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During the height of the Pacific War, Japan recruited Koreans with English-language abilities and deployed them across newly occupied Southeast Asia as POW guards. A number of these young men were assigned to the construction sites of the Thailand Burma Railway and were prosecuted as B- and C-class war criminals after the war. The records left by the ad hoc interpreters stationed at the most brutal work site the construction of the bridge over the River Kwai reveal the profound ethical and practical dilemmas they faced as linguistic mediators working in two languages not their own and positioned between two hostile parties. In contrast, accounts produced by British, American, and Australian prisoners of war portray Korean guards not merely as interpreters of the violence they were instructed to convey, but as its direct perpetrators. Their visibility as “interpreters” rendered the violence associated with them even more indelible. Following Japan’s defeat, these men stigmatized as “interpreters of the defeated nation” were effectively abandoned by both Korea and Japan. Yet these ad hoc interpreters must be integrated into the history of interpreting in Korea, for the ethical dilemmas they confronted resonate with those faced by interpreters today. Interpreting studies must therefore move beyond a narrow focus on professional interpreters to encompass all those who were compelled, under varied and often coercive circumstances, to act as interpreters.