Category: Korean War

The Incheon Landing, code named “Operation Chromite” is quite possibly the most recognized action taken during the Korean War and what is most amazing about the operation is the fact that it happened at all. Just about every general in the Pentagon was against General MacArthur’s plan to invade Incheon because of the great danger involved in navigating Incheon’s infamous tidal flats. Everyone else was convinced that Kunsan or even Osan south of Incheon were better locations to launch an amphibious operation of this magnitude. MacArthur knew that this is where the North Koreans would expect the UN forces to land and the North Korean were in fact making preparations for landings in these areas because they believed no one was foolish enough to try and land at Incheon. Well no one accept General MacArthur.

MacArthur convinced the Secretary of Defense that his plan was the right course of action and eventually using has famous flare and prestige MacArthur was able to convince the Joint Chief’s of Staff and President Harry Truman to sign off on his plan. However, visions of landing crafts trapped in the Incheon mud which would be sitting ducks for the North Korean artillery raced through everyones minds.

Fortunately the successful “Operation Trudy Jackson” put those fears to rest. The operation allowed General MacArthur’s armada of ships containing the newly constituted X Corps and associated combat power to safely navigate the treacherous Incheon Bay the night of September 14, 1950. The bright light of the Palmi-do lighthouse proved to be a critical navigational aid for the sailors involved with the landing.

Lt. Eugene Clark’s successful intelligence gathering also allowed General MacArthur to gain much needed knowledge about the enemy’s strong points and weaknesses. However, General MacArthur had one weakness himself. The X Corps that would carry out the operation was highly inexperienced. The X Corps commanded by MacArthur’s close friend and advisor Major General Edmond Almond was created specifically for the invasion of Incheon and featured many troops with no combat experience.

Two of the three Marine regiments that composed the 1st Marine Division involved in the operation had no combat experience. In fact the 1st Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division was activated in August and staged in Japan preparing for the invasion and the 7th Marine Regiment was activated on the 1st of September before deploying to fight at Incheon. Both of these regiments were filled with replacements from state side school houses, half of them were from the US Marine Reserve, and Marines transferred from the Mediterranean. The 5th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division on the other hand were battle hardened Marines who fought in ferocious battles along the Naktong River Line during the Pusan Perimeter defense. They were the only unit in the X Corps with combat experience.

The 7th Infantry Division which was the Army’s contribution to the invasion was in worse shape than the Marines. They were the division responsible for occupation duty in Japan. However, as the war raged on in Korea the division was stripped for replacement soldiers in Korea. In August of 1950 the 7th Division was at approximately half strength. By channeling all infantry and artillery replacements into the 7th Division and transferring 8,000 ROK Army KATUSA trainees from Pusan to join the 7th Division in Japan, the division was able to near 100% strength by September.

However, these 8,000 KATUSA soldiers were merely nothing more than poor Korean boys taken from the refugee camps of Pusan for KATUSA training before being picked up for the Incheon invasion. They had not received any English or military training before leaving for Japan. Many of the KATUSAs in fact wore only shorts and sandals when they reported to their respective units in Japan.

To say the US invasion force lacked experience was an understatement but they did have numbers because X Corps when it was all said and done was composed of over 70,000 soldiers. MacArthur however, would rely heavily on the battle hardened 5th Marine Regiment to spearhead the landing at Incheon.

For two days prior to the landing the North Korean positions had been bombed repeatedly by US naval and air power. At 6:30AM on September 15, 1950 Marines from the battle hardened 5th Marine Regiment with nine Pershing tanks landed on Green Beach on Wolmi-do Island. The island sat in the middle of the harbor and had to be secured before the remaining invasion force could land at Incheon proper. The Marines secured the island in one and a half hours and killed or captured 400 North Korean soldiers while only suffering 17 wounded themselves.

However, the tide receded by 8:30AM and the invasion fleet had to retreat or risk being stuck in the mud flats. The Marines on Wolmi-do had to hold the island from an enemy counter attack along the tidal barrier connecting the island to the mainland until the tide rose again and more troops could land. The Marines held the island until 5:32PM when the tide rose again and the remaining Marines from the 1st Marine Division stormed Red Beach to the North and Blue Beach to the south of Wolmi-do, crushing the enemy resistance in the city of Incheon.

A picture of a Marine climbing a 15 foot high tidal barriers with a ladder while being shot at by North Koreans hiding in buildings over looking his position became the iconic image of the landing .

There had been no such amphibous landing during World War II into a city like what was being attempted now. Also during this time of combat in the streets of Incheon the Pershing tanks and Marines on Wolmi-do began to cross the tidal barrier to enter Incheon and also engage the overwhelmed North Koreans.

By 0130 on 16 September, 1950 the Marines had secured all their objectives in Incheon and allowed the ROK Special Marines to enter the city and mop up any remaining enemy forces, which they did with great brutality. Overall the X Corps had only 20 men killed, 174 wounded, and one MIA in taking Incheon. It was truly a brilliant amphibious operation constructed by General MacArthur.

The harbor was secured and the remainder of the X Corps, mostly the 7th Division, unloaded their equipment and men and began the march to capture Seoul. By September 26, 1950 Seoul was in UN forces hands and the North Korean supply lines had been effectively cut to their forces in the south. The 8th Army units at the Pusan perimeter mounted an offensive against the North Koreans and quickly the North Korean units were crushed by MacArthur’s hammer and anvil tactic. The North Koreans would never recover from this major defeat until the Chinese entered the war. But that is a story for another posting.

Information about the Incheon Landing was provided by the Kmike.com website and the book, This Kind of War by T.R. Fehrenbach.

The Battle of Incheon

This Kind of War

Then:

Freedom Bridge which crossed the Imjim River during the Korean War via Defense Media.

Now:

Notice the amount of trees that have since grown on the South Korean hillsides. The mountains you see in the background are the mountains near Kaeseong, North Korea.

The Korea Times is running an article about the claimants from Nogun-ri demanding more compensation from the US government:

The controversy continues over how to settle a civilian massacre that U.S. troops committed during the Korean War at Nogun-ri, a rural village in central South Korea, as Washington considers the case closed.

The U.S. Department of Defense said Thursday that it stands by its announcement in 2001, when then U.S. President Bill Clinton offered a memorial and scholarship fund. The Koreans rejected the proposal, calling it insufficient.

It is not that the compensation is insufficient it is more like the compensation isn’t going directly into their pockets:

The dispute centers on who should benefit from the $1 million monument and the annual scholarship fund of $560,000 that will run for five years.

The White House intends them to cover all South Korean civilian victims of the Korean War, while the Nogun-ri victims say the beneficiaries should be restricted to that single incident.

(…)

He said that since 2001 the U.S. Department of Defense has set aside roughly $500,000 each year to fund the scholarship program.

“Each year, the funds have been returned because there have been no applicants for these scholarships, but they are still available,’’ Hicks said.

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul was not immediately available for comment, however a spokesman there assumed the families had been notified of the American fund but said it had not received any applications.

Concerning the $1 million budget for the memorial monument, the Pentagon said some of it has already been paid to a Korean firm to design the monument. He did not specify the amount, but the Korean families claim one-tenth of the fund was spent in 2003.

There is compensation available for the claimants that can be used to give a college education to members of their families. IMHO the reason they are not using the college scholarship fund is because they are still holding out hope that the US government will eventually just give them direct compensation to put this issue at rest. If the US gives them direct compensation I guarantee the government would be setting a precedent that would cause more people to come forward demanding compensation from other tragedies of the Korean War, real or imagined.

I don’t think the Korean govnernment wants direct compensation either because their own ROK soldiers and secret police are also accused of killing civilians during the war. Direct compensation may also cause people to demand compensation from the Korean government as well.

The idea of the scholarship fund and memorial plus a public statement of regret from President Clinton I believe is fare compensation for a tragedy that was largely caused by the mass confusion and conditions of the early period of the Korean War. I’m still waiting for North Korea and China to start a scholarship fund for all the civilians they killed during the war as well. How come nobody is demanding compensation from them?

For more on the Nogun-ri tragedy check the Focus On: No Gun Ri series.

Check out the Korea Sojourner’s take on why the Korean media is suddenly making a headline story out of this.

Korea’s popular citizen news service, Oh My News, recently published their own version of what happened at Nogun-ri. It is safe to say that this article of “journalism” or should I say docu-fiction tends to focus more on fantasy then the actual facts. Take this passage here as the first example:

Once the story broke and grabbed headline attention, the victims began to step forward. The Seoul government was placed between a rock and a hard place. Continuing to muzzle the victims would strengthen the notion that the Seoul government was a mere puppet of Uncle Sam. After all, its main reason for suppressing the story was to please him.

What evidence does the author, a Mr. Young Kim offer that the Korean government was trying to suppress the story because of pressure from the US? He has no evidence. Also how is this considered journalism? Sounds like propaganda to me. But wait there is more:

The massacre of innocent civilians by American troops was, of course, well-known among the victims and their relatives, but the Seoul government had for years labeled anyone mentioning the massacre “communists,” and brutally prosecuted them. Ironically, it took a fair-minded American journalist to disclose the massacre.

Once again he provides no evidence of his claims and then calls the AP reporters “fair minded” when the principle source of their reporting Edward Daily was uncovered as a liar by US News and World Report and the Stars and Stripes newspaper through simple background checks of Daily’s past these real journalists uncovered that Daily wasn’t even a combat arms soldier, did not earn the awards he claimed to have won, and wasn’t even anywhere near Nogun-ri at the time of the incident. Daily wasn’t the only one. Other veterans that made key claims about Nogun-ri were later found to have not even been there. Then according to Robert Bateman’s Book, Nogun-ri, the lead AP reporter Charles Hanley admitted to the discrepancies in the veterans stories but ran with the article anyway. There was a Pulitzer Prize to think about.

Some how Kim failed to mention all this in his article. Then the claim that this was covered up for decades is absolutely false. In Bateman’s book he provides articles from major US newspapers such as the New York Times that documents the killing of civilians by US soldiers during the Korean War. This is not new news but the story needs the air of a great government cover up to catch the readers attention. Then Kim goes on to try and use the Pentagon investigative report of the incident as evidence that the US soldiers blatantly killed the refugees. Here is the excerpt from the Pentagon report he used:

The Korean villagers stated that on July 25, 1950, U.S. soldiers evacuated approximately 500 to 600 villagers from their homes in Im Gae Ri and Joo Gok Ri. The villagers said the U.S. soldiers escorted them towards the south. Later that evening, the American soldiers led the villagers near a riverbank at Ha Ga Ri and ordered them to stay there that night. During the night, the villagers witnessed a long parade of U.S. troops and vehicles moving towards Pusan. On the morning of July 26, 1950, the villagers continued south along the Seoul-Pusan road. According to their statements, when the villagers reached the vicinity of No Gun Ri, U.S. soldiers stopped them at a roadblock and ordered the group onto the railroad tracks, where the soldiers searched them and their personal belongings. The Koreans state that, although the soldiers found no prohibited items (such as weapons or other military contraband), the soldiers ordered an air attack on the villagers by radio communications with U.S. aircraft. Shortly afterwords, planes flew over and dropped bombs and fired machine guns, killing about 100 villagers on the railroad tracks. Those villagers who survived sought protection in a small culvert underneath the railroad tracks. The U.S. soldiers drove the villagers out of the culvert and into the larger double tunnels nearby (this report subsequently refers to these tunnels as the “double railroad overpass”). The Koreans state the U.S. soldiers then fired into both ends of the tunnels over four days (July 26-29, 1950), resulting in approximately 300 additional deaths.

If you notice in this excerpt this is all the claims made by the refugees that Army logged in their report, not the findings of the actual report. If you notice he makes no references to the claims of what happened made by the soldiers that were there. If Kim was a real journalist he would of read more from the report especially the interviews with the soldiers. In Chapter 5, of Robert Bateman’s book, No Gun Ri he quotes interviews from soldiers who were at Nogun-ri. The US-ROK report doesn’t state that soldiers evacuate the villagers. It stated that it was possible but unlikely:

While the U.S. Review Team cannot rule out the possibility that the movement of the villagers occurred as described by the Korean witnesses, there was no sound military reason for soldiers to travel approximately three miles off their designated movement route to the village of Im Gae Ri during a hasty withdrawal for the purpose of encouraging an additional 400 refugees onto the already crowded roads and aggravating further the congested conditions. It is also unlikely that the soldiers would have performed this evacuation given the widespread knowledge and fear of North Korean infiltrators believed to be present in refugee concentrations.

The reason for wanting to keep refugees away from the front line was because North Korean soldiers had been infiltrating into the Americans rear areas by posing as civilians. Why would these US soldiers in a desperate retreat go so far out of there way to evacuate a Korean village to further fill the US frontlines with civilians? It makes no sense.

A lesser known fact was that the area around the villages of Yongdong and Nogun-ri were filled with South Korean communist sympathizers that were actively ambushing American soldiers in the area. In fact just weeks before the start of the Korean War an entire ROK Army division was in this area battling the communist insurgents. Then the accounts of the aircraft strike are easily proven to be inaccurate due to veteran testimony and aerial recon photographs.

I could go on and on dispelling Mr. Kim’s myths but please read my complete Focus On: No Gun Ri series for a complete factual analysis of what happened instead of Mr. Kim’s mythology. There was a tragedy at Nogun-ri, know doubt about it. Civilians were killed by US soldiers. I don’t dispute that. What I do dispute is the factors that caused it and the numbers of civilians killed. The anti-American crowd like Mr. Kim wants you to believe that these soldiers were cold heartless killers just waiting to kill helpless Korean refugees under orders from their uncaring commanding general, so the US Army wouldn’t have to deal with the refugee problem anymore.

This is the mythology Mr. Kim and his ilk are pushing and they are winning this information battle. I am willing to bet most Americans and Koreans believe Mr. Kim’s version of events. That is the continuing tragedy of this incident. The advocacy journalism these reporters are using to push their anti-military or in the case of Mr. Kim, anti-USFK agendas is truly disturbing. They are actively wanting to smear the honor of aged veterans who sacrificed their youth to save Korea from communism.

It is bad enough the Korean War is considered the Forgotten War in America but now it is becoming the Revised War in an effort to smear the veterans and in turn Americans themselves. Oh My News is an interesting outlet for citizen journalism but it is becoming citizen propaganda instead. Isn’t there editors that check what is being posted? How am I supposed to take an article from Oh My News seriously in the future when they let such propaganda as Mr. Kim’s article be reported? I exposed this guy in 15 minutes of typing. Shouldn’t journalists have some kind of responsibility to verify facts before reporting a story? If Oh My News doesn’t believe in checking the credibility of a story than they need to change their name to Oh My Tabloid News. At least then they are being intellectually honest.

For more about Mr. Young Kim you can check out his Kimsoft site and draw your own conclusions about if he has an anti-USFK agenda or not.

UPDATE: I highly recommend everyone read my prior postings on this subject:

• Responding to the Bridge at No Gun Ri
• The Forensics of No Gun Ri
• Revisiting No Gun Ri
• Transcript of Briefing to Seoul Rotary Club
• The No Gun Ri Document Shell Game

_________________________________________________________

Recently many Korean news media have been providing inaccurate reports about the tragic events that happened today, 55 years ago, on July 26, 1950 near the village of Nogun-ri during the first month of combat during the Korean War. In an effort to set the record straight and hopefully educate the wide audience I have and appreciate that read my blog, I have decided to have my next Focus On series dedicated to the tragedy that happened at No Gun-ri during those dark days of the Korean War.

This topic is highly controversial and filled with inaccuracies and mythology that is taken to be fact by many people who have certain anti-military or anti-USFK agendas or are just not aware of all the changing stories and retractions made from the original Pulitzer Prize winning AP story from 1999.

Unfortunately this perception of war criminal GIs from the Korean War created by this irresponsible reporting continues to slime the slowly dying generation of veterans who left America to fight for the freedom of a country that many of them had never heard of before.

In an effort to get the opposing viewpoint of what happened at No Gun-ri out and restore honor to these veterans, I wrote a series of articles on the topic that are posted below to help people become more educated about what really happened at No Gun-ri:

Controversies of the Korean War: The Tragedy at No Gun-ri?

Part 1 – Who Were the Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry?
Part 2 – What Happened at No Gun-ri?
Parth 3 – The Aftemath of No Gun-ri
Part 4 – The Media and No Gun-ri

The AP tried everything in their power to discredit Robert Bateman who wrote the book No Gun-ri which challenged the original misreporting by the AP. The AP even contacted his publisher and boss at West Point to intimidate them. This is your freedom of the press in action. It didn’t work and his book was published, which exposed the distortions, frauds, and dishonesty in the original AP article.

Amazingly one of the AP reporters found time to even go after me for posting about No Gun-ri. I guess my No Gun-ri postings have been getting to many hits from readers which they don’t like.

The No Gun-ri issues continues to be a hot button issue that has been shaped with to much emotion and myth making and not enough facts. Unlike the AP I want you to judge the facts of No Gun-ri for yourself and make your own decision about what happened at No Gun-ri. Read all my postings and then I highly recommend you read both Bateman’s and the AP’s books and then judge the information for yourself. It also helps to read some of the good quality Korean War books available as well to further educate yourself about the Korean War.

Below are more No Gun-ri related postings that I have done and I update this list as new No Gun-ri information becomes available:

No Gun-ri Compensation Money Goes Unused

Claimants Want Washington to Show them the Money

Oh My News and No Gun-ri

AP Reporter Charles Hanley Responds to GI Korea Criticism

No Gun-ri Compensation Money Goes Unused

No Gun-ri Movie Completed

No Gun-ri the Comic Book, Coming to Europe

What Does Iraq and No Gun-ri Have in Common?

Bateman Responds to Latest AP Scandal

No Gun-ri Misreporting Continues

The Muccio Letter: Making Old News New Again

Fishing for the Next No Gun-ri

This story is truly despicable. A group of people has vandalized the UN Cemetery in Busan:

A giant anti-U.S. President George W. Bush message apparently written in herbicide has appeared on the lawn of the UN Memorial Cemetery in Daeyeon-dong, Busan. The site is reportedly on the itinerary of visiting national leaders attending the APEC summit in November.

The office of the UN Memorial Cemetery said Thursday it notified Nambu Police Station on the morning of June 14 that someone had written “NO BUSH” in 10 m high letters on the lawn between the flags of nations participating in the Korean War and the graves.

The cemetery’s office said it appeared the perpetrators used liquid herbicide to write the message, which was 50 m wide, with each line some 30 cm thick. Given the scale, it must have taken several people with spraying tools to write it, the office said. The grass is being restored.

This reminds me of when the grave stones of GIs killed during the invasion of Normandy in France were spray painted by anti-American vandals with the words, “Remove this rubbage from French lands”.

If someone has got a problem with Bush that is fine. Go stand on the street corner and protest. You have every right to do so but you don’t have the right to harm others or vandalize property. Especially the hollowed ground of UN soldiers buried at the UN Cemetery. That is right it isn’t just the remains of US soldiers buried in Pusan. The cemetery in Pusan is the only cemetery administered by the UN in the whole world and includes remains of soldiers from all the countries that took casualties during the war. I have traveled to the cemetery before and it is really a beautiful and solemn place for being situated in the middle of Korea’s 2nd largest city of Busan.

I would hope that people no matter what their political persuasions may be would agree that such a place should be considered sacred. It is unfortunate that such an act of vandalism is kept in the back pages of the papers and is not causing an outcry here in Korea. The memories of these dead soldiers are cheapened by such an act of vandalism by a country these international soldiers gave their lives to save. The way the youth is today, I doubt these same protesters would be willing to die for Korea like these soldiers did during the Korean War.

Could you imagine the outcry if somebody put anti-Bush graffiti somewhere at Arlington National Cemetery? I think even the kookiest Democrats like Howard Dean would even condemn such an act. Why shouldn’t Korea do the same for this cemetery?

Big shout out to Katolic Shinja for pointing this story out.

The US has stopped recovering the remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War in North Korea.

The Pentagon on Wednesday abruptly suspended U.S. efforts to recover the remains of American soldiers from North Korea, accusing the Koreans of creating an environment that could jeopardize the safety of U.S. personnel performing the work.

The work has been proceeding since 1996, resulting in the recovery of more than 220 soldiers’ remains. Thousands more are still missing, and a large number of those are believed to be recoverable.

The move came just one day after the Pentagon announced that a number of remains of U.S. soldiers had been recovered during the first of what had been scheduled to be a series of missions this year at two former battlefields in North Korea. That announcement gave no indication there was a problem with safety.

This is interesting, I wonder if the North Koreans are demanding more money? The recovery of the remains is a nice little money maker for the North Koreans because they make a lot of money for allowing the US authorities to recover the remains. I don’t think the US government would suspend this type of mission unless the money demand was completely unreasonable.

I have actually seen one of the repatriation ceremonies at Panmunjom in the JSA. It really is a solemn moment to see the coffin being brought across the MDL (military demarcation line) at Panmunjom. It kind of brings home the ultimate sacrifice that 53,000 American soldiers made in the hills of Korea 50 years ago and we continue to make today in the deserts of Iraq. It has to mean a lot to the families that the US government is so vigorously pursuing the recovery of their family members. Hopefully this program will continue again once the North quit doing whatever they were doing.

Basic Information

• Name: Incheon Landing Operation Memorial Hall (인천상륙작전기념관)
• Where: Incheon, Gyeongi Province
• Cost: Free
• Hours: 0900-1800 (Closed for holidays)
• More Info: Visit Korea website

Narrative

For those who want to learn more about the Incheon landing operation or about the Korean War in general I recommend you visit the Incheon Landing Memorial Monument Hall in the Songdo area of Incheon. The memorial is fairly new and houses a nice collection of artifacts and memorabilia from the landing operation and the Korean War. The best part is that admission into the museum is free.

The entrance to the memorial features a large archway adorned with the flags of the 16 countries that participated in the Korean War. Climbing up the stairs to the second outside level of the memorial you can see a static display of aircraft and equipment used during the Korean War. Most notably the landing crafts used during the invasion.

The third level of the memorial houses a large statue that honors the soldiers that fought at Incheon Harbor on September 15, 1950. The statue is detailed and quite impressive. Near the statue is a bronze plaque in tribute of the 1st Marine Division that spearheaded the Incheon Landing Operation. Like the Marine heroes in action at Incheon that fateful day, today’s 1st Marine Division was called on to lead the November 2004 successful assault to retake the terrorist held city of Fallujah in Iraq.

From here head back down to the first level of the memorial to enter the museum. The museum is actually put together quite nicely with events of the Korean War and the Incheon Landing Operation presented in chronological order complete with explanations of the exhibits presented in Korean, English, and Japanese by the push of a button.

Conclusion

If in Incheon make sure you visit the Incheon Landing Memorial. It is free and really well put together and worthy of a visit. It is open on Tues-Sun from 9:30-18:30. To reach it just get off at the Incheon train station and have a taxi taking you to Songdo where the Memorial is located.

This weekend I took a trip to the remote Northern Gangwon-do area to see the infamous Korean War battle site, the Punchbowl. I reached the Punchbowl by traveling North from Chuncheon on Highway 46. The highway travels up and twists around the side of some high mountains before traveling adjacent to the Soyangho Lake.

The mountains here are round, steep, and high; many reaching over 1,000 meters. They are not stunning rock monoliths like Bukhansan or Soraksan but more like mountains you would see in West Virgina. Never the less it is extremely beautiful up there especially along the lake. The best part about exploring this area is the fact very few people venture up there. No traffic jams, no cars parked all over the side of the roads, and no trails jam packed with hikers like a city side walk. You can pretty much pick a spot and enjoy it for yourself the whole day.

The lake itself was just beautiful. I just wish I had time and access to a boat. This would be a great place to water ski. The water was so calm and there was only one boater on the lake the whole day. I didn’t see any boat or water ski rental businesses or anybody water skiing the whole day; so I wonder if you can do water sports on the lake? Probably I don’t see why not.

The city of Yanggu just North of Soyangho Lake is located adjacent to another lake Paroho Lake. Supposedly this lake is famous for great fishing. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to find out but I am actually thinking of planning a fishing trip there in the future. The Marmot had sent me a message saying the city was a really nice place and he was right. The city has lots of flowers planted everywhere and was really clean and orderly. The school there was brand new with a huge gym and also a new soccer stadium with two practice fields. This city was impressive for being located so close to the DMZ. Border cities are usually run down and shabby, not this one. This picture is from a ridge on the Punchbowl looking South towards Yanggu.

Looking around this area I can’t help but think this would be a great place to turn into an adventure sports city. There are plenty of remote and steep mountains for climbing, hiking, and mountain biking, access to the lake for water sports, and down the road in Inje there is white water rafting and kayaking. It just needs to be developed to conduct these activities. Personally I would love to go mountain biking up there sometime.

The next stop was the Punchbowl to the north. Highway 31 travels north of Yanggu along a pretty valley filled with sporadic farms and military bases. Eventually you will reach an exit to the Punchbowl. The road to the Punchbowl travels up an extremely steep road that reaches over 1000 meters in elevation. From the top of the road you get a great view of the area and something that really sticks out is the deforestation that occurred here in the past due to the war. Many small trees have been planted to heal the scars here just like in other areas in Korea.

Once inside the Punchbowl you can really understand why they called it such. The valley is exactly the shape of a round bowl. This shape is due to the valley actually being the caldera of a long extinct and badly eroded volcano. Kind of like a really, really, old Paekdusan, the famous North Korean volcano.

In this picture you can see that the Punchbowl is actually visible from outer space.

Inside of the valley there are many farms and located in the middle of the valley is the village of Haean. Haean is a very small village with few accomodations and a heavy military presence. The village does have a small museum and you can book a tour to see the 4th Infiltration Tunnel and the Ulji Observation Post.

The Punchbowl is the site of the infamous Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge battles. On these slopes during the Korean War 183 ROK Marines and 245 American Marines lost their lives to take these mountains from the defending North Korean soldiers. The combined ROK and American Marines inflicted 2,799 KIAs on the enemy and captured 557 POWs during the fighting.  The memories of these casualties are enshrined at a memorial in the middle of Haean:

Securing these two mountains allowed the coalition forces to consolidate their hold on the Haean basin and to gain strategic ground over looking the North Korean territory to defend against any future North Korean offensives. This strategic ground remains valuable today in protecting the nation from future North Korean aggression.

The below pictures show the Heartbreak and Bloody Ridge battle sites.

Today the battle sites make up part of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and is defended by the ROK Army. Looking at the Punchbowl today it is hard to imagine that such a tranquil valley as this was once the scene of the most ferocious fighting of the Korean War. Besides the DMZ the only reminder that this battle occured here, is the billboard in the city proclaiming this basin as the site of the final battle featured in the hit Korean movie, Taeguki.

Saturday I went and checked out the Korean War battle site in Kapyong which is located East of Seoul not to far from Chunch’on. Kapyong is a small country city with a wide river that runs through it from the nearby mountains. Nothing about the appearance of this city would lead you to believe an epic life or death battle happened here. However, one did.

On 23-24 April, 1951 the British 27th Commonwealth brigade reinforced with New Zealand, Canadian, & Australian soldiers plus a US tank company fought a heroic pitched battle against the communist Chinese forces just North of the city of Kapyong. To the North of the city the Kapyong river goes to the base of the 1200 foot Myeongji-san mountains. It is in these mountains that the Commonwealth Brigade held off the Chinese for two days allowing rear UN forces to retreat without being destroyed.

Here is a great quote from the battle I really liked from the Australian website commemorating the battle.

“Major O’Dowd then directed the radio operator to contact anyone. The American 1st Marine Division answered but their operator refused to believe who our operator was speaking for. Major O’Dowd took the phone and demanded to speak to the commanding officer. The general in charge of the [Marine] division came on the phone and told O’Dowd we didn’t exist as we had been wiped out the night before. Major O’Dowd said, ‘I’ve got news for you, we are still here and we are staying here.'”

Private Patrick Knowles, 3 RAR, on the morning of 24 April 1951

To check out this link to check out the complete website (Battle of Kapyong).

In honor of these country’s heroes a memorial in the city of Kapyong was created. The memorial honors the British, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian militaries for there heroices during the battle of Kapyong.

Noticably missing from the memorial was any mention of the US military’s involvement in the battle. Plus at the different battle sites just north of city, memorials for the commonwealth brigade’s individual countries have been constructed but the US Army has none.

Granted the commonwealth brigade took the majority of the casualties in the fight and deserves the memorials but could the American military’s involvement be at least worthy of being mentioned in the overall memorial in Kapyong?

Actually it is probably better that the Americans are not mentioned on the memorial because it is quite possibly the dirtiest memorial park I have ever been to. Dead grass, garbage everywhere, cigarette butts, and worn out flags greet the visitors to the park. There was even empty beer bottles and cigarette butts on the memorial itself. This is by far the worse Korean War memorial park I have been to so far in the country. Usually they are kept up fairly well.

Myeongjisan Mountain North of Kapyong

However if you are not into Korean War history the drive to Kapyong and then North on highway 75 is definitely worth the ride. There are scores of beautiful mountains to see and the Kapyong river makes for a nice sight also. A recommended weekend drive.