Category: Korean War

These five personnel had their combat decorations they received for heroism during the Korean War upgraded to Medals of Honor this past week:

Juanita Mendez gave President Joe Biden a kiss as she sat on stage Friday to accept the nation’s highest military honor for combat valor on behalf of her brother, Pfc. Charles Johnson. It drew a laugh from the crowd gathered in the East Room at the White House.

Biden didn’t seem to mind the moment but moved forward with presenting the Medal of Honor to five Korean War soldiers. “These are genuine to their core heroes. Heroes of different ranks, different positions and even different generations,” he said during the ceremony. “But heroes who all went above and beyond the call of duty, heroes who all deserve our nation’s highest and oldest military recognition.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more about each of the veteran’s combat heroics during the Korean War at the link.

This is interesting, I did not realize that the U.N. Cemetery in Busan has never buried remains of an unknown remains from the Korean War:

Military veterans and troops from more than 20 countries gathered here Monday to pay their respects as an unknown Korean War service member was laid to rest at the U.N. Cemetery in Korea. Roughly 1,000 people attended the service on International Memorial Day for U.N. Korea War Veterans, observed each year on Nov. 11. It was hosted by the U.N. Command and South Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, or MPVA, at the only cemetery overseen by the command.

The burial ground, roughly 200 miles southeast of Seoul, holds the remains of 2,329 veterans from 14 member states who participated in the 1950-53 Korean War. They include 40 service members from the United States; 892 from the United Kingdom; 38 from South Korea; 462 from Turkey; and 281 from Australia. Monday’s service honoring war veterans included the cemetery’s first interment of an unidentified U.N. Command service member. The remains were initially recovered from Yeoncheon county in 2010 by South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense Agency for Killed in Action Recovery Identification. (…….)

DNA testing and dental records determined the 17- to-25-year-old service member was of Caucasian descent and likely to have been from Britain, according to the MPVA. Unable to confirm the identity or nationality with certainty, the South Korean government allowed the service member to be buried in a new plot dedicated to unidentified remains.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The Philippines sent an entire battalion that saw heavy combat during the Korean War:

President Yoon Suk Yeol began his state visit to the Philippines on Sunday by honoring fallen soldiers who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War and meeting with Korean nationals in the nation. 

Yoon visited the Korean War Memorial Pylon at the Heroes’ Cemetery in Manila with first lady Kim Keon Hee on the first day of his two-day trip focused on strengthening economic and security ties. 

“South Korea and the Philippines have maintained close, friendly relations, and the Philippines was the first country in Asia and the fifth in the world to establish diplomatic ties with us back in 1949,” Yoon said in a meeting with Korean nationals in Manila.

The Philippines dispatched around 7,400 troops to the Korean War to help defend South Korea, with 112 soldiers killed and 299 wounded.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link. You can also read more about the Philippines’ PEFTOK battalion that served during the Korean War at the below link:

This would be a really interesting mission to be part of. Hopefully they are able to find this wreck:

Teams from the U.S. and South Korea tasked with recovering wartime remains launched a joint underwater search in South Korea this week for a bomber and its crew that crashed during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Twenty-two divers and underwater archaeologists from the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and the South Korean Agency for Killed in Action Recovery Identification, or MAKRI, started searching Tuesday for a U.S. B-26 Invader off Haeundae Beach in Busan, according to a Ministry of National Defense news release. Investigators are using sonar equipment and magnetic detectors to comb through 4.6 square-miles of water until the search ends Sept. 27, the ministry said Tuesday.

South Korea’s navy and coast guard will provide weather information and logistical support throughout the investigation. Three crew members of the B-26 assigned to the 5th Air Force are believed to have died when their aircraft crashed into the sea after taking off from the K-9 Busan East Air Base in January 1953, according to the ministry. 

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2024-09-04/korean-war-dpaa-b-26-missing-busan-15065538.html
Source – Stars and Stripes

It is interesting that it took this long for this massacre to be confirmed:

This photo, released on Wednesday by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, shows the cemetery of Christians who were massacred by North Korean soldiers at Byeongchon Holiness Church in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province.

Dozens of Christians were tortured and killed en masse at a church in Nonsan by communist soldiers during the Korean War, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said Wednesday.

After two years of investigation into the case, the commission confirmed that 54 Christians, including 29 minors, were murdered for their faith at Byeongchon Holiness Church by communists between July and September 1950.

After taking control of the city in South Chungcheong Province in July, within just one month after their invasion on June 25, 1950, North Korean soldiers initially tortured and killed three leading figures at the church.

But just before retreating from the region, following the successful U.N. Command mission at the Battle of Incheon, North Korean soldiers massacred the remaining church members and their families in late September, the investigation concluded. Thirty of the victims were women.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the article says that over 1,700 Christians in total were executed during the war and many of them by communist sympathizers in South Korea that allied with North Korea.