Diamond Raiders

Mount Kumgang was the sacred place of Koreans for many centuries. In the 7th century, the Silla Kingdom (one of the three kingdoms) built a captivating Buddhist Temple. It looked like the House of Three Gods, defined as Heaven, Earth, and the God of Ancestors. Every poet and artist who lived during the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) made a special journey to paint watercolors and write verses. The World War II division of the country in 1945 stopped the South Korean people from visiting these cherished mountains for the past 78 years. The 155-mile-long barbed-wire fence erected as part of the Demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas after the War proved to be an obstruction deadlier than any other barrier.

Numerous folk tales, myths, and legends connected to Mount Kumgang delighted people for many generations. But the story in this book is concerned with raiders of diamonds from the Temple during the Japanese occupation of 35 years, where no Korean police existed, and the Japanese police controlled all the crimes in the country. However, it is the natural law that anyone raiding things from a sacred place has to pay the price. How to identify the raiders and what price the raiders had to pay is anyone's guess. Koreans are gentle and seldom engage in murder, although they can be hot-headed to butt their heads first and shake hands later. Thus, identifying guilty people was extremely difficult.