After delivering his television address announcing the missile strike against North Korea, President Moon Jae-in and his aides faced a long night. None of them believed that they were on the threshold of a nuclear war, although they did worry—indeed, they were certain—that Kim Jong Un would retaliate in some form. More than anything, they were anxious that the tit-for-tat should remain under control. “We were definitely worried that Kim might punch back,” according to Im Jong-seok, Moon’s aide, “but our mind-set was all about keeping things from getting too crazy.”
At the same time, there was not much for the South Koreans to do. There were no survivors from BX 411, and the missiles had been launched. When Moon and his advisers reconvened in the bunker, they found themselves just sitting there, silently, waiting to learn whether the strike had been a success and checking their phones. Kang Kyung-wha, the foreign minister, noticed Trump’s tweet first. She read it aloud, first in English and then translated into Korean.
Kang had studied in the United States, and her English was excellent. But she was never really sure how to translate the taunt implied in “Rocketman”—Mr. Rocket? Rocket Boy? The others around the table quizzed her about the rest of her translation. Did Trump really just suggest that he was about to kill Kim Jong Un? It was ambiguous. “He’s really a fool, isn’t he?” she said, to no one in particular.
Eventually, a preliminary damage assessment arrived—a few sheets of paper in a folder marked “SECRET,” carried by a military aide in a smart uniform. The aide handed the folder to General Jeong, who opened the folder, scanned the contents, then distributed them to the rest of the group in the bunker.
The damage assessment was a single page, but General Jeong nonetheless provided an impromptu briefing. South Korea’s intelligence assets were not as extensive as those of the Americans, and they would need to wait for daylight to take clear satellite pictures of the damage. But it seemed that the missiles had reached the targets. There were six large explosions. And based on intercepted cell-phone conversations, it seemed the big building at the Air Force headquarters had fallen down and that there were casualties at the Kim family residence. He also noted that, despite the strike, North Korea’s military—already on alert for the duration of the US–South Korean war games—was acting normally, although he cautioned that it was too early to know exactly how the North would respond.
Moon asked a few questions. “General Jeong felt obligated to brief the president, and in turn, Moon felt obligated to ask at least one question to show he was listening,” Im recalled. “But there was really no point. We all had copies of the same piece of paper.”
They waited in the bunker for at least another hour before General Jeong pointed out that it might be several days before North Korea responded. After all, he said, it would probably take until the morning for the North Koreans to give Kim Jong Un a full and accurate picture of what had happened, and they would likely need a day or so to plan a calibrated response. “I know the president felt some responsibility to see the strike through,” Im recalled, “but there really wasn’t anything to do in that bunker. General Jeong was doing us a favor, hinting that we could all go home.”
Eventually, at 11:24 PM, after sitting in the bunker for nearly three hours, Moon relented and suggested that they all go home and try to get a good night’s sleep. He asked his aides to inform him immediately if the military detected any unusual movements in North Korea, such as preparations for a missile test or an artillery barrage. They all agreed that, in that case, they would reconvene immediately. If not, Moon told them, they were to treat the next day like any other Sunday. General Jeong asked for all the copies of the damage assessment, counted them, and slid them back into the folder before locking it in his briefcase.
Moon retired to his residence. Im Jong-seok, the president’s aide, telephoned his wife to say that he would stay overnight in a guest room at the Blue House. Im later recalled that he was uneasy, convinced that he was in for a sleepless night. “I decided not to go home,” he said later. “I didn’t think I was going to sleep much anyway. I don’t know why, but I knew the phone would wake me.”
The call came at 2:16 AM, when General Jeong woke Im Jong-seok to inform him that the military had intercepted an unusual pattern of communications in North Korea. The communications were mostly encrypted, but the pattern was still unusual enough that General Jeong thought the president should know. South Korean military intelligence had intercepted a great many communications since North Korea’s military went on alert at the beginning of the US–South Korean war games a month earlier. But this order looked different. General Jeong said that they had never seen anything like it before. He suggested that some North Korean units, such as the country’s missile units, might be moving to a higher state of readiness. Im said that he would wake President Moon.
Moon’s residence was only a short walk from the guesthouse where Im was staying. He walked across the courtyard, then asked the household staff to wake the president. Moon emerged from his quarters after a short delay. “I suggested that he call General Jeong,” Im recalled later. “Moon said it was enough to reconvene.”
Moon and Im briefly discussed where the security council should gather. The Crisis Room was secure, but it was also small and cramped. Moreover, it was cut off from the rest of the government now housed in the Central Government Complex, which was in downtown Seoul and separated from the Blue House by an ancient palace complex. Moon decided that it was better that they meet downtown. They could evacuate back to the bunker if things got out of hand. “Then he said I looked terrible, like I had not slept at all,” according to Im. “I told him about my premonition about the phone call. [Moon] Jae-in looked at me a long time, and I got the sense he worried that the stress was starting to get to me. He suggested that I go back to bed for a few more hours.”
Im recalled weighing the president’s offer before acquiescing, telling himself that it was unlikely that he would have another chance to rest in the next twenty-four hours. “I didn’t know that was the last time I would see him,” he explained to investigators.
Moon arranged for a motorcade to take him to the Central Government Complex, about a mile away. He was still downtown, with most of his national security team, when, at 5:48 AM, a single nuclear weapon exploded over the city center.
The explosion reduced the Central Government Complex to rubble. President Moon and all of the advisers who had gathered with him apparently were killed in the blast. Like more than one million people in Seoul that day, they simply disappeared—incinerated in the fireball or ground into nothing as the massive government building collapsed.
Despite its proximity to the downtown government complex, the Blue House sustained only what is called “light damage.” The explosion shattered all the windows, sending shards of flying glass through the buildings. Although Im, lying in his bed, suffered lacerations on the side of his body facing the window, he was not seriously injured. The guesthouse did not collapse on him. A few of the buildings were seriously damaged when the blast wave pushed past them, then reflected off the massive hillside and hit them again from behind. The effect was like a riptide, straining the buildings in one direction, then pulling their foundations out from under them in the other.
Im was able to stumble outside, although he was in a daze. He initially thought it was snowing. “Only after a few moments did I realize that it wasn’t snow, but that there were pieces of paper floating everywhere. I picked up one. It was the damage assessment that General Jeong had tucked under his arm.”