In 1984, Ha Tae-jun, then 24, spotted a notice recruiting for a special unit at the Military Manpower Administration office in central Seoul's Yongsan District. The notice was scrawled on the wall in marker, with little explanation. Ha applied, and his life was changed forever — training as a South Korean operative for covert missions into North Korea. “About a month after submitting background check documents, they said I'd passed and told me to meet at a cafe near my house,” Ha, now 66 and president of the Association of Bereaved Families of Special Mission Agents, said in an interview with The Korea Times. At the time, he had no idea it would be three years before he saw home again. Taken to a safe house on Mount Cheonggye in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, he passed a fitness test and got into a car, believing it would take him home. Instead, the car took him to another safe house in Sokcho, Gangwon Province, operated by the Headquarters of Intelligence Detachment, a South Korean military unit that trained and dispatched agents on covert infiltration missions into North Korea. The n