Category: Korean War

ROK Government Hosts Korean War Veterans at Visit to U.N. Cemetery in Busan

| July 30, 2019

This is a really good program that the South Korean government puts on every year:

Carlos Pallan, a Korean War veteran, places a white flower on the headstones of a U.S. servicemember at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, July 25, 2019. 

South Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs hosted Munson and more than 100 other veterans and family members from 16 nations to express the South’s appreciation for the sacrifices made during the three-year war.

During the six-day revisit program that began Tuesday, the vets participated in numerous cultural events and tours, including a trip to the truce village of Panmunjom and other sites in the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone.

They also laid white flowers on the headstones of fallen servicemembers at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in the southern city of Busan.

They were welcomed with a standing ovation and honored during the annual United Nations Forces participation day ceremony in Seoul, which was broadcast on national TV.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

ROK Defense Ministry Considers a Joint Korean War Commemoration with North Korea

| July 5, 2019

The only way I could see ever holding any joint Korean War ceremony with North Korea is if the Kim regime acknowledges they started the war. Currently they continue to claim the ROK invaded North Korea to start the war despite all the evidence to the contrary. Sadly many South Korean leftists believe this claim:

The Defense Ministry is considering co-hosting a ceremony with North Korea next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. 

The inclusion of the North in such a ceremony is expected to lead to strong protests by families of soldiers killed during the 1950-53 war, which Pyongyang still insists was triggered by a South Korean invasion. It celebrates Armistice Day on July 27 as “Victory Day.”

In fact North Korean forces invaded the South, and miscalculations on both sides put the border back more or less where it was before after three years of bloodshed. The two Koreas remain technically at war.

A copy of a Defense Ministry report leaked to the Chosun Ilbo details various plans to mark the 70th anniversary. The ministry said the report was put together by a contracted agency and is simply a set of proposals, which it will “selectively consider.”

Chosun Ilbo

Remains of American or French Soldier Found on the Korean Demilitarized Zone

| June 15, 2019

Hopefully forensic investigators can quickly identify who the remains belong to:

Remains that may be from an American soldier are excavated from Arrowhead Hill, South Korea, June 5, 2019. Bottom: Buttons from a U.S. soldier’s uniform and combat boots.

 South Korean search crews working in the heavily fortified border area found a skeleton believed to be from an American or French soldier killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, the defense ministry said Monday.
The remains were unearthed Wednesday during an excavation project at the former battleground known as Arrowhead Hill, which is in the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the country since the war ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
The area was cleared of land mines in the fall as part of an inter-Korean agreement reached in efforts to improve relations between the two countries in connection with separate nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

US Military Suspends Efforts to Recover Korean War Remains in North Korea

| May 11, 2019

I hope no one really thought a deal on this issue was going to be reached because I never did:

A United Nations Command honor guard prepares to repatriate a casket carrying Korean War remains at Yongsang Garrison in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018.

 In a new sign of troubled relations with North Korea, the Pentagon said Wednesday it has suspended its efforts to arrange negotiations on recovering additional remains of U.S. servicemembers killed in the North during the Korean War.

In a statement Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency said it has had no communication with North Korean authorities since the Hanoi summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February. That meeting focused on the North’s nuclear weapons and followed a June 2018 summit at which Kim committed to permitting a resumption the recovery of U.S. remains, which had been suspended by the U.S. in 2005.

“As a result, our effort to communicate with the Korean People’s Army regarding the possible resumption of joint recovery operation for 2019 has been suspended,” the agency said. “We have reached the point where we can no longer effectively plan, coordinate, and conduct field operations in the DPRK during this fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, 2019.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the only way a deal was getting done was if the US paid North Korea an exorbitant amount of money to recover the remains as has been done in the past.

The North Koreans know exactly where the bulk of the remains are because the US military buried a large number of casualties in marked cemeteries before evacuating North Korea after the Chinese intervened in the war.

Korean War - HD-SN-99-03172
Cpl. Charles Price sounds “Taps” over the graves of fallen Leathernecks during memorial services at the First Marine Division cemetery at Hungnam, following the division’s heroic break-out from Chosin Reservoir. December 13, 1950. Cpl. W. T. Wolfe. (Marine Corps)

To be able to repatriate these remains to their family members the North Koreans have been demanding inflated prices which just shows how low the Kim regime is willing to go to make money.  The work to recover the remains ended in 2005 and so far does not look like it will begin again any time soon.