A U.S. soldier, seemingly traumatized from combat, is being consoled by his Korean comrade with a warm touch of his arm. A statue of this image was dedicated at the Yongsan compound of the U.S. Forces-Korea last week in memory of 135 personnel of the two allies who were killed in the line of duty along the Demilitarized Zone since the 1953 ceasefire.

The monument honors 92 members of the USFK and 43 Korean soldiers who were called “KATUSA” or the Korean Augmentation to the U.S. Army. The mixed service system that started immediately after the U.S. participation in the Korean War to help the foreign forces better familiarize with Korean conditions still continues. During the three-year war, about 9,000 KATUSAs were killed along with their 33,000 American colleagues.

Two weeks earlier, we received the remains of 12 KATUSA troops who fought together with American soldiers in the worst battles of the war, died and were buried together in a valley in North Korea in the unforgettable winter of 1950. The Hawaii-based U.S. Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) sent the remains of the Korean soldiers after years of identification work with the bones recovered from areas around the lake of Jangjin (“Chosin” in Japanese pronunciation used in old military maps) in North Korea.

Private 1st Class Lee Gap-su was identified with his ID tag and the remains of Pfc. Kim Yong-su went through DNA comparisons with the data provided by the Korean families of missing soldiers until his identity was finally established. The day after I read the news reports of the arrival of the soldiers’ remains, I went to see the Korean War photo exhibition at Gwanghwamun again. It was because I had seen several pictures of the Jangjin-ho battle on my first visit to the exhibition two years ago.

I remembered there was the heart-breaking photograph of a makeshift gravesite the retreating troops built in Goto-ri at the southern end of the Jangjin reservoir for their fallen comrades. The graves in long rows had a small white cross on each. I had thought of the great difficulty of those exhausted soldiers digging the frozen earth with their little shovels while the Chinese were approaching. Now, I wanted to pay my tribute to the dead with a silent prayer before the picture of the gravesite.

But, to my regret, the particular photo I had in mind was somehow removed as the exhibition moved from a small park opposite Gwanghwamun Gate to the sidewalk near the Seoul Finance Center. Still, there remained other pictures of the Jangjin-ho battle and the subsequent Hungnam evacuation. I was struck by the even more tragic picture of the numerous bodies of American, British and Korean soldiers waiting for burial in Goto-ri.

They died when the war suddenly changed from a speedy advance to the north after the Inchon Landing to an abrupt halt and retreat upon the intervention of the Communist Chinese forces. In the 17-day “breakout” of the Chinese encirclement, the U.S. 1st Marine Division and the 7th Infantry Division lost 5,000 men. Army records show 875 KATUSAs were also killed in these battles. The Chinese are known to have suffered 40,000 dead.

David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter” (2007) had this description of the hellish combination of biting cold, the worst kind of mountainous terrain and the thrust of Chinese from all directions: “On that retreat, just when you thought you had been through the worst of it, there was something worse ahead. Something to haunt you for the rest of your life…” Other writers and historians recorded the bitterness of the battle of Chosin in many books, but the blown-up pictures at the photo exhibition are telling viewers enough of the winter of 1950.

The Chosin Few, the fraternity of the survivors of the Jangjin-ho battle formed mainly with veterans of the U.S. 1st Marine Division, has held commemorative events in chapters across America to pay homage to their fallen comrades-in-arms and recount the valor exhibited in breaking out of the Chinese encirclement. The Chosin Few (often deliberately misspelled Chosen Few) reunions are getting thinner in the number of participants year after year but their blogs convey the pride of the veterans in the history they played a part of.

The Republic of Korea that Pfcs. Kim Yong-su and Lee Gap-su left behind six decades ago has been tremendously transformed in every aspect and many now talk about entering the “20/50 Club” of countries that achieved an average income of $20,000 or more for a population of over 50 million. That of course is the reward for the great toiling of Koreans after the war, but the simple question is: could it be possible without the foreign help in the war? The degree of forgetfulness among contemporary Koreans must surprise our war-dead in heaven.

The nation is now fighting two “wars,” one external and the other domestic. In Seoul, partisan politics plunged into noisy trades of ideological claims between the right and the left with the U.S. security role on the Korean Peninsula increasingly questioned by radical skeptics. After the April 11 general elections, the entry of some former (possibly current) pro-North Korean activists into the National Assembly is raising political tension to new heights.

Yet, the new statue on the USFK compound built by a few private organizations is not the only evidence that there still are many who remember and appreciate. On Memorial Day last week, the spacious War Memorial of Korea at Samgakji was crowded with young couples accompanying little children who mingled with old families of veterans in the exhibition halls, the central lobby and gift shops. The earnest faces of the young and old assured this visitor that the nation can withstand whatever disturbances from inside and out.

Leaving the war memorial through the western cloister where the 40,000 names of the U.N. KIA in the Korean War are engraved on bronze plates along the wall in alphabetical order divided by states, I noticed an American family of four searching through the names. While I was watching, they spotted the name they were looking for and were taking pictures by the plates. I smiled at them and they smiled back. 

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik, a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald, was a long-time defense correspondent for a Seoul-based newspaper. ― Ed.