Diamond Raiders: Mount Kumgang Mystery by Mae Adams
Mount Kumgang was a sacred place for many centuries. In the 7th century, the Silla Kingdom built a captivating Buddhist Temple resembling the House of Three Gods, defined as Heaven, Earth, and the God of Ancestors. Every poet and artist made an extraordinary journey to paint watercolors and write verses. The World War II division of the country in 1945 stopped the South Koreans from visiting these cherished mountains for many years. The 155-mile-long barbed-wire fence erected as part of the Demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas after the War proved to be an obstruction deadlier than any other barrier.
Numerous folk tales, myths, and legends connected to Mount Kumgang delighted people for many generations. But the story in this book is concerned with raiders of diamonds from the Temple during the Japanese occupation of 35 years, where no Korean police existed, and the Japanese police controlled all the crimes in the country. However, it was the natural law that anyone raiding things from a sacred place had to pay the price. How to identify the raiders and what price the raiders had to pay was anyone’s guess. The gentle Koreans seldom engaged in murder, although they could be hot-headed to butt their heads first and shake hands later. Thus, identifying guilty people was extremely difficult.
