I can take some pride in saying, that although in the annals of military history this won't even register, that I was able to piss off a whole bunch of North Koreans. When the Battalion I was the S3 for got the mission to patrol the DMZ we were moved to a tent city adjacent to the Joint Security Area which housed the UN Joint Security Bn. They had some really neat facilities and I got myself invited to use their gym which was open 24 hours a day. So I routinely went over about 1900 every other day and worked out with the US and Korean soldiers that manned the area. One day while I was winding up doing some bench presses I got my hand caught on the bench rest and let out a few expletives. Up to this point in time the Korean soldiers had only been talking Korean but when they thought I was hurt they came over to assist and in perfect accent free English one said, "My God man, are you okay?."
The next day I had the job of taking some folks into Panmunjom within the DMZ to the truce talk building which straddles the border between North and South Korea for some talks and as is the custom the North Koreans have their guards scrutinize the US folks with binoculars while the South Koreans from the JSA provide a cordon from the vehicles to the building in which the talks are to be conducted. Now the South Korean soldiers are really sharp, stand at a rigid attention and are doing the I'm sharper than any of you slugs in the North Korean Army thing. But out of the corner of my eye I see the South Korean who had rushed over in the weight room the night before to lend me a hand. As a simple way of acknowleding that he knew me, he quickly moved both his hands from his sides up to his chest in a weight lifting motion. Now this was quick and he snapped back to attention. This move did not go un-noticed by the N. Koreans who were concentrating on everything we were doing and one of them with the binoculars suddenly raced back inside the Pagoda from which he was surveilling us and brought back his superior. He pointed to me and made the same weight lifting gesture that the S. Korean had just made. Then both dissappeared and you could see them through the Pagoda windows explaining this new hand and arm signal to other N. Koreans. Finally a small contingent of about 5 officers came into view with the one N. Korean who had reported the incident and was making wild gestures and pointing to me and the South Korean guard. Somewhere in some obscure intell report is a confusing discription of some secret hand and arm signal heretofore not found in US manuals that a North Korean analyst is probably still trying to figure out.
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