Many, maybe most journalists at some points in their careers have thought about being a war correspondent.

What could be more intense? What could tell us more about the human condition, and about ourselves, than the most destructive of human activities, seen first-hand?

I was reminded of this while re-reading John le Carre‘s novel The Honourable Schoolboy, which is set in the final stages of wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. The “cover” for the leading character is “war correspondent”, and Le Carre at one point puts that character in the middle of a battle in Cambodia. The random danger and unpredictability of it, and the probably unhealthy fascination many journalists have with war … was nicely depicted by the author. It felt real. As did the notion that only a select few are really cut out for it.

In 2004, I asked the editor of the newspaper where I worked if I could go to Iraq. The heavy fighting of the 2003 invasion was over, but policing was going on, and an insurgency was coming on that would reach a crisis in a few years.

My idea was to “embed” with the National Guard unit based in San Bernardino, California, that had been sent to Iraq. For a month. Or three. Or however long those things went on, back then.

The editor said the cost of life insurance was prohibitive. And that was that.

The closest I have come to something resembling a battle?

Seoul, South Korea, July of 1988.

It was a few days before the 1988 Seoul Olympics were due to begin.

South Korea had seen lots of demonstrations, some of them with people killed or injured, since June of 1987. The unrest seemed to abate, as the Olympics neared, but a few days before Opening Ceremonies, we read that students at Yonsei University, right there in Seoul, were planning a demonstration.

That meant cops. Lots of them. It meant students. And, being journalists, about six of us decided we needed to go have a look at this event.

We piled into a couple of cars set up by our corporate masters and asked to go see the demonstration/riot.

The demonstration began pretty much on schedule. The police were already waiting.

We were allowed to get within a few feet of the police lines (behind them, of course). They were on one side of a very wide street; Yonsei University, known as a hotbed of student activism, was on the other side of the street.

I remember the cops seeming well-prepared. They were formed up in long lines to our right and to our left. They had helmets with visors that covered their faces, and they had shields and clubs. They had guns. They certainly had tear gas, and maybe water cannons … and all of that could come into play, depending on what the students did.

At noon, or whatever time the protest march was to begin, we saw the first group of students coming out the road leading into the campus. Hundreds of them. We journalists stood watching them watching the police. Tension rose. You know how people sometimes say “violence was in the air”. It seemed like we had a whiff of it.

I remember eventually thinking I hoped everyone would just go home. I would rather have a non-event than a bloody one.

The students came out of the university, a bit, as I recall, maybe flowed slightly left and right of the road out of the campus … and perhaps they came part way across the street.

I do remember saying to my colleagues that if they crossed a certain place in the street — maybe the midway point? — there would be violence.

The kids marched up pretty much to the place I thought was the limit of where the police would let them go … and stopped. I probably wondered if I would get sucked into any violence, and just how much I would be able to see if the students and police clashed.

Was there chanting? Perhaps. I seem to recall whistles. Maybe banners. For a while, it seemed highly likely a clash would ensue, because that was what student demonstrators had been seeking for more than a year.

And then … the students pulled back.

The cops seemed to relax a little. So did the half-dozen sports writers who had come to see a riot that never happened.

Within a few minutes, the students had disappeared back inside the campus, and we drove back to the media center to write about it. The close call, days before the Olympics.

From that time forward, I was pretty sure I would not be a good war correspondent.

But in 2004, I was willing to try. Just as well insuring me was prohibitive.