A choir performs during a memorial service at the National Cemetery in Seoul on July 17, 2015, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of former President Rhee Syng-man, who served as the nation’s first chief executive from 1948 to 1960. (Yonhap)
It will be interesting to see if this guy’s suicide note is ever released to public to see what the “national interest” information is:
An employee of South Korea’s spy agency has been found dead in his car with his will, which contains information about a hacking incident that has triggered a controversy in the country, police said Saturday.
Police said that the person identified only by his family name Lim worked for the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and was discovered around noon on a mountain road in Yongin, south of Seoul. Investigators present at the site said there was a burnt coal inside the car and no sign of forced entry, making it likely that the 45-year-old took his own life.
They also said he left a three-page, handwritten will on the front passenger seat that expressed his feelings about family and work, which included matters of “national interest.”
Police said they could not release more details about the will because relatives were opposed to the contents becoming public.
Family members reported his disappearance after Lim left home around 5 a.m. and could not be contacted, authorities said.
The apparent suicide and the will are expected to further stoke the controversy surrounding where and how the NIS used the hacking program.
The software program, which uses Remote Control System technology, allows hackers to manipulate and track smartphones and computers by installing spyware.
The NIS said it bought the program made by an Italian company in 2012 and confirmed it can be used to hack into up to 20 mobile phones simultaneously.
The NIS claimed it used the program for the purpose of strengthening cyber warfare capabilities against Pyongyang.
Such explanations, however, are met with skepticism by many in the country, and in particular, the main opposition party, which thinks the NIS used the program to spy on South Korean civilians. [Yonhap]
Mud-covered tourists frolic at the Daecheon Beach Mud Plaza in the city of Boryeong on South Korea’s west coast on July 17, 2015, as they take part in the Boryeong Mud Festival, which opened that day and will run through July 26. Boryeong mud is rich in natural minerals and is known to prevent skin aging, among others. (Yonhap)
I don’t see how hiking slow improves the environment, but that is what the National Park Service is claiming:
The Korea National Park Service will stage a campaign that encourages hikers to slow their pace when hiking mountains rather than just rushing to the peak.
The agency announced the campaign on Thursday, adding it will hold various promotional events as a part of the event that will go until Sunday.
There is an online event on how to improve the hiking culture, while events will be held at all national parks on Saturday to promote good hiking etiquette.
The slow hiking campaign is to help better protect the environment and prevent accidents in the mountains. [KBS World Radio]
There may be safety benefits from hiking slow to avoid tripping, but if the National Park Service wants to improve hiking culture in Korea how about people picking up all their trash they bring into the mountains?
In 1966 North Korea began a campaign to infiltrate increasing amount of communist agents into South Korea along with well trained special operations troops to launch attacks against US and South Korean military forces along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates North and Korean War. The goal of North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung was to infiltrate enough agents within South Korea to cause an insurgency against the ROK government while simultaneously sapping the US and ROK military’s morale and initiative. He planned to do by launching ambushes on the DMZ which would also test US resolve in Korea due to America’s heavy involvement in Vietnam. This period of increased conflict became known by those who fought in this shadow war as the “DMZ War“. The list of military provocations during this period against the Republic of Korea government by their rivals in North Korea is a long and extensive one. However, one provocation is clearly the most audacious and remarkable by the fact the communist agents nearly accomplished their mission, and that is the Blue House Raid.
On January 17, 1968, North Korean commandos infiltrated into North Korea with the express purpose of assassinating South Korean president Park Chung-hee. Not only were they ordered to kill Park Chung-hee but they were to chop his head off and toss it into the streets of Seoul. The belief Kim Il-sung had was that by launching a decapitation strike against the ROK regime it would cause chaos within the nation that his communist agents in place throughout the country could then take advantage of by launching a guerrilla campaign against the government in the hope of causing a final regime collapse.
The undercover guerrillas would target transportation nodes, TV stations, post offices, police, and military bases in order to cause chaos throughout the country. The conventional North Korean army could then use the guise of an internal uprising against the South Korean regime to legitimize its invasion of South Korea to reunite the peninsula under his rule. However, first Kim had to successfully assassinate Park which would be no easy task.
To do this a thirty-one man assassination team was specially selected from the infamous North Korean 124 Army Unit responsible for most of the infiltration and ambushes launched along the DMZ. These specially selected soldiers trained for two years solely for this operation. Before beginning their mission the team spent their final 15 days conducting mock raids against a full model of the Blue House set up near the North Korean city of Wonsan where their training base was located. Once their superiors were satisfied with their level of proficiency they were immediately sent to execute their mission.
The assassination team was divided into six different teams each commanded by a Captain in order to more easily infiltrate into South Korea. Each team member wore dark overalls, sneakers, a cap, and carried 66 pounds of equipment to include a sub-machine gun, a pistol, grenades, and daggers.
The commando team decided to infiltrate through the 2nd Infantry Division sector near the city of Yeoncheon because it was believed that by infiltrating through the US sector of the DMZ and then successfully assassinating Park Chung-hee that the Korean military would blame the US for the assassination. This in turn would cause tension between the two allies for North Korea’s communist agents to exploit. Each of the North Korean teams were able to successfully breach the DMZ fence and landmines without being detected.
Here is what the only commando to survive the attack had to say about the initial infiltration operation:
At 04:00 on January 18, 1968, 31 commandos crossed the border. (The border fence they cut is preserved to this day). They wore South Korean uniforms and were trained in Seoul accents – “This is the basis of guerrilla fighting!” They removed mines as they went. They halted before a South Korean observation post: Women were going in: “They were not very alert!” Covered in white sheets, the assassins crossed the frozen Imjin River. [Kim Shin-jo]
After successfully crossing the DMZ the six different teams regrouped and began their expected four day march south towards Seoul. For the first two days the commando team was able to successfully march south undetected. Their infiltration mission had gone so well that they even camped out one night just a few kilometers from the major US military installation in the western corridor, Camp Howze.
Initially the commandos had been very luck to not be detected, however their luck would change on the late afternoon of January 19th. On that day the commando team was spotted by four South Korean woodcutters, all brothers working in the mountains. This was a moment where the North Koreans made a terrible mistake.The North Korean commandos had been long taught that the oppressed masses in South Korea were just waiting to be liberated from their puppet government that was backed by the Yankee Imperialists. So instead of killing the woodcutters the commandos decided to conduct an indoctrination sessions with them and teach them the wonders of Juche and the on coming communist conquest that would unit the country and free the oppressed South Korean masses that they figured the woodcutters were part of. It never occurred to them that the South Korean masses were not oppressed and in fact loyal to the ROK government.
To add some context the masses in South Korea were oppressed by the Park Chung-hee regime, but they were no where near as oppressed as the people in North Korea. Remember many of the Koreans during this time frame had lived through the Japanese colonization of the peninsula and knew what oppression was, Park Chung-hee was nothing compared to what they saw before. Additionally Park’s economic policies had brought unprecedented economic growth to South Korea and thus causing the average ROK citizen to be quite happy to put up with some oppression if it meant the continued economic growth of the country. The fact that the commandos were indoctrinated with communist propaganda led to them making a mistake that would ultimately doom their entire operation.
After the indoctrination session the woodcutters proudly pronounced themselves converts to the communist ideology which they were then released by the commandos. Once they were released they immediately went and notified the South Korean police of what they had saw. The police notified the South Korean military and a massive counter-guerrilla operation was launched to catch the commandos. However, the South Korean authorities did not know what the mission of the group was and thus could not focus their operations into one area. The commandos were so skilled they were able to easily avoid the perimeter checkpoints by moving in two to three man teams before meeting up again on the outskirts of Seoul.
In Seoul security was much tighter and the commandos took off their civilian overalls which exposed the ROK Army uniforms they wore underneath them. The ROK Army uniforms were perfect replicas and even had the correct unit designation of the 26th ROK Infantry Division sewn on them. They were a mile from the Blue House and decided the best way to penetrate the city’s security would be to do something no one expected, march right through the city straight to the Blue House.
The North Koreans posed as a South Korean platoon returning from patrol on the city’s outskirts. They marched right through the city right by a number of military checkpoints before arriving 800 meters from the Blue House around 10:30 AM on the morning of January 21, 1968. It is here where the commandos encountered a final police checkpoint that stopped the marching soldiers to question them. The North Koreans fumbled their answers to the questions the commander of the Chongno police station Choe Kyu-sik asked them. Here is how the Chosun Ilbo newspaper described the events that happened next:
But a jeep carrying Jongno Police Station chief Choi Kyu-sik was coming up the road. Choi shouted at the North Korean commandos, “Identify yourselves! What’s inside your coats?” He was taking out a gun to stop them when two city buses came up close and stopped. Mistaking the buses for vehicles that carried police or military reinforcements, the North Korean commandos shot Choi in the chest, tossed hand grenades into the buses, and scattered in every direction. [Chosun Ilbo]
From there chaos broke out as the North Koreans entered into a massive fire fight against the South Korean security forces. A platoon of South Korean infantry had been tasked to reinforce the Blue House’s security and they immediately maneuvered to engage the North Korean infiltrators. It was during this exchange of gun fire that a school bus got caught up in the crossfire killing the women and children aboard. The ROK security forces were only able to get the North Koreans to abandon their mission to kill Park Chung-hee when ROK Army tanks began to rumble down the road towards the North Koreans. With no effective way to fight the tanks, the commandos decided to abandon the mission and fight their way back to North Korea.
The operation to track down and kill the North Korean infiltrators would end up being even bloodier then the initial fire fight. Both US and ROK military units were mobilized to patrol the South Korean country side to find the infiltrators. More often then not the infiltrators when located would go down in a blaze of gun fire that would claim the lives of even more people. A few of the operatives committed suicide to avoid being captured. The most bizarre death was when one North Korean operatives was captured alive and brought into to be questioned by the Korean National Police Director Chae Won-shik. Unfortunately the police had not bothered to properly disarm the operative who proceeded to pull a pin from a grenade and kill himself and injure the Police Director. Here is how the January 24th, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes reported the incident:
Overall, the operation to track down the commandos lasted for nine days where 29 of the infiltrators were killed, one unaccounted for, and only one captured.
Corpses of the dead North Korean commandos pictured on Jan. 25, 1968.
The casualties the South Koreans received was steep with 68 South Koreans killed and 66 more wounded. Most of these casualties came during the operation to hunt down the commandos. Of these casualties most were military and policemen, but two dozen of them were South Korean civilians. American forces experienced three soldiers killed and three more wounded in the operation to track down the North Korean operatives. This article from the New York Times suggests that these US soldiers were not killed by the commandos themselves but by other North Korean operatives on the DMZ while the search was going on. The January 25th, 1968 edition of the Stars and Stripes likewise published an article about US soldiers combating infiltrators along the DMZ during the time the Blue House Raid operatives were trying to get back to North Korea:
It was later learned that the one unaccounted for commando had in fact successfully made his way back to North Korea and would later become an Army general. The lone captured commando was a young man by the name of Kim Shin-jo who was on just his second covert mission into South Korea. Much of the details of the Blue House Raid have come from the testimony of Kim Shin-jo. Kim’s statement upon capture was, “I came down to cut Park Chung Hee’s throat!” became a well known footnote of the aborted raid.
Today Kim is far less aggressive and in fact became a Protestant pastor in 1997. Kim received a Presidential pardon for the raid and was released from jail when a forensic investigation determined he never fired a bullet from his weapon. Besides being a pastor Kim is also a hard line anti-Communist:
“What has really changed while the South has been pouring out so much money on the North?” he said. “North Koreans are only becoming hungrier and hungrier while the unilateral support from the South is extending the North Korean government’s life.” Kim said he wants to live “as long as possible” so he can serve as living evidence of North Korea’s spy program against the South. Otherwise, “North Korea will just say they are not responsible for the Jan. 21 incident once I’m gone, like many other incidents North Korea has caused,” he said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Interestingly enough there is evidence that Seoul may have captured more than just Kim Shin-jo alive. The below Joong Ang Ilbo article claims that there was in fact 33 commandos sent to kill President Park, but ROK intelligence was able to convert two of them into double agents to spy on North Korea:
North Korea sent two more spies to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung Hee on Jan. 21, 1968, than previously disclosed, a North Korean defector claimed in an interview with the JoongAng Sunday published yesterday.
They were captured alive and sent back to the North as double agents, said the 57-year-old defector, who trained in the 1970s at the same North Korean special military unit as the commandos dispatched to the South. He goes by the alias Hong Eun-taek.
Publicly, the government says 31 North Korean commandos attempted to raid the Blue House in what was one of the boldest North Korean attempts to assassinate a South Korean leader, and all were killed during the raid, except for one, Kim Shin-jo.
“The record left at the unit where I served said that 33 people were sent to the South and two of them escaped [to the North],” Hong said.
Hong served in the eighth battalion of North Korea’s 711 unit in the 1970s, which was the successor of the 124 unit that sent the commandos on the Blue House raid.
He identified the two North Korean commandos who returned to the North as Lim Tae-yong and Wu Myong-hun. Hong said Lim was the chief of the eighth battalion when he was serving there.
He said the two double agents were promoted to two-star or three-star generals after their return to the North.
But they were executed in 1998 when their spying for the South was disclosed.
Hong said there was a widespread rumor in the North Korean military of them being double agents right before their executions.
Hong claimed that another commando was also caught alive, of higher rank than Lim and Wu. The South tried to persuade the three to return to the North as double agents, and they resisted.
The higher ranking commando was beheaded with a farming implement in front of Lim and Wu, and terrified, they signed onto the plan and pledged allegiance to the South, Hong said.
They were returned to the North and told to advance as high as possible in the military, Hong said.
One of the North Korean commandos killed during the raid was indeed found with his head missing. Kim Shin-jo, believed to have been the only survivor, was forced to identify the bodies of his colleagues after the raid.
A Jan. 26, 1968 JoongAng Ilbo article reporting on the incident quoted Kim as saying, “I don’t know [who he is].”
Kim Shin-jo became a South Korean citizen in 1970 and became a Christian pastor in 1997.
The defector who uses the alias Hong Eun-taek defected to the South in 2001. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The Blue House Raid is quite possibly the most unbelievable provocation between North and South Korea ever since the division of the peninsula. The plan was so bold that it seemed certain to fail, yet these commandos came only 800 yards from completing their mission despite fully alerted authorities looking for them. The Blue House Raid may have been foiled, but the ability of the commandos to so easily infiltrate the DMZ and allude detection demonstrated lacking weaknesses in the security plan and training of both the US and Korean troops.
As bad as these weaknesses were, not all the aftermath of the Blue House Raid was bad. The commandos’ mission was foiled by loyal citizens reporting their movements and one alert policemen who paid with his life for uncovering the commandos. This proved to Park that more then just the military was loyal to his rule, but that South Korean citizens were as well. This incident clearly showed that a true South Korean identity separate from the North Koreans had been formed during Park’s rule in the 1960’s. However, before US and ROK military leaders could even contemplate the negatives and the positives of the Blue House Raid, another crisis would break out two days later; the capture of the USS Pueblo.
For more DMZ Flashpoints articles please click the below link:
I guess we will see if this inter-Korean project will end up just like all the other ones, as a negotiating chip to increase the wealth of the Kim regime while doing little to nothing for average North Koreans:
South Korea’s unification minister expressed hope on Sunday that the reconnection of the railway linking Seoul and the North Korean city of Wonsan will be a “starting point” for inter-Korean cooperation down the road.
The 223.7-km-long railway was built in 1914 and served as a major supply route from Seoul to Wonsan before it was severed during the 1950-53 Korean War.
The Seoul government earlier said that it will start construction of the 11.7-km-long section of the railway running through Gangwon Province next month in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of its independence from Japan.
“I want to see the railways between the two Koreas be reconnected as quickly as possible,” Unification Minister Hong was quoted as saying during his visit to the area. “I want it to be a major starting point.”
“Railways are actual linking channels for the two Koreas and I wish to discuss many other issues and cooperative projects based on this railway reconnection business,” he said. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link.
Ethiopia is not a name you hear much of when it comes to the Korean War, but 122 Ethiopian soldiers died in the defense of Korea:
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se says the sacrifices made by Ethiopian war veterans contributed greatly to the democratization and economic advancement of South Korea.
Minister Yun, who is in Addis Ababa to attend the 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development, made the remark while visiting the Korean War veterans memorial park at the Ethiopian capital.
In front of Korean War veterans on Monday, Yun expressed thanks for the deployment of elite troops to the conflict such as members of the Imperial Guard at the time.
The minister also participated in the burning of incense and a moment of silence for 122 fallen soldiers of the war. [KBS World Radio]
Here is some good news for the people in Korea:
Anchor: The Ministry of Health and Welfare says no new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome were reported for the sixth straight day on Saturday, marking the longest period of time to date in which no new cases were confirmed.
Our Mina Cha has more.Report: The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Saturday that no new cases of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) have been reported for the sixth straight day, leaving the number of total confirmed MERS patients from the current outbreak unchanged at 186.
The Ministry’s central MERS-response headquarters said this marks the longest period of time to date in which no new cases were confirmed since the outbreak in South Korea that began in May.
Three more patients have fully recovered and were released from hospital, while one more patient has died from the deadly virus.
Five-hundred-13 suspected patients remain under quarantine at home or hospital, 53 fewer than Friday.
If the MERS outbreak continues to subside at this pace with no additional patients, those under quarantine are also all expected to be released by around July 25. [KBS World Radio]
You can read more at the link.
This NK News article makes a really good argument that the Chinese government has no creditability to complain about Japanese World War II historical revisionism when they themselves have made laughable historical revisionist claims about their involvement in the Korean War. Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole thing:
Finally, there is a museum titled the “Commemorative Museum of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid North Korea.” It has exhibits on how South Korea, in collusion with the United States, started the war, how the U.S. made use of germ warfare, and how American POWs held by the Chinese and North Koreans were treated humanely according to the Geneva Convention – including photos of a “Santa Claus” handing out care packages to POWs from the Red Cross. (This contrasts sharply to the reports of POWs repatriated after the war concerning their brutal and inhumane treatment, as documented in U.S. Senate Report No. 848, 83rd Congress, Second Session – Korean War Atrocities.)
Xi Jinping, in his 2010 speech, repeated the dubious claim presented at the museum of the use of germ warfare by U.S forces when he said: “Thereafter, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army constructed an impregnable defense bastion and crushed the enemy’s multiple attacks and their germ warfare.”
In conclusion, the assertion by Xi Jinping in his 2010 remarks that Harry Truman started the Korean War is directly contradicted by the Yeltsin documents. It is thus as controversial as the claim of non-coercion of Comfort Women made in the past by Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Yet, while Abe’s intemperate remarks have caused criticism throughout South Korean society, there is almost no public outcry over Xi’s condemnation of the American president. Yet Truman was one of the leaders of the UN coalition which laid the groundwork for a viable and independent South Korean state. [NK News]
Read the rest at the link.
On October 31, 1966, US President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived in South Korea to meet with then South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee. This was the first time that President Johnson had traveled to South Korea and President Park was eager to make an impression. Here is how the Stars & Stripes described the seen as President Johnson arrived in Seoul to a crowd estimated at 250,000 people:
Image via Scenes from an Unfinished War.SEOUL — President and Mrs. Johnson got a rousing Texas-style welcome here Monday.
They were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 2 million as they flew to the Republic of Korea on the last leg of a 7-nation trip.
Officials traveling with the presidential party called the welcome the largest and most enthusiastic of the trip.
At times, the ecstasy almost resulted in tragedy.
Frenzied crowds estimated at 250,000 at Seoul’s City Hall Plaza roared approval at the sight of Johnson so loud and long that the speech of Korean President Chung Hee Park was drowned in the din.
The mob also overran a 2,000-member girls’ chorus near the presidential stand, trampling some of the girls underfoot, and at one time threatened to break Secret Service lines and overflow onto the speaker’s stand.
One 57-year-old Seoul woman was hospitalized with serious injuries after being trampled and 12 persons were treated for minor injuries.
The entire 9-mile motorcade route in Seoul was lined with crowds 20-30 persons deep.
Much of the crowd was made up of schoolchildren waving U.S. and Korean flags and carrying hand-painted signs bearing greetings to the President and First Lady. The city’s schools were closed for the occasion.
The President stopped the motorcade five times to shake hands with Koreans along the route between Kimpo International Airport, where he landed at about 3 p.m., and Seoul’s city hall. Several times along the route, the crowd surged forward past police lines and flooded around the car bearing the two presidents.
At city hall, order among the roaring crowd was restored only after Deputy Prime Minister Key Young Chang personally took charge of police lines and appealed to the front ranks of the crowds.
Johnson told the city hall crowd that Koreans should be “rightly proud” of the rebuilding job they have done after the Korean War leveled the nation, and suggested that Asia was experiencing “a new spirit of cooperation.
“That spirit of cooperation in this part of the world was shared by the seven nations who met at Manila last week.
“That historic meeting, which you first suggested … affirmed the broad partnership and the common purpose of free Pacific nations — a partnership that will endure long after the communist aggression is ended in Vietnam,” Johnson said in his speech.
(“Here in Korea, our fighting men stand with your own along the Demilitarized Zone, and we shall come once again to your defense if aggression — God forbid — should occur here again,” he added, AP said.)
(“To an American, the free soil of Korea is hallowed ground,” Johnson told the throng police estimated at some 350,000.)
(“More than 54,000 Americans died in the bitter 1950-53 battle to save this mountainous peninsula country from communist invaders from the north. Today South Korea has around 45,000 soldiers helping the allied cause in South Vietnam.”)
The two partnership efforts against Red aggression and Korea’s remarkable recent economic progress were main themes of the visit.
Park said Korea had “undiminished appreciation” for the help the United States has given it during the past quarter-century.
“We have been much indebted to you as comrades-in-arms,” he said.
“Please be assured that ours is not a nation which will indefinitely continue to be indebted to others, but rather is a nation which knows how to requite its obligations, which has a keen sense of responsibility, and which abides by good faith.”
At city hall, Johnson was officially welcomed to Korea and presented a gold key to the city of Seoul by Mayor Hyun Ok Kim.
President and Mrs. Johnson were honored Monday night at a state dinner given by the Korean first family at the national capitol. After the dinner they attended an art festival in Seoul’s Citizens’ Hall.
Tuesday, Park and Johnson had a private, 30-minute talk.
Johnson was to visit the Korean 26th Inf. Div. and the U.S. 36th Engineer Group, both near Uijongbu, 13 miles north of Seoul later Tuesday. He was to lunch with U.S. troops.
In the afternoon, the President was to visit an agricultural display at Suwon, 20 miles south of Seoul, where he was also to have a hill named after him.
Johnson will wind up his Far East trip Wednesday with visits to the National Cemetery and Korean National Assembly, where he will give a speech on nationwide television. [Stars & Stripes]
As well as President Johnson’s trip was going, evil was lurking in the background. Early on the morning of November 2nd, the same morning that President Johnson was projected to leave Korea, members of the North Korean 17th Foot Reconnaissance Brigade followed an eight man patrol of US Army soldiers with Company A, 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division. The soldiers were patrolling about 1 kilometer south of the DMZ near the Libby Bridge. The North Koreans set a hasty ambush ahead of the patrol and engaged them with hand grenades and small arms fire. After they cut down the patrol the North Koreans shot a few more rounds into some of the bodies and stuck their bayonets in others. Six Americans and a Korean Augmentee to the US Army (KATUSA) were killed by the attack. Incredibly a seventh American soldier, PFC David L. Bibee some how survived the attack by playing dead. Here is what he had to say afterwards:
PFC David L. Bibee . . . 17 years old. He was wounded but escaped death by playing dead. “The only reason I’m alive now is because I didn’t move when a North Korean yanked my watch off my wrist. [Korean War Project]
At the same time of the attack on the US soldiers, a ROK Army patrol was also ambushed killing 2 soldiers. Both attacks were well timed and well executed. The below Google Earth image shows where Libby Bridge is located outside the village of Changpa-ri and where the DMZ fence is located. The ambush would of happened in the hills between the bridge and the fence:
With the attack happening during President Johnson’s Korea trip this caused the attack to make headlines in the US. Here is how the November 3, 1966 Stars & Stripes reported the attack:
This attack along with others during this timeframe would become part of what became known as the “DMZ War“. The North Korean regime led by Kim Il-sung was launching attacks in an effort to test US resolve to defend Korea during the Vietnam War. He hoped the attacks would create a wedge between the US and ROK alliance while simultaneously sending in operatives to create an insurgency within South Korea. Fortunately Kim Il-sung’s strategy failed, but it cost the lives of the following men in the 2nd Infantry Division patrol ambushed on November 2, 1966:
Of note is that Private Reynolds who was Killed in Action during the ambush, was nominated for the Medal of Honor and was awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. He had only been in Korea 17 days. Ernest D. Reynolds was born October 13,1946 in Maryville, Missouri to Lowell D. and Joyce A. Reynolds (died 2011). In 1958 the family moved to Northeast Kansas City, Missouri. Ernie went to Whittier Elementary and graduated from Northeast High School in 1964. In 1986 the family was in Seoul for the dedication of the Reynolds Range. He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, Maryville, MO. Private Reynolds is survived by his siblings Melody, Roger and Sharon. Here is his Silver Star citation:
The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the Silver Star Medal (Posthumously) to Ernest D. Reynolds (US-55881470), Private, U.S. Army, for gallantry in action while engaged in military operations, while serving with Company A, 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry Division. Private Reynolds distinguished himself by gallantry in action on 2 November 1966, in the Republic of Korea, by sacrificing his own life in the defense of his fellow soldiers. Private Reynolds was a member of a patrol operating near the southern boundary of the Demilitarized Zone in Korea when his patrol was attacked and overrun by an armed patrol of the North Korean Army. Prior to the attack, as rear security man, he had occupied a concealed position and opened fire upon the enemy, and he continued to fire until he himself was killed. His indomitable courage, determination, and profound concern for his fellow soldiers, are in the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the 2d Infantry Division, and the United States Army. Department of the Army, General Orders No. 16 (April 4, 1967) Home State: Missouri Personal Awards: Silver Star (Korea-1966), Purple Heart.
The Korean War is known as the “Forgotten War”, but for the soldiers that served on the Korean frontier during the “DMZ War” their conflict should be known as the “Really Forgotten War” since so few people know about it. Fortunately the 2nd Infantry Division today is beginning to embrace and remember the brave soldiers who served on the frontlines of the DMZ War. It is because of the service of the brave men that served in Korea during this time period that Kim Il-sung’s strategy was thwarted and South Korea was able to develop into the thriving democracy and economic miracle that it is today.
For more DMZ Flashpoints articles please click the below link:
