Category: Korean War

Blaine Harden writing for the Washington Post explains one of the ways that the Kim regime is able to manufacture hate of the United States to justify their rule:

Where does the hate come from?

Much of it is cooked up daily in Pyongyang. Like all dictatorial regimes, the Kim family dynasty needs an endless existential struggle against a fearsome enemy. Such a threat rationalizes massive military spending and excuses decades of privation, while keeping dissenting mouths shut and political prisons open.

The hate, though, is not all manufactured. It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.

The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.

The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the New Yorker in 1995. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.  (………..)

“It is still the 1950s in North Korea and the conflict with South Korea and the United States is still going on,” says Kathryn Weathersby, a scholar of the Korean War. “People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened.”

There is real value in understanding this paranoid mindset. It puts the calculated belligerence of the Kim family into context. It also undermines the notion that North Korea is merely a nut-case state.  [Washington Post]

Harden concludes his article that some day the US should apologize for the bombing of North Korea.  Using that mindset should the US then apologize for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities as well?  Anyway the Korean War was a United Nations action, so shouldn’t the UN be the ones apologizing?

I am going to have to go watch this film:

Dozens of American and South Korean veterans attended a special screening Wednesday of a South Korean box-office hit that chronicles the Korean War and other hardships South Korea has gone through to rebuild itself from the war’s ashes.

“Ode to My Father” has become a sensation in South Korea since its opening on Dec. 17, surpassing the 10 million viewer mark in less than a month, as it struck a chord with older generations who have witnessed how South Korea overcame poverty and other hardships to become what it is today.

Organizers of the special screening — the Korean Churches for North Koreans (KCNK) and the human rights group LiNK — said they held the event and invited American war veterans to shed light on the meaning of the Korean War to Korea-U.S. relations.

The movie, which tells the story of an ordinary father who sacrificed himself to support his family, begins with spectacular scenes of a massive evacuation operation that pulled some 105,000 U.S. and South Korean troops and about 98,000 refugees to safety during the Korean War.

The December 1950 operation, known as the “Heungnam evacuation” after the name of the North Korean port, came as the U.S.-backed South Korean forces began retreating from North Korea after China sent massive numbers of troops to fight alongside the communist neighbor.

U.S. veterans attending the screening at the Regal Fairfax Towne Center theater included retired Col. Thomas Fergusson, a grandson of Edward Almond (1892-1979), then commanding general of the U.S. X Corps, who is known for his decision to dump all weapons overboard to get more refugees aboard evacuation ships at the port of Heungnam.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

The Visionary: MacArthur at #Incheon [PDF] http://t.co/nci2voVqpz via @RANDCorporation #KoreanWar

— Sino-NK (@Sino_NK) January 23, 2015

Here is a pretty cool story involving a Korean War veteran:

Early last month, Chip Herrington was headed back to Alabama, where he lives, from Mississippi, where he happened to be working that day. As he drove, Herrington, an attorney, saw some antique and pawn shops along the roadway and decided to stop and take a look around.

That’s when Herrington spotted it — an old military sword, resting in a butter churn next to the bat and gun barrel at the Mississippi shop.

“I saw what I knew to be an old Navy officer’s sword,” Herrington told The Post in a phone interview this week. “I love that kind of stuff, and it was a good price, I thought. So I bought it for $40.”

The sword was listed as a Civil War-era piece of equipment, even though it wasn’t. And the scabbard wasn’t in great shape — the leather peeling away — but Herrington said he understood what he had was once valuable to someone.

“I knew exactly what it was when I saw it,” Herrington said.

When Herrington got home and took a closer look at the sword, he noticed that it was inscribed with a name — ROY M. JOHNSEN, written in all caps, just like that.  [Washington Post]

You can read the rest at the link, but Herrington was able to track down Roy M. Johnsen and found out that he was a 88 year old Korean War veteran who had the sword stolen decades ago.

Life magazine photo of US troops in Korea in 1952.

Chaplain Kenny Lynch conducts services north of Hwachon, Korea, for men of 31st Regt. August 28, 1951. Pvt. Jack D. Johnson. (Army)

1st Lt. Alvin Anderson, one of the many repatriated POW’s to return home aboard the USNS Marine Phoenix, embracing his mother and sister as other members of his family look on. Fort Mason, CA, September 14, 1953. Herb Weiss. (Army)

I am a bit surprised that London did not have a memorial of any kind in it in recognition of the United Kingdom’s valiant soldiers who fought in the Korean War until now:

The first public memorial in London to British soldiers who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War was unveiled in a ceremony Wednesday along the banks of the River Thames.

The memorial incorporates a bronze statue of a British soldier by award-winning Scottish sculptor Philip Jackson that stands in front of an inscribed Portland stone obelisk on a base of Welsh slate.

The 5.8 by 3.1 meter (19 by 10 feet) memorial is just outside the headquarters of the U.K. Ministry of Defence. It is the last such monument to be erected in the capital of one of the 16 countries that allied with South Korea during the war. Over 300 members of the British Korean Veterans Association (BKVA) attended the unveiling ceremony in Victoria Embankment Gardens in central London.

The ceremony was also attended by 200 British and Korean officials, including the Duke of Gloucester and Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. The memorial is a gift from the Korean government to express thanks to the 81,000 British soldiers who served in the Korean War, which includes 1,106 troops killed and 1,060 who were prisoners of war.

Queen Elizabeth II sent a congratulatory message that was read by the Duke of Gloucester. “The memorial is a fitting tribute to the veterans of that fierce conflict,” she said in the message, “and will ensure that they, and their fallen comrades, are never forgotten.”

“The Korean War was the first UN action against aggression,” reads an inscription on the obelisk. “Although exhausted and impoverished after the Second World War, Britain responded immediately by providing strong naval, army and air forces and became the second largest contributor after the United States. A distant obligation honorably discharged.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Below is a video with historical military footage of troops having Thanksgiving dinner on the Yalu River around the 4:00 minute mark:

A wounded soldier on a hospital ship in Incheon, Korea eats Thanksgiving dinner, in 1952. ( National Museum of Health and Medicine/Flickr ) via the Atlantic.