50 years later, peace still faces threats

Mike O'Callaghan

Friday, July 25, 2003 | 5:12 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan, who was a combat infantryman in Korea, is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor. The following commentary originally appeared in the July 2003 issue of The American Legion.

Fifty years ago, in July 1953, I was in the amputee ward of Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco with four months to go before my release. The announced cease-fire in Korea had some impact on the patients, but millions of Americans weren't overly impressed by the end of a "police action" few knew or cared about -- that is, unless they had a family member among the more than 33,000 killed there or the more than 103,000 wounded in combat.

In December 1953, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities Sen. Charles E. Potter of Michigan conducted hearings. The subcommittee's report, released in January 1954, was based on eyewitness accounts of American servicemen and U.S. Army records. Testimony during those hearings substantiated what Lt. Col. Felix L. Ferrante, a former POW, later wrote in his book "Tour of Duty."

"I have said it before, and I say it again: North Korean military are inhumane, sadistic bastards," Ferrante wrote.

All Americans should read the subcommittee report, so they won't be shocked by the conduct of North Korea in 2003. It also should be read by the thousands of young South Koreans who now attack American soldiers stationed in their country and believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is a good guy.

Allow me to share but one paragraph from the 24-page committee report, which includes many photographs of atrocities: "On Sept. 27, 1950 approximately 60 American prisoners who had been confined in Taejon prison were taken into the prison yard in groups of 14, with their hands wired together. These men were forced to sit hunched in hastily dug ditches and then were shot by North Korean troops at point blank range, with American M-1 rifles, using armor-piercing ammunition. Of the two seriously wounded survivors, only one lived to recount the gruesome details. Civilians estimated to number between 5,000 and 7,000, as well as soldiers of the Republic of Korea, also were slaughtered at Taejon between Sept. 23 and Sept. 27, 1950."

We have had an armistice but never a peace agreement with North Korea. The demilitarized zone established between the north and south after the cease-fire is still in place. Despite this separation, at least 50 Americans have lost their lives, and more than 100 have been wounded in and around the "Z."

In 1985, I returned to Korea and visited the 2nd Infantry Division, my outfit in 1952 and 1953. I also went to the DMZ. Upon returning home, I recalled what I'd seen on the road from Seoul to the outpost overlooking Pork Chop Hill, the site of brutal battles during the war. Happy children on their way to school waved to us. Parents bathed their babies in a river, rice paddies awaited harvesting, red peppers dried in the sun, and people worked in the fields. It was a peaceful scene worth recalling.

I thought it was a damn shame the Korean War took so many good lives to prove a point in an imperfect world that, overall, really hasn't changed that much. Nevertheless, I was satisfied that the war we fought 50 years ago was justified and reflected by the smiling schoolchildren waving to us that day.

My next time in Korea came in 2000 with seven other outside observers assigned by the Department of Defense to investigate the alleged No Gun Ri massacre. As our Black Hawk helicopters carried us over dozens of golf courses and traffic-filled modern highways, we saw little to bring back memories of the first time we saw Korea. Prosperity dripped from the eaves of our hotel, and the huge shopping malls in Seoul were first-class American style.

After more than a year's work, the observers concluded that a U.S. apology wasn't justified. The demand of some Koreans that we pay monetary compensation for the loss of life was bothersome. It was determined that civilian lives had been lost, but not nearly the number claimed and not as a result of an order to fire given by a 7th Cavalry officer or a noncom. One of the key former soldiers whose claims were used to describe a massacre was later shown as not even being in the No Gun Ri area.

My individual report to then-Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen concluded: "There isn't a clear-cut reason for monetary compensation to be paid to those now making claims. Who would receive payments and where would they begin and end?

"Thousands of American soldiers, who were drafted to save the Republic of Korea and the claimants, died in combat. Their wives or parents received six months gratuity pay and $10,000, period. The man who reaped the farm crops to pay off a mortgage, worked on the railroad to feed his family or was a lumberjack and supported a widowed mother and siblings didn't come home. There was no opportunity to have lawyers plead for millions of additional dollars or any foreign government to pressure U.S. diplomats and Congress to provide the money."

Today I ponder the past 50 years and wonder if those schoolchildren waving to us in 1985 are now among those waving "Yankee Go Home" signs in the streets of Seoul. I'm sure the Korean infantrymen attached to my platoon aren't in those crowds. We can only hope that in the near future an even more deadly lesson than the one South Korea and the world learned between 1950 and 1953 isn't again taught by the hordes from the north.

Bringing both peace and security to the Korean peninsula has never been a promising project. The North Korean government was led by Kim Il Sung, the father of Kim Jong Il, from 1945 until his death in 1994. The senior Kim perfected the art of blackmail to the degree never before seen in the modern world. Since his son has taken the reins of the dictatorship, he has made past extortion efforts look puny. Young Kim, now 61, has assumed the title of "Dear Leader." Despite his economic failures and the suffering of his people, he is treated as the exalted leader of an imperial dynasty.

American veterans of the Korean War reading this article have had the satisfaction of outliving the man who started the war, which cost an estimated 2 million lives. With encouragement and weapons from China and the Soviet Union, Kim Il Sung invaded South Korea. For all practical purposes, his army was defeated within five months. That's when China came to his rescue and halted the Americans at the Yalu River.

We know the remainder of that story.

We had hopes young Kim would be an improvement. About the only thing he improved upon is blackmail and the added threat of nuclear weapons. Some of our young soldiers who fought in Korea may outlive Kim, but his son, Kim Jong Chul, stands in line to be an even more "Dearest Leader." The people of his country had better hope that the new Kim on the scene, at 22, doesn't have plans to improve upon the methods of starvation and brutal treatment his father has brought to them. It's doubtful if he can improve on the successes of his grandfather's and father's blackmail, which included monetary and economic demands to return the bodies of American soldiers. His father extracted $500 million from South Korea's Hyundai Group just to have a summit meeting with then-South Korean President Kim Dae Jung.

Yes, American Korean War veterans were the troops who stopped the power grabs of the Soviet Union and started the decline of that nation's spread of communism. They saved the small nation of South Korea, which eventually became Asia's economic dynamo. Most of them came home and went back to making a living and didn't expect or get large parades and thanks. Now, 50 years later, then can only hope that the Korean peninsula's history isn't repeated and doesn't have to learned again by their grandchildren.

archive