Tag: Korean War

It has now been 68 years since the start of the Korean War:

A solemn ceremony took place in Washington Monday to mark the 68th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, an annual event that carried special meaning as the remains of some of the fallen heroes are set to return home.

The ceremony drew some 200 people to the Korean War Veterans Memorial as the United States and North Korea are in talks to formally end the 1950-53 conflict that ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. [Yonhap]

Here is a cool quote from the article:

Cunningham, 88, said he served as a radar repairman with the Air Force during the war. He now drives an Amanti built by South Korea’s Kia.

“It is one of the finer cars that I have driven in the course of my lifetime, but when I left Korea in February of 1952 the last thing in my mind was that I would ever be driving a vehicle manufactured in this country because what I saw there was ashes and rubble,” he told Yonhap. “It’s very gratifying to us to see what’s been made of the economy — the 10th strongest economy in the world — and that’s very commendable.”

You can read more at the link.

There must be a political calculus behind this designation by the ROK government considering it has happened decades after the fact:

Germany has been belatedly classified among the participating nations in the Korean War, as South Korea has added the European country to the list of countries that provided medical assistance during the 1950-53 war, government officials said Friday.

The Ministry of National Defense has designated Germany as the sixth provider of medical support to the war-stricken South Korea 64 years ago, saying that Germans set up a hospital in Busan in May 1954 and engaged in medical assistance activities.

After the outbreak of the war on the Korean Peninsula, 21 countries contributed to the United Nations force that came to the aid of South Korea against North Korea, which was backed by China and the then Soviet Union.

Sixteen countries sent combat troops to South Korea, while four countries — Norway, Denmark, Sweden and India — sent medical units and Italy provided a hospital to the South.

In May 1953, two months before the ceasefire, Germany notified the U.N. headquarters of its intent to set up a field hospital in South Korea to support U.N. soldiers participating in the Korean War and sent a medical unit of around 80 staff the following year.

But the European country was not included among the Korean War providers of medical aid because its medical support activities began after the armistice treaty was signed on July 27, 1953.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link, but President Moon decided to pursue this designation after a trip to Germany last year where he met with former German medical team members.

In this July 8, 1951, photo, a North Korean solider, center, looks at Time magazine flanked by two U.S. soldiers in Gaesong during a ceasefire talks for the Korean War in Gaeseong. This is one of 14 Korean War-related photos at the National Institute of Korean History (NIKH) collected from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). / Courtesy of NIKH  [Korea Times]

What is most notable about this is that the Kim regime apparently did not demand bags of cash to make this happen.  It appears to be simply a good will gesture in response to the cancelling of the UFG exercise:

The U.S. military plans to send 215 empty caskets to North Korea via the inter-Korean border on Saturday to get back the remains of American soldiers killed during the Korean War, a South Korean military official said.About 30 U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) vehicles carrying the caskets were scheduled to depart from the Camp Humphreys base in Pyeongtaek for the border village of Panmunjom on Saturday afternoon, the official said on condition of anonymity.

“North Korea will repatriate the remains in the caskets,” the official said.

Recovering and repatriating the remains of U.S. troops killed during the 1950-53 war was one of the agreements that U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reached during their historic summit in Singapore earlier this month.   [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it is right now undetermined how the remains will be repatriated, but it is expected to happen in the next few days.

What I did not see in the article was if any money was handed over to North Korea for the return of the remains.  My assumption would be probably not since the sanctions are still in place.  It will be interesting to see how many remains the Kim regime hands over because Korean War remains are a cottage industry for the North Koreans to make money off of:

Marines of the First Marine Division pay their respects to fallen buddies during memorial services at the division’s cemetery at Hamhung, Korea, following the break-out from Chosin Reservoir, December 13, 1950. Cpl. Uthe. (Marine Corps)

The U.N. Command in South Korea is planning for the North Koreans to turn over the remains of U.S. troops who died in the 1950-53 war, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

It would be the first such repatriation in more than a decade.

The announcement follows an agreement by President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their summit last week to recover the remains of thousands of war dead, “including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.”

The U.S.-led command didn’t give a number or timing for the ceremony. The agency that oversees POW/MIA issues has said North Korean officials have indicated that they have recovered as many as 200 sets of remains over the years.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but 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.

The JSA may be preparing for the ceremony, but President Trump has said 200 remains have already been returned:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that North Korea has sent back the remains of 200 American soldiers who were killed in the 1950-53 Korean War.

The repatriation is part of an agreement Trump signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at their historic summit in Singapore last week.

“Our great fallen heroes, the remains, in fact today already 200 have been sent back,” Trump said at a rally in Duluth, Minnesota, noting that he had “great chemistry” and “got along really well” with Kim.  [Korea Times]

I could find no confirmation that this has actually happened yet; you would think this would be major news which leads me to believe it hasn’t happened.  However, if Kim does hand over 200 remains that is a pretty significant amount.

Trump apparently believes (wrongly) he’s done something with the Korean War MIA issue that none of his predecessors has done before, in addition to treating it like a “mission accomplished” for simply having talked about it. https://t.co/RH2YZ70lOJ

— kushibo (@kushibo) June 17, 2018

I wonder if the North Koreans will demand payment for allowing searches for war remains inside their section of the DMZ?:

President Moon Jae-in said Wednesday he will push for the recovery of the remains of fallen soldiers in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the Koreas in line with the improvement of ties with the North.

In his address at the 63rd Memorial Day ceremony at the National Cemetery in Daejeon, he expressed hopes that the fresh detente will pave the way for inter-Korean joint efforts to account for tens of thousands of service members still listed as missing in action from the 1950-53 Korean War.

“We will continue efforts to recover the remains of military and police members who fell during the Korean War until we find the last remaining person,” the commander in chief said.

“When South-North relations improve, we will push for the recovery of the remains in the DMZ first of all. We will also be able to retrieve the remains of U.S. and other foreign soldiers who participated in the war.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the North Koreans have long attempted to milk money out of the US for allowing searches for war remains within North Korea.

Korean War veterans from abroad pay tribute at the graves of deceased fellow soldiers at the U.N. Memorial Cemetery in Busan on May 29, 2018. (Yonhap)

A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WATCHING #NorthKorea events: What It Would Mean to End the Korean War https://t.co/n6EqznQzbo

— Harry Kazianis (@GrecianFormula) May 11, 2018

For anyone that likes to read about the Korean War, the Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article that includes redacted testimony given by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Congress in regards to General Douglas MacArthur’s request to expand the war into mainland China.  In the redacted testimony the Joint Chiefs made a very good argument on why the limited war against China actually favored the United States military instead of hindering it during the Korean War:

Other remarks contradicted MacArthur’s recurrent complaint about the advantage the Chinese derived from the administration’s refusal to grant him permission to bomb targets beyond the Yalu River in China. Democrat Walter George of Georgia, echoing MacArthur’s assertion that “China is using the maximum of her force against us,” said it was unfair that MacArthur had to fight a limited war while the Chinese fought all out.

Omar Bradley responded that George was quite mistaken—and, by implication, that MacArthur was quite misleading. The Chinese were not fighting all out, not by a great deal. “They have not used air against our front line troops, against our lines of communication in Korea, our ports; they have not used air against our bases in Japan or against our naval air forces.” China’s restraint in these areas had been crucial to the survival of American and U.N. forces in Korea. On balance, Bradley said, the limited nature of the war benefited the United States at least as much as it did the Chinese. “We are fighting under rather favorable rules for ourselves.”

Vandenberg amplified this point. “You made the statement, as I recall it, that we were operating against the Chinese in a limited fashion, and that the Chinese were operating against us in an unlimited fashion,” the air chief said to Republican Harry Cain of Washington.

“Yes, sir,” Cain replied.

“I would like to point out that that operates just as much a limitation, so far, for the Chinese as it has for the United Nations troops in that our main base of supply is the Japanese islands. The port of Pusan is very important to us.”

“It is indeed.”

“Our naval forces are operating on the flanks allowing us naval gunfire support, carrier aircraft strikes, and the landing of such formations as the Inchon landing, all without the Chinese air force projecting itself into the area,” Vandenberg said. “Therefore, the sanctuary business, as it is called, is operating on both sides, and is not completely a limited war on our part.”

George Marshall, the secretary of defense and a five-star general himself, made the same argument. Marshall, insisting on “the greatest concern for confidentiality,” said he had asked the joint chiefs just hours before: “What happens to the Army if we do bomb, and what happens to our Army if we don’t bomb in that way.” The chiefs’ conclusion: “Their general view was that the loss of advantage with our troops on the ground was actually more than equaled by the advantages which we were deriving from not exposing our vulnerability to air attacks.”

In other words—and this was Marshall’s crucial point, as it had been Vandenberg’s—the limitations on the fighting in Korea, so loudly assailed by MacArthur and his supporters, in fact favored the American side.  [Smithsonian Magazine]

You can read much more at the link, but another fact of interest in the article was the assessment of Chiang Kai-shek’s military in Taiwan.  MacArthur had wanted to use Chiang’s army to open another front against the Communists.  His Army was however, assessed by the Joint Chiefs to be of little value due to poor training, equipment, and it was riddled with Communist infiltrators.  Additionally Chiang was assessed to have little to no legitimacy on mainland China.

All of this showed why President Truman fired MacArthur and also why the Republicans in Congress quietly withdrew support for him for President.  The Republicans instead threw their support behind another general, Dwight Eisenhower which history has shown was a far wiser choice for President than MacArthur.