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Category: Korean War

July 17, 2013

I interrupt this hiatus (briefly)

Recently, I was pleased to learn that Miss Hannah Kim, about whom I wrote admiringly here and here several years ago, is now a staffer for Korean War veteran and Congressman Charles Rangel.  Because I have a certain weakness for Miss Kim’s inner beauty (I say this in all sincerity) I find myself unable to (resist embarrassing her or) refuse her kind request to post a link to her latest piece in the Huffington Post.  Here is the gist of it: As a...

Categories Korean War
August 13, 2010

Repatriated South Korean POW Sent to Yodok

An octogenarian South Korean POW has been sent to a North Korean prison camp after he was caught attempting to escape the country and return to his homeland more than 55 years after being captured during the Korean War. [Open News] According to the report, the “peace forest” that will be Jung’s final destination is the infamous Yodok, or Camp 15. Follow me in a slightly cynical thought. If we’re going to start using the I.C.C. as a means to...

Categories Korean War/North-South/Refugees/The Camps
July 28, 2010

Why There Is a Cold War in Asia

When someone escapes from North Korea and makes contact with South Koreans, and when China then repatriates that person to North Korea, the North Korean authorities typically execute that person, or send him to die in a prison camp. China has known this for years. That’s why the Chinese government is an accessory to murder when it does things like this: China has repatriated an 81-year-old former South Korean prisoner of war who had fled North Korea decades after being...

Categories China/China & Korea/Korean War/Refugees
June 30, 2010

China, Korea, and the Persistence of Mendacity

It’s nice to see Koreans calling China on its P.R. blunders with greater frequency these days: In its feature on the 60th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, the International Herald Leader, a newsweekly of the Xinhua News Agency, said the North Korean army launched the war by crossing the 38th parallel and seizing South Korean capital Seoul in three days. The article immediately drew attention, with some placing significance on China’s first admission of military aggression...

Categories China & Korea/Korean War
June 30, 2010

North Korea Demands $65 Trillion Dollars from U.S. Government

In case you thought there was an end in sight to North Korea’s demands before it would agree to disarm: The Obama administration ridiculed North Korea on Friday for claiming $65 trillion from the United States in Korean War damages, saying the communist nation is an economic “basket case” due its own failed policies. Have the North Koreans actually looked at our balance sheets lately? While it’s probable that the Congressional Budget Office has been working nights to recompute our...

Categories Korean War/WTF?
June 25, 2010

Some Korean War Anniversary Links

On this, the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, it’s gratifying to see that not all Korean films are anti-American propaganda harangues: The 15-year-old boy prayed silently beside a freshly dug grave as he and other prisoners waited to be shot by a North Korean firing squad. Kim Man-kyu, barely taller than his M-1 rifle, had fought with other South Korean student volunteers in an 11-hour battle before being captured just weeks into the 1950-53 Korean War. “Suddenly, a fighter...

Categories Korean War
June 24, 2010

Lee, Bush Commemorate 60th Anniversary of the Korean War

Golly, this was a nice thing of President Lee to say: As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I offer our deepest, most sincere gratitude to all the American veterans and their families for what they did. The friendship and bond that we share is reinforced by the strong and robust military alliance, which in turn was the basis for the Republic of Korea’s remarkable twin achievements of the past six decades, namely achieving economic growth and...

Categories An Alliance?/Diplomacy/Korean War/U.S. & Korea
March 26, 2010

Don’t Know Much About History

Just the latest example of historical myopia from the kids in South Korea. As the university was announcing the plans, the Chosun Ilbo reported a Gallup poll in Korea that showed 62.9 percent of teens and 58.2 percent in their 20s did not know when the Korean War broke out. Also, only 43.9 percent of those surveyed said North Korea is to blame for starting the Korean War, with the figure among teenagers 38 percent and 36 percent for 20-somethings....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Education/Korean History/Korean War/U.S. & Korea
July 29, 2009

Chosun Ilbo Profiles Hannah Kim

Miss Kim is the very young woman I wrote about the other day who single-handedly obtained a presidential proclamation thanking Korean War vets for their service and honoring the sacrifices of those who died in the war.  The picture accompanying the Chosun’s article confirms that the creator of the proclamation is the same woman I briefly met at a function in Washington about a year ago (also the only time I’ve met Jodi in person). Kim established a group called...

Categories Korean War
May 27, 2009

And in Other News, The Korean War Is On Again

It would be too unfair to entitle this post, “Obama restarts Korean War,” even in jest, but on the other hand, we may now safely abandon all hope that his election would pleasure the world with a gentle warming sensation, release our tensions, and leave us in a state of affectionate post-coital afterglow.  The world does not work that way.  I knew we were in for something like this as soon as Obama threw Kim Jong Il below the fold...

Categories History/Korean History/Korean War/North-South
December 8, 2008

Seoul Mulls Ransom Payments to Bring POW’s Home

It sticks in the craw to even consider paying ransom to induce North Korea into doing what the 1953 Armistice requires it to do, and return at least 560 South Korean prisoners of war the North is still believed to hold. One can only imagine what ghastly uses the regime might find for the money. Still, when you consider that for years, South Korea had paid the North billions and received nothing in return, getting at least some quo for...

Categories Abductions/Korean War
July 8, 2008

History, Through Charles Hanley’s Soda Straw

[Update: See also GI Korea’s post. Neither Hanley nor Syngman Rhee comes out of this one looking good, nor do U.S. officials and officers who had the breathtakingly poor judgment to attend Lee’s killings. Clearly, however, Hanley has told us nothing we didn’t already know.] Professional atrocity monger Charles Hanley is back again, faithful to his rigid 13-month schedule, to report breaking news from 1948 that contains no relevations for Korea-watchers: Syngman Rhee turns out to have been an evil,...

Categories Korean War/Media Criticism
June 25, 2008

Paroled from Death, Or Worse

The anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s invasion of South Korea is a fitting time to post about just the latest Ssouth Korean prisoner of war to return home after being held in North Korea  since a 1953  Armistice agreement in  it agreed to  return  its prisoners.    A prisoner of war (POW) escaped from North Korea 55 years after being captured and is currently staying in China awaiting entry to South Korea, the association of abductees’ family members said Tuesday. ...

Categories Abductions/Korean War
June 20, 2008

How Much More Don’t We Know?

There are two  unfolding enigmas  from that black hole of disappearing humanity known as North Korea this week.  The L.A. Times  catches us up on the rumors that North Korea may soon “discover” that, notwithstanding years of denials, it may have some more Japanese abductees after all.  I wonder how many Yen this will cost the Japanese  in ransom reparations.  Wouldn’t that make this, you know, terrorism? The second story involves an American who has been missing since the Korean...

Categories Abductions/China/Korean War/Uncategorized
March 25, 2008

S. Korea (Sort of) Links Humanitarian Aid to Return of Abductees

South Korea’s president has asked North Korea to consider sending home prisoners of war and captured civilians in return for receiving humanitarian aid from Seoul. President Lee Myung-bak said in an interview published Monday that he wouldn’t seek to link food and fertilizer aid to international efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. “Still, since we are sending humanitarian aid, the North should consider humanitarian measures, without any condition, on the pending issue of South Korean PoWs and 400...

Categories Abductions/Famine & Food Aid/Korean War
January 12, 2008

South Korea to push U.N. for return of its POW’s

President-Elect Lee Myung Bak’s transition team  is speaking more about its plans to finally bring home about 560 prisoners of war  it believes North Korea is still holding, in violation of the 1953 Armistice agreement.  South Korea may seek help from the international community in pressing North Korea to return South Korean prisoners of war, the Defense Ministry said Saturday.   North Korea has so far balked at South Korean requests to return POWs, saying it has never held any South...

Categories "United" Nations/Abductions/Korean War
April 15, 2007

Anju Links for 15 April 2007

*    We’ve Lost the True Meaning of Kim Il Sung’s Birthday.   It’s another OFK exclusive — I have the first video of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung Day parade.  In North Korea, where devotion comes from the barrel of a gun, the object of this  devotion  is now a side of preserved meat; thus,  I urge everyone to  pay their respects  with  a feast  appropriate for the occasion.  If only the people of North Korea were fortunate enough...

Categories Abductions/Anju Links/Appeasement/Korean War/Refugees