that's what ultimately matters at the end of the day. But if I can keep us all alive and safe for another day, I call it a day well spent. Even if it involves me peeing on General Park's grave for an entire hour when I clock out.
POTUS: There's gonna come a time when your best won't be good enough, SPYGOD. You do know that, don't you?
SPYGOD: Maybe more than you realize, sir.
POTUS: Okay, then. Mind control. I'll let you have your spin teams handle the fallout. Try not to make a mess of it, okay?
SPYGOD: I think we'll be alright, sir. This isn't my first round of Blame The Bad Guy, you know.
POTUS: I know. That's what scares me.
SPYGOD: Good afternoon, sir.
(CALL TERMINATED AT SEOUL END)
(SPYGOD is listening to I Am The Best (2NE1) and drinking a suspicious microbrew in Seoul)
OPERATOR: Hello, is this SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: It !@#$ well is, sweetie. Who the !@#$ is this?
OPERATOR: Please stand by to receive a call from the President of the United States of--
SPYGOD: Blah blah !@#$ blah. Put him on, !@#$ it.
POTUS: Hello, SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: No, this is his Asian stunt double, Fred. SPYGOD's out back smoking a cigar the size of a battleship. And you wouldn't believe who it's attached to.
POTUS: Um, okay. I don't think I want to know what that meant.
SPYGOD: Well that's why I'm in charge of The COMPANY, Mr. President. I go places you don't want to go, see things above your pay grade, and !@#$ them in the !@#$ with guns for America.
POTUS: I see. So there was some overriding issue of national security that necessitated your publicly urinating on the grave of General Park Chung-hee, last night?
SPYGOD: Well, no... not really, sir. Spending the previous two days !@#$ing !@#$ up in Incheon was an issue of national security. Peeing on that !@#$'s grave was just stress relief. And overdue revenge.
POTUS: *sighs* Okay, you know, this is not how I expected this call to go.
SPYGOD: If you called to hear me say the magic "sorry" word, sir, you are sorely mistaken. I regret nothing.
POTUS: You... regret nothing?
SPYGOD: That's !@#$ right.
POTUS: Look, I get a phone call telling me that the Seoul police found you roaring drunk, buck naked, and peeing on the grave of one of their national heroes--
SPYGOD: Actually, I was still wearing my high heels, sir.
POTUS: Look--
SPYGOD: The red ones that light up, act as backup phones, and spray eyeball-eating gas out the back.
POTUS: You know--
SPYGOD: Which, you'll be happy to know, were not used on the park police when they came by and did their honest duty. In fact, if you ask them you'll find I was a perfect gentleman once they explained the magnitude of my error.
POTUS: They say you tried to start a homosexual orgy--
SPYGOD: And the only people who think General Park was a !@#$ hero are all in their !@#$ 70's and dropping like flies. The man was a dirty !@#$ bastard who ran disappearance squads and put a rubber stamp on HONEYCOMB using their people as test subjects.
POTUS: Yes, I have read your initial report--
SPYGOD: They should be lucky I didn't eat half the bulgogi in town and take an elephant-sized !@#$ on his grave! Except I think it'd probably gain some weird kind of sentience and go eat a few buildings.
POTUS: SPYGOD...
SPYGOD: I mean, sometimes I think I hear my !@#$ screaming when I flush the commode. Have you ever had that happen to you?
POTUS: The President of South Korea is furious. I'm furious. The only reason the press isn't having a field day with this is because Libya is in the headlines, right now!
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet they are. Did you tell my friends in the other Company that they should have been a little more careful when they got into bed with Khaddafy's people? There's a reason we wear protection in this business.
POTUS: I've already had words with them.
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet you told them.
POTUS: Now that's just--
SPYGOD: You know I can hear them laughing right now, right? Something about a dumb-!@#$ moron who doesn't understand how this business works reprimanding them for taking any avenue they could in order to deal with a potential asset, in spite of his numerous shortcomings.
POTUS: Well, yes, the Director did mention that.
SPYGOD: Minus the parts about your being a dumb-!@#$, I'm sure.
POTUS: Well, what do you want me to say?
SPYGOD: The truth would be a nice thing, once in a while. But we know you have a problem with that, don't we, Mr. President?
POTUS: Oh, Jesus !@#$ Christ. That is it. I want your letter of resignation on my desk first thing tomorrow morning, once you sober up and make it back to D.C.
SPYGOD: No.
POTUS: No? What the !@#$ do you mean no?
SPYGOD: I mean no, Mr. President. I am not resigning. You will have to fire me.
POTUS: I thought I just did.
SPYGOD: No, you asked me to resign. That's something entirely different. That makes it sound like it's my idea, and then you can always say you're sorry to see me go. If you have to fire me, that's a whole different busload of prison fish.
POTUS: Not from where I'm standing.
SPYGOD: Then sit down a second, sir. Because then you have to say why. And then you have to explain why this particular excretory outburst from yours truly is any different from any other time I've whipped the glowing alien mansnake out and peed on something sacred. And then you have to explain to everyone, which includes your colleagues, your own intelligence agencies, the worldwide intelligence community, and, most importantly, the American voting public, why this was necessary. And what the blazing living !@#$ are you going to tell them?
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Yeah, that's what I thought. You can't tell them a god!@#$ thing because there is nothing. To. Tell. I get drunk, I get !@#$ up, I shoot guns at people who probably don't deserve it, I expose myself in public, and have probably done even more outrageous and inappropriate things than you and I both know about because my overworked but well-compensated COMPANY spin teams are so good that sometimes they can even reverse the !@#$ flow of time itself. And yet, if you ask most Americans about good old SPYGOD, they give me a glowing 95% approval rating almost every !@#$ time.
POTUS: Because you killed Hitler.
SPYGOD: Because I killed Hitler. Because I kept the commies from nuking us back in the Cold War. Because I fought SQUASH to a standstill, and beyond. Because I helped keep those idiot Jihadis from flying planes into buildings. Because when the Computer Hell Virus hit NYC, I was the one who held it off while Dr. Yesterday and his people found the way to stop it. Because when GORGON takes over a town, or HONEYCOMB pulls another science raid, or the Legion's in fine form yet again, I'm the one who rolls in and deals with their !@#$. Because I just blew up Outland, and stomped ABWEHR, and--
POTUS: After years of letting them slide. After years of sitting on your !@#$ and letting them get away with murder just so you could stop them from doing something worse.
SPYGOD: ... I know. It was the way we used to do things. I never liked it.
POTUS: You never liked it? Well that's good to know, SPYGOD. Now imagine me having to realize that I'd inherited that terrible history the moment I stepped into this position. Imagine me now knowing that I was partially responsible for all those deaths. When I read the report when I got into the Oval Office I had to not cry.
SPYGOD: Well at least you fought crying. Your predecessor just shrugged it the !@#$ off.
POTUS: You never did like him, did you?
SPYGOD: No, but I don't like you, either.
POTUS: Gee, thanks.
SPYGOD: The difference is I would like to like you, Mr. President. You seem like someone who actually thinks about things, once in a while. Your predecessor left that up to his cabinet. We all know how that went.
POTUS: We can't think of everything. That's why we have a cabinet.
SPYGOD: And you can't deal with everything, either. That's why you have people like me.
POTUS: And the other Company.
SPYGOD: Whether we can trust them to clean up after their own !@#$ mess or not.
POTUS: So what are you suggesting, here? I can't just let this slide.
SPYGOD: Mind control.
POTUS: What?
SPYGOD: I was under mind control. We'll blame someone disposable from the Legion. I'll go deal with him or her with extreme prejudice, probably well overdue. And then we can all laugh about it the next time we're at the UN.
POTUS: Are you... are you !@#$ing with me?
SPYGOD: In return, I won't say anything about the real reason you wanted me out of Ice Palace.
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Remember, SPYGOD hears all.
POTUS: So where's GORGON?
SPYGOD: ... we're working on it.
POTUS: I certainly hope so.
SPYGOD: Mr. President, back when we started The COMPANY, I promised the President at the time that we would, forever more, do our best to protect America from all threats beyond the scope of normal intelligence to handle. Maybe we haven't always been successful, and maybe some of the things we've done to do it have been questionable. But in the end we've done our best. I don't go for the whole 'history will judge us' bull!@#$ because it doesn't mean anything in the here and now, and that's what ultimately matters at the end of the day. But if I can keep us all alive and safe for another day, I call it a day well spent. Even if it involves me peeing on General Park's grave for an entire hour when I clock out.
POTUS: There's gonna come a time when your best won't be good enough, SPYGOD. You do know that, don't you?
SPYGOD: Maybe more than you realize, sir.
POTUS: Okay, then. Mind control. I'll let you have your spin teams handle the fallout. Try not to make a mess of it, okay?
SPYGOD: I think we'll be alright, sir. This isn't my first round of Blame The Bad Guy, you know.
POTUS: I know. That's what scares me.
SPYGOD: Good afternoon, sir.
(CALL TERMINATED AT SEOUL END)
(SPYGOD is listening to I Am The Best (2NE1) and drinking a suspicious microbrew in Seoul)
Thursday, September 1, 2011
8/30-31/11 - Operation Bad Soju
Let me start this out by saying that I didn't intend to spend the last two days beating the !@#$ out of giant metal wasps on a tiny island in the Yellow Sea, just off Incheon.
The fight took in a lot of the nearby, larger island of Muui, as well as the Incheon international airport. Seeing as how giant metal wasps and passenger planes do not mix very well at all, the Korean authorities are not happy with us, right now.
But I'm pretty sure they'll get over it. Especially when I show them exactly what we've been doing, and why they really don't want to make too much of a fuss about it.
Because they really do not want this !@#$ to go public. Not now. Probably not !@#$ ever.
What are we doing here in the first place? Glad you asked that, son. As you know, we've been working on mining what data we could out of various computer drives we've salvaged from HONEYCOMB installations, so as to facilitate what we've come to call OPERATION BUGSTOMP: the total eradication of the entire science terrorist outfit, the horse it rode in on, and it's nazi eyeball thieving dog Gerte, too.
If you've been paying attention, you know why this is absolutely necessary. But let me show you yet another reason why this must be done.
Let me take you back to South Korea, back in the late 60's and early 70's. This was back in the General Park, days, when a pro-business totalitarian dictator was running things south of the 38th parallel. The KCIA was running a tight ship, and making so many "dissidents" and "communist spies" disappear that it they were making Pinochet's death squads look like amateurs.
Believe me, that's saying something.
In January of 1968, North Korea sent a small detachment of men from Unit 124 into Seoul in an attempt to kill General Park. These were some scary and dedicated bastards, willing to dig up graves and sleep with !@#$ corpses to avoid being seen at night. They had excellent training, adequate equipment, and total commitment.
The only reason they failed was because Park, nasty monster that he was, was !@#$ lucky that day.
Needless to say, General Park wasn't in a mood to let it slide. So he had his military goons in the Air Force put together a revenge mission. They swooped down and gathered up their own "dirty dozen": 31 criminals, outcasts, misfits, and aimless youths who were promised money and rewards if they'd just do their country a little favor.
And after that horrible war, which !@#$ flattened everything between Pyongyang and Pusan, who wouldn't want to be well paid to go North and kill Kim Il-Sung? It must have been how it felt to be in the Dolittle raid after Pearl Harbor, only maybe a little less visceral (unless you lived in Hawaii).
But this was not the Dolittle raid, which is a time-tested textbook case of professionalism, planning, and daring-do. This was a cluster!@#$.
The 31 men who would be turned into Unit 684 were shipped off to Silmido, a tiny island, not far from the shores of Incheon. Over the next two years they were trained past the limits of their endurance and sanity, to the extent that seven of them died just from exhaustion. The instructors didn't give a !@#$, and just pushed the survivors harder.
Their training started in 1968. They were deemed ready to go by 1971. But by that time, Kim and Park had had something of a meeting of the minds. There was talk of reunification, which, as we well know, did not, has not, and will probably never !@#$ happen. But it sounded good after everything that had happened before, and Park, for whatever reason, wasn't of a mind to return the assassination favor, anymore.
So Park did the unthinkable. After spending two !@#$ years training these guys to go do the mother of all wetwork jobs, he canceled the !@#$ mission with extreme prejudice.
(Which means, in civilian terms, he ordered the Unit to be assassinated, themselves, in order to keep the North Koreans from finding out what he'd been planning.)
What happened next, just a little over 40 years ago, is one of the blackest acknowledged chapters in South Korea's history. August 23rd of '71, the remaining members of Unit 684 rebelled, slaughtered their guards, left the compound, and fought their onto the mainland, towards Seoul. What they were going to do, or where they were going to go, is still largely uncertain. But they fought to the death, using every tactic they'd been trained with, and some they'd probably learned before all that.
They were magnificently terrifying, by all accounts. In the end the police just barely stopped the Unit, and most of what was left of them killed themselves with hand grenades. The remaining four were executed after a drumhead trial a year later, and the government sat on the whole !@#$ thing until they were more or less forced to fess up to it, thanks to a movie of all things.
So what does that have to do with anything? Well, son, I'm glad you asked.
While we were decrypting the files we got off those HONEYCOMB servers, we uncovered notes about a PROJECT DANCERS DRESS. Something about taking 31 men and turning them into Supers through a low-impact regimen of training and chemicals. The project wasn't a success, but they didn't go into much detail as to why, or what happened.
And then SPYGOD got to thinking, as SPYGOD is likely to do after a few really strong drinks and a ladyboy or two. Why does 31 sound so familiar? And "Dancers Dress"?
It took me a little scouring, but we eventually figured it out. I'm sure you realize, by now, why 31 is important. But it turns out that the larger, populated island of Muui is right next to Silmido. Muuido means "Dancers Dress Island."
Oh those sneaky HONEYCOMB people. So of course we suit up and zip over there, letting the South Koreans know we're on our way but exactly telling them why. Some bull!@#$ about a rogue strategic talent they really don't want drunk and on the rampage in Seoul, which is good enough for them.
We do some digging on Silmido, and we find a treasure trove of old HONEYCOMB materials, including the aforementioned giant metal wasps. Cue a massive battle that rages across both islands and their precious !@#$ airport for two days, thankfully won by the good guys once the new tech we've been trying out pays off and we trip their kill switch.
So here's the real story about Unit 684, son.
For some weird reason, the Korean peninsula is just not super central. Maybe being the hermit kingdom for so long denied them some essential strands of DNA, and maybe they're just not lucky that way, but you can count the number of known supers in North and South Korea on both hands and have room for a few fingers and a thumb.
So maybe General Park, who got to see some Strategic Talents in action (sort of) during the Korean War wanted some of his own. Maybe having a group of mere men almost cap his sorry butt in 68 brought it home to him that he really needed some special talents guarding him. Maybe he was worried that Kim Il-Sung already had more than he was letting on, and there might be a god hovering outside the Blue House any day now.
Some discrete inquiries are made, and some friends are introduced. Promises are made and plans are cooked up. But tests and trials are required, so raw material is needed.
Hence Unit 684.
Which means that, for two years, while we were fighting them across the planet along with ABWEHR and SQUASH, one of our more rabidly anti-communist allies, and a country in which we actually had a major !@#$ military presence, was clandestinely linked up with HONEYCOMB in a bid to make them their own rabidly loyal, mind-controlled supers.
And then it all went to !@#$.
What happened on that August day, 40 years ago? Did Park finally realize what he'd made a deal with and try to get the !@#$ out of it? Did HONEYCOMB get angry that their plan was botched and decide to punish their former allies? Did the men of Unit 684 just rise up to save their own lives?
We may never know. The answer may be in these drives we've painstakingly excavated. It may remain a mystery forever.
But the scary thing is this: from what little we've been able to determine, PROJECT DANCERS DRESS was just the tip of the iceberg. Ever since 1971, HONEYCOMB has created numerous "Unit 684s" all over the world. They've taken normal people, altered them, and then let them loose amongst the populations.
This means that, much like GORGON, there could be any number of sleeper agents waiting to rise up when they get the signal. They may not even know what they are, or what they can do. And when it happens they may not be in total control of their own actions, which will make what has to happen next very heartbreaking.
But, unlike GORGON, who are fanatical but still mostly baseline, these sleepers will be very hard to deal with.
You see, the men of Unit 684 didn't kill themselves with hand grenades just to make a statement. They used hand grenades because, by that point, that was probably the only thing that would kill them.
Yeah.
General Park is dead, shot by the director of his own KCIA in 1979. So I can't force him to tell me what the !@#$ he was thinking. I can't berate him for having been so !@#$ short-sighted, envious, and dumb.
I can, however, go find his grave and !@#$ on it for a full hour. And after I have another few bottles of this nasty soju I've been drinking since they told me about this new problem we have, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
And I'll toast the men of Unit 684 when I do it. Magnificent doomed bastards, one and all.
(SPYGOD is listening to Tell Yourself (Clazziquai Project) and drinking some very awful Soju)
The fight took in a lot of the nearby, larger island of Muui, as well as the Incheon international airport. Seeing as how giant metal wasps and passenger planes do not mix very well at all, the Korean authorities are not happy with us, right now.
But I'm pretty sure they'll get over it. Especially when I show them exactly what we've been doing, and why they really don't want to make too much of a fuss about it.
Because they really do not want this !@#$ to go public. Not now. Probably not !@#$ ever.
What are we doing here in the first place? Glad you asked that, son. As you know, we've been working on mining what data we could out of various computer drives we've salvaged from HONEYCOMB installations, so as to facilitate what we've come to call OPERATION BUGSTOMP: the total eradication of the entire science terrorist outfit, the horse it rode in on, and it's nazi eyeball thieving dog Gerte, too.
If you've been paying attention, you know why this is absolutely necessary. But let me show you yet another reason why this must be done.
Let me take you back to South Korea, back in the late 60's and early 70's. This was back in the General Park, days, when a pro-business totalitarian dictator was running things south of the 38th parallel. The KCIA was running a tight ship, and making so many "dissidents" and "communist spies" disappear that it they were making Pinochet's death squads look like amateurs.
Believe me, that's saying something.
In January of 1968, North Korea sent a small detachment of men from Unit 124 into Seoul in an attempt to kill General Park. These were some scary and dedicated bastards, willing to dig up graves and sleep with !@#$ corpses to avoid being seen at night. They had excellent training, adequate equipment, and total commitment.
The only reason they failed was because Park, nasty monster that he was, was !@#$ lucky that day.
Needless to say, General Park wasn't in a mood to let it slide. So he had his military goons in the Air Force put together a revenge mission. They swooped down and gathered up their own "dirty dozen": 31 criminals, outcasts, misfits, and aimless youths who were promised money and rewards if they'd just do their country a little favor.
And after that horrible war, which !@#$ flattened everything between Pyongyang and Pusan, who wouldn't want to be well paid to go North and kill Kim Il-Sung? It must have been how it felt to be in the Dolittle raid after Pearl Harbor, only maybe a little less visceral (unless you lived in Hawaii).
But this was not the Dolittle raid, which is a time-tested textbook case of professionalism, planning, and daring-do. This was a cluster!@#$.
The 31 men who would be turned into Unit 684 were shipped off to Silmido, a tiny island, not far from the shores of Incheon. Over the next two years they were trained past the limits of their endurance and sanity, to the extent that seven of them died just from exhaustion. The instructors didn't give a !@#$, and just pushed the survivors harder.
Their training started in 1968. They were deemed ready to go by 1971. But by that time, Kim and Park had had something of a meeting of the minds. There was talk of reunification, which, as we well know, did not, has not, and will probably never !@#$ happen. But it sounded good after everything that had happened before, and Park, for whatever reason, wasn't of a mind to return the assassination favor, anymore.
So Park did the unthinkable. After spending two !@#$ years training these guys to go do the mother of all wetwork jobs, he canceled the !@#$ mission with extreme prejudice.
(Which means, in civilian terms, he ordered the Unit to be assassinated, themselves, in order to keep the North Koreans from finding out what he'd been planning.)
What happened next, just a little over 40 years ago, is one of the blackest acknowledged chapters in South Korea's history. August 23rd of '71, the remaining members of Unit 684 rebelled, slaughtered their guards, left the compound, and fought their onto the mainland, towards Seoul. What they were going to do, or where they were going to go, is still largely uncertain. But they fought to the death, using every tactic they'd been trained with, and some they'd probably learned before all that.
They were magnificently terrifying, by all accounts. In the end the police just barely stopped the Unit, and most of what was left of them killed themselves with hand grenades. The remaining four were executed after a drumhead trial a year later, and the government sat on the whole !@#$ thing until they were more or less forced to fess up to it, thanks to a movie of all things.
So what does that have to do with anything? Well, son, I'm glad you asked.
While we were decrypting the files we got off those HONEYCOMB servers, we uncovered notes about a PROJECT DANCERS DRESS. Something about taking 31 men and turning them into Supers through a low-impact regimen of training and chemicals. The project wasn't a success, but they didn't go into much detail as to why, or what happened.
And then SPYGOD got to thinking, as SPYGOD is likely to do after a few really strong drinks and a ladyboy or two. Why does 31 sound so familiar? And "Dancers Dress"?
It took me a little scouring, but we eventually figured it out. I'm sure you realize, by now, why 31 is important. But it turns out that the larger, populated island of Muui is right next to Silmido. Muuido means "Dancers Dress Island."
Oh those sneaky HONEYCOMB people. So of course we suit up and zip over there, letting the South Koreans know we're on our way but exactly telling them why. Some bull!@#$ about a rogue strategic talent they really don't want drunk and on the rampage in Seoul, which is good enough for them.
We do some digging on Silmido, and we find a treasure trove of old HONEYCOMB materials, including the aforementioned giant metal wasps. Cue a massive battle that rages across both islands and their precious !@#$ airport for two days, thankfully won by the good guys once the new tech we've been trying out pays off and we trip their kill switch.
So here's the real story about Unit 684, son.
For some weird reason, the Korean peninsula is just not super central. Maybe being the hermit kingdom for so long denied them some essential strands of DNA, and maybe they're just not lucky that way, but you can count the number of known supers in North and South Korea on both hands and have room for a few fingers and a thumb.
So maybe General Park, who got to see some Strategic Talents in action (sort of) during the Korean War wanted some of his own. Maybe having a group of mere men almost cap his sorry butt in 68 brought it home to him that he really needed some special talents guarding him. Maybe he was worried that Kim Il-Sung already had more than he was letting on, and there might be a god hovering outside the Blue House any day now.
Some discrete inquiries are made, and some friends are introduced. Promises are made and plans are cooked up. But tests and trials are required, so raw material is needed.
Hence Unit 684.
Which means that, for two years, while we were fighting them across the planet along with ABWEHR and SQUASH, one of our more rabidly anti-communist allies, and a country in which we actually had a major !@#$ military presence, was clandestinely linked up with HONEYCOMB in a bid to make them their own rabidly loyal, mind-controlled supers.
And then it all went to !@#$.
What happened on that August day, 40 years ago? Did Park finally realize what he'd made a deal with and try to get the !@#$ out of it? Did HONEYCOMB get angry that their plan was botched and decide to punish their former allies? Did the men of Unit 684 just rise up to save their own lives?
We may never know. The answer may be in these drives we've painstakingly excavated. It may remain a mystery forever.
But the scary thing is this: from what little we've been able to determine, PROJECT DANCERS DRESS was just the tip of the iceberg. Ever since 1971, HONEYCOMB has created numerous "Unit 684s" all over the world. They've taken normal people, altered them, and then let them loose amongst the populations.
This means that, much like GORGON, there could be any number of sleeper agents waiting to rise up when they get the signal. They may not even know what they are, or what they can do. And when it happens they may not be in total control of their own actions, which will make what has to happen next very heartbreaking.
But, unlike GORGON, who are fanatical but still mostly baseline, these sleepers will be very hard to deal with.
You see, the men of Unit 684 didn't kill themselves with hand grenades just to make a statement. They used hand grenades because, by that point, that was probably the only thing that would kill them.
Yeah.
General Park is dead, shot by the director of his own KCIA in 1979. So I can't force him to tell me what the !@#$ he was thinking. I can't berate him for having been so !@#$ short-sighted, envious, and dumb.
I can, however, go find his grave and !@#$ on it for a full hour. And after I have another few bottles of this nasty soju I've been drinking since they told me about this new problem we have, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
And I'll toast the men of Unit 684 when I do it. Magnificent doomed bastards, one and all.
(SPYGOD is listening to Tell Yourself (Clazziquai Project) and drinking some very awful Soju)
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