Two descendents of a late U.S. war correspondent who covered the 1950-53 Korean War came to Seoul Tuesday at the invitation of the government. The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs wished to celebrate her vivid reporting of the war which helped arouse international support for South Korea.

The ministry said that a daughter and grandson of Marguerite Higgins arrived here for a six-day visit, during which they will receive the Order of Diplomatic Service Merit.

Linda Vanderbleek, a 51-year-old psychology professor at Troy University in Alabama, and her 20-year-old son Austen will receive the national medal on Thursday, in recognition of her mother’s sacrifice and bravery in covering the fratricidal war and enhancing the South Korea-U.S. alliance.

While here, they are scheduled to visit the National Cemetery, the War Memorial of Korea and the Demilitarized Zone, a four-kilometer wide buffer zone dividing the two Koreas that still remain technically at war.

After writing “War in Korea” in 1951, which was a compendium of what she had experienced on the battlefield, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Shortly after the war broke out on the peninsula following the North Korean invasion on June 25, 1950, Higgins, who was then working at the bureau in Japan of the New York Herald Tribune, came to Korea to cover the war.

Higgins also covered stories in World War II and the war in Vietnam during her 24-year career in journalism. She died in 1966 aged 45 of leishmaniasis, a tropical disease, in Vietnam. She was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington,D.C.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)