The Shadow of Sea Wolf

For those living at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, 1946 was an unfortunate year.

A year earlier, Japan had surrendered, and Korea gained independence. People returned from the battlefields to their hometowns, searching for loved ones, reuniting families, and once again enjoying domestic bliss. It should have been a year of discarding the old, embracing the new, rekindling spirits, and starting anew. But no one expected that right-wing organizations in South Korea would stir up trouble in Seoul at the very beginning of that year. They convened an Extraordinary National Assembly, held large-scale demonstrations, and called for strikes and shutdowns. This urgent state prompted the U.S. and Soviet forces stationed in North and South Korea to intensify their actions. On February 6th, they established a Joint Commission in Seoul to discuss how to divide the Korean Peninsula. Seizing this opportunity, Syngman Rhee (李承晚) and Kim Il-sung (金日成) hurriedly set up their own People's Committees and Democratic Councils in Seoul and Pyongyang, respectively. From that moment, they actively moved toward national division and territorial independence. What followed was ideological confrontation and purges of political dissidents.

Before long, the U.S. military government in South Korea openly took action, bloodily suppressing Korea's independent national liberation, even implementing a "scorched earth policy." There seemed to be no end; the tragedies of that year were relentless. Situations that once might have been understood became utterly impossible. Suspicion, murder, violence, and plunder replaced everything. The resulting irreconcilable feuds and ensuing punishments were enough to make anyone realize that life itself could be the most terrifying ordeal.

As long as despotic regimes that scorn human rights and disregard life exist for even a single day, as long as power politics, tyrannical acts, poverty and hunger, plunder and war continue, then the development, manufacture, and use of biochemical weapons worldwide-and the related acts of terror-will persist indefinitely. It is precisely because of this that the characters, events, and the ensuing story of The Shadow of Sea Wolf (《海狼》), as well as works of a similar nature, will not lose their impact...