The Elusive Korean Tiger - A "Brother Strangeface" Story

A patrol from the United Nations Command Security Force - Joint Security Area in the Korean demilitarized zone near Panmunjom, South Korea - circa 1988-1990. 

My dad, Al Edmonds, was a 30-year-old captain in 1988 when he became the Intelligence Officer (S2) of the United Nations Command Security Force - Joint Security Area (JSA) along the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Of the many adventures he had there, one of the most peculiar stories of his time in the JSA involved tiger poop. 

Following the ceasefire of the Korean War in 1953, the DMZ was supposed to be an area that neither side could conduct military operations in. Naturally, both sides disregarded that. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) conducted infiltrations into the Republic of Korea (ROK), dug tunnels, and patrolled the DMZ to catch defectors and to intercept JSA patrols. The ROK & US forces of the JSA conducted patrols in the DMZ, as well. Firefights and standoffs in the DMZ were not uncommon. 

So it was odd to Captain Edmonds that the J2 (Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence) of US Forces Korea should inform him 1) that wildlife experts considered the “untouched” DMZ to be a veritable oasis of wild animals, 2) that the nearly extinct Korean tiger was thought to be living in the DMZ, and 3) that he was to collect evidence of the existence of the aforementioned tigers and send it back to Seoul for examination. When he asked what “evidence” the J2 and the wildlife experts wanted, he was told they wanted “scat”, or to be quite frank . . . tiger shit. 

This made him consider that if the USFK J2 and the wildlife folks thought the JSA patrols had time to collect tiger shit, they might not appreciate the ground truth of the DMZ. So, Captain Edmonds complied with their order . . . with gleeful zeal. He tasked every JSA patrol with bagging every piece of poop found in the DMZ, Panmunjom, and Camp Bonifas - whether it was from the elusive Korean tiger, feral dogs & cats, or laughing soldiers. And at the end of the month he mailed the “tiger scat” in a box back to USFK HQ in Seoul. 

Captain Edmonds quickly received a memo from the J2 informing him that no more fecal samples would be required - or tolerated - from the JSA, and the JSA commander, Colonel Buckley, told him not pull anything like that again. Life went on in Panmunjom.

He always wondered afterwards if there really were tigers in the DMZ . . .

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