Tag: Korean War

The story for this webtoon sounds ridiculous, but it is cool that it is highlighting the Thai soldiers that fought in the Korean War:

Days after the 1950-53 Korean War broke out, Thailand became the first Asian nation to respond to the U.N.’s call for aid to South Korea.

Over the course of three years, it supplied the war-ravaged country with 40,000 tons of rice as food aid and dispatched 6,326 soldiers in army, navy and air force units to fight off waves of enemy attacks, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

After the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement on July 27, 1953, Thailand continued to maintain a combat unit in Korea until 1972.

A webtoon series that aims to revisit and celebrate this underappreciated historical legacy left by Thailand’s contribution to the Korean War will be launched later this year.

Kakao Entertainment and the Korean Cultural Center (KCC) in Thailand will unveil the series, titled “One Day, My Favorite K-Pop Idol Group Leader Disappeared!” (direct translation), on the Southeast Asian nation’s online platform in September, the company announced, Friday.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Duane Mann was engaged to get married to a Japanese lady he met while serving in Japan with the Air Force during the Korean War. However, when the war suddenly ended he was quickly sent home and for various reasons lost contact with his fiancé. Now after all these years they have been reunited through the power of the Internet:

In a last-ditch effort to find her, Mann posted a plea on Facebook on May 1, sharing a photo he’d taken of her along with the whole story, writing that he carried “a very heavy heart because of what all happened.”

Friends, strangers and internet sleuths weighed in with suggestions. A local news channel, KETV7, picked up the story, spreading Mann’s plea even further.

That’s when a young woman in Vancouver caught wind of Mann’s plight.

“I couldn’t get it off my mind,” said Theresa Wong, 23, who works at the History Channel. “Duane has clearly been looking for closure for seven decades. I can’t imagine how that must weigh on a person.”

She decided to join the search, and soon, “I had her name, the names of her relatives. It all came together very quickly,” she said.

Wong typed in “Peggy Yamaguchi” on newspapers.com, hoping to find a marriage announcement of some sort. A promising article, with the headline “Tokyo Bride Likes Life in Escanaba,” appeared.

“It seemed to line up with everything,” Wong said.

She shared her findings with KETV7, and the station then had a married name and address in Michigan to go on. A reporter contacted Yamaguchi’s son, Rich Sedenquist.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link about how they were reunited, but it is pretty amazing that both of them are still alive in their 90’s to be able to reunite like this.

This is a really good idea and a nice gesture by a Korean couple who founded the Korean War Foundation:

In Kaycee, Wyoming, the only school library is named for Corporal Demaret Kirtley, a Korean War veteran born in the small American town.  
   
The library got its name thanks to a $5,000 (6.26 million won) donation by Koo Sung-yeol and Kim Chang-hwa to the school in May 2021. 

In 2020, the Korean couple, who have lived in the U.S. for more than 50 years, founded the Korean War Foundation. It has made $5,000 donations to schools in the hometowns of nine American soldiers who died in the Korean War.  
   
Koo and his wife make donations to the schools and deliver nameplates that honor the fallen soldiers.  
   
The couple’s grand notion: to pay respect to the American foot soldiers in the war for Korea’s freedom from all 50 states.  
   
Corporal Kirtley died on Dec. 6, 1950, in the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir on the Gaema Plateau in South Hamgyeong. He was 21 years old. His remains, which were not recovered at the time, were returned to his hometown in June 2019, 69 years after he died. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.