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My Story

From Wartime Korea to America

June 1950 –August 1953

1 Outbreak of War p5

2 Prisoner of War 14

3 Retreat from Seoul 18

4 The 11th Infantry Division 22

5 Guerrilla War in Chirisan 27

6 Move to the Northern Front 29

7 My Brother in the war 32

8 Pusan 35

9 Missing a plane to Ft.Sill Oklahoma 37

10 An incident during my high school days 37

11 Fortune Teller in Taegu 40

12 Korean Military Academy 45

13 My American Dream 49

14 Amherst College 51

15 My discharge from the army 53

16 Sailing for America 55

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The year 2000 heralds the beginning of a new millennium.

It also marks the 50th anniversary of two major events in my life: my graduation

from high school and the outbreak of Korean War. I graduated from high school in May

1950. The Korean War, which broke out only one month after our commencement, raged

for the next three years. For my generation, our lives in the late teens and early twenties

are inseparable from our war experience.

The war has changed our lives in a profound and irreversible way. Because of our

age (we were nineteen years old) we were the prime targets of conscription into both

North and South Korean armies. Out of our graduating class of 240, we lost sixty friends,

either killed or missing in action during the war.

Before the war, I never saw a dead man or thought about death. I took life as a

given, as the only natural state of our being. The immediacy of human mortality during

the war etched a lasting impression on me. For the first time, I came to see that death is as

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real as life. Before the war I had an idealistically rosy picture for the world and myself.

In my youthful optimism I had laid out detailed plans for my future. I will work hard at

the university to be the top student in my area of physics, earn a scholarship abroad for an

advance degree to further my education. Nothing seemed to be in my way to achieve this

end. South Korea before the war was under the authoritarian rule of its first president

Syngman Rhee, but there was a functioning legislature, albeit weak, that could moderate

the authoritarianism of the government. With better education and increased political

experience gained through election, there was a hope that more democratic, forward-

looking political force could emerge.

The mortal war that raged for three years has crushed all these idyllic views I had

for the world.

I came out of the war more resigned to the limitation of what an individual man

can do to his life. During the war there were many incidents in which a coincidental

choice made upon me by external factors, rather than my own will, changed the course of

my life. When a fellow officer and I reported for our first assignments to the 11th infantry

division in Taejon, he was ordered to go to a regiment farther away and I to stay at the

division headquarters. One month later, on his way to the division headquarters for a

meeting, he was ambushed and killed. During the communist occupation of Seoul, a

friend who happened to walk by the building where I was detained saved me from certain

conscription into the North Korean army. My older brother, Hunki, who was a medical

officer in the army, miraculously came out alive one week after his unit was completely

encircled and badly decimated by the Chinese and North Korean army.

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It took me a long time before I came to terms to a more positive outlook that an

individual human being can shape one’s destiny through his or her will and hard work.

But I still can not help thinking that some external forces beyond one’s control also

influence human destiny. One has to accept and work within these inherent limitations,

and make the best of it.

Outbreak of War

In May 1950, I graduated from my high school and entered Yonsei University in

Seoul. April and May are beautiful months in Korea. You can see the pinkish white of

cherry blossoms in the Kyungbok Palace gradually making way to the fresh green of the

budding trees in the mountains surrounding the city. On my 19th birthday in May, my

mother arranged a special party for a group of my friends. She surprised us all with the

offer of sake and beer at the dinner. Now that we were all university students, this was

my mother’s way to celebrate our elevated status and to show her tacit approval for us to

drink as grown men. What a joyous occasion it was-the strictly regimented high school

life was behind us, and we looked forward to our new college life with a great hope and

plan for the future.

June 25 1950 was a beautiful Sunday, with a clear blue sky. I was visiting Yukap

Han, a high school friend and a fellow physics student at Yonsei. On my way to his house,

I saw a group of people reading a news flash posted on wallpaper. It reported that North

Korean Army launched a large-scale attack along the entire 38th parallel but South

Korean Army was repulsing the attack. Such a border skirmish had been quite frequent

recently and it usually subsided after a few days clash. So I did not pay much attention to

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this report. Yukap’s house was on a small hill with a nice view overlooking the city of

Seoul. As we were chatting outside his house, we suddenly heard an airplane overhead.

A black, unfamiliar looking fighter plane was diving low towards the Capital building.

As I was trying to identify the plane, I heard the burst of machine gun fire from the plane.

It was a Soviet-built Yak fighter plane. We ran out to one of the main streets to find out

what was happening. An army jeep was moving down the street and an officer was

shouting through a speaker “All members of the armed forces immediately return to your

units! Repeat! Return to your units immediately”. We saw a group of solders, who were

apparently on their Sunday leave in the city, flagging down a truck and hurriedly

clambering aboard.

We then realized the seriousness of the situation. It did not seem to be one of

these small border clashes. There was an omen of an all-out war approaching Seoul.

Throughout the night, however, Radio Seoul repeatedly assured the citizens that the

gallant South Korean army was crushing the communist attack on all fronts and it was

pushing towards north.

But it was obvious that Radio Seoul was not telling the truth about the progress of

war. From the next day on, columns of refugees from the north began to stream into

Seoul, mostly farmers carrying their few possessions on their back and pulling the cattle

behind them. The distant thunder of artillery fires came closer and louder as the day

progressed, and the night sky of Seoul was lit with what looked like a continuous display

of lightning and bursts of fire. Towards the evening of Tuesday, June 27, an eerie shroud

of silence fell on the entire city except occasional cracking sounds of machine guns. After

a sleepless night, my brother and I went out of our house to see what was happening in

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the city. We met one of our neighbors who threw up his hands in a despairing gesture

and said: “It is all over. The North Korean troops are in Seoul. We can no longer leave

the city to south because the Han River Bridge has been blown off”. My brother and I

ventured further down the main street until we reached the capital building. Two black

tanks with North Korean flags were stationed at the gate with their guns pointing towards

the street. We saw an overturned car and lying around it were three dead bodies including

that of a young boy in his blue high school uniform. Their desperate dash to flee the city

was apparently too late and they were brutally machine-gunned down by the tank It had

been raining on and off during the previous night and already I could smell the odor of

decaying flesh from the bodies.

It was the first time I ever saw dead bodies. Here was a boy, who was almost of

same age as I was who was alive only a few hours ago, lying dead next to his parents. An

indescribable emotion of sadness, terror and anger grappled me when I realized how

powerless we were against the destructive machinery of war.

After the fall of Seoul, the big question in everybody’s mind was whether the US

would come to aid South Korea militarily. If it did not enter the war and very quickly, it

was obvious that the communist North would take over the entire Korean peninsula in no

time.

In January 1950, the US secretary of state, Dean Acheson, declared that the US

defense lines in the Far East ran through the Aleutians, Japanese Islands, Okinawa and

the Philippines. Korea was thus placed outside the strategic interests of the US. In view

of this so-called Acheson doctrine, most South Koreans thought it was very unlikely that

US would intervene militarily. It seemed just a matter of time before the North Korean

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army, far better equipped than the South, would occupy and unify the entire country

under their communist flag.

But the US did enter the war. Under an emergency United Nations resolution,

many member countries also sent troops to fight the aggression. Later in the war, the

Chinese also sent massive troops to aid the North Koreans. The result was a prolonged

war lasting three years pitting the UN forces (the United Nations forces composed mainly

of the U.S. and South Korean troops but also including smaller contingents from other

countries.) against the combined forces of Chinese and North Koreans. This war

destroyed the country literally to ashes, with the human casualties on both sides reaching

4 million. (Of which 3 million were civilian casualties, in a country of total population

then of 40 million.)

About a week after Seoul fell, North Korean army confiscated our house in

Chungwoon Dong to use it as a field hospital. We had to move to a relative’s house for

shelter. Because the American warplanes continuously bombed the supply lines, food

became very scarce to the people of Seoul. We could sleep at the relative’s house but he

could not feed us. So my mother made arrangements with one of her close friends in the

same neighborhood. This widow, who lived alone, was always very nice to me. I would

go to her house to eat. One day in early July, I had my breakfast at her house and was on

my way back to my temporary residence. As I turned into a small alley, I suddenly came

to face a group of North Korean soldiers and local communists who could be identified

by their red armbands. After surrounding me they shouted, “Comrade! We want you to

join the people’s volunteer army. Let’s go!” Without waiting for any reply from me, they

marched me to the nearby town office. The building was completely surrounded by North

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Korean soldiers carrying the long Russian rifles with fixed bayonets. Inside the building I

saw about hundred men, all rounded up by the communists either from their houses, in

the streets, or wherever they happened to be. Outside the town office were swarms of

women and older people desperately trying to find the whereabouts of their husbands or

sons.

Finally, a communist party propagandist began to speak, “Comrades! Our

country, the People’s Republic of Korea, is now engaged in the holy war of liberation

against the American imperialists and their running dogs of Syngman Rhee. Under the

great leadership of our beloved Marshall Kim IL Sung, our gallant People’s army has

now occupied almost all southern half of our fatherland except a small perimeter around

Pusan. We are at the crossroad of history! The great leader wants us, the people of Korea

wants us all to join the People’s Volunteer Army to fight this war of liberation!” As soon

as he finished his speech, there was an outburst of North Korean military songs---the

North Korean national anthem, the hymn to the Great Leader, The song of Red Partisans-

--. What appeared to be a spontaneous singing spree was in reality a highly orchestrated

act by the communist members who were strategically planted among the crowd.

It was then that I suddenly saw a high school friend of mine, Jongin Kim, coming

into the room. I knew that Jongin was a member of the communist party but in spite of

our differences in political views we have been close friends.

The ruling political power that was established in South Korea under the US

military government had many authoritarian, reactionary and corrupt elements. To many

Korean intellectuals, the ideology of Marxism advocating a classless society appealed

strongly as a simple and immediate solution for the social and economic injustices they

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saw around them. Many like Jongin, who joined the communist movement from an

idealistic and somewhat naive motive, would soon be strongly disillusioned in the reign

of terror during the North Korean occupation of Seoul. Jongin said in a low voice,

“Kongki, I saw your mother outside as I was going to visit my sister, and she told me you

may be detained here.” My mother must have heard that all the young men in the

neighborhood were rounded up in the town hall and rushed to the building to find me.

Jongin whispered to me,” I want to help you out of here. Just follow me and don’t say

anything.” He then took me to the chief communist member in the crowd and showed

him his party identification card. He told the party functionary that we were both

members of Kyunggi High School Self-defense Committee and that we were scheduled

to join the People’s army in the following week as a group. While we were talking, the

feverish singing of the crowd stopped and there was a shout,” Let’s go to the camp!

Forward, comrades! To the camp!” edA column of North Korean soldiers came in to

encircle the crowd and escort the company to the training camp. After the crowd was

gone, there were only three of us left in the building. The party functionary glowered at

us and said menacingly,” Comrades, I will trust your words this once. You must know

this though. Sooner or later everybody is going to join the People’s Army. Nobody can

get away.” With these words, he gestures us to go away.

Jongin and I then went to his sister’s house. As we talked about the prospect of

the war, we heard the drone of American bomber B-29’s overhead. Looking up at the

airplanes Jongin said in a melancholic tone, “Our party made a fatal mistake in assuming

that the Americans will abandon Korea. If they are coming in with all their military

power we will have a hard time fighting them.” He continued to say that in the event of

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Americans and South Koreans recapturing Seoul he would flee to North Korea because

most certainly he, a communist, will be executed. “But Kongki, your situation is

different from mine. I think it is a matter of a few months that the Americans will roll

back the North Korean forces and enter Seoul again, and until then hide yourself

somewhere to avoid being dragged into the Volunteers Army.”

That was the last time I saw Jongin. Without his help, I would certainly have been

forced into North Korean army with the group on that day.

Many years later I met a man who was among the same group that was forced to

go to the volunteers’ training camp on that fateful day in July. As a North Korean soldier,

he was sent to the Pusan perimeter in the North Korea’s last desperate attack against the

defending U.S. and South Korean forces, was captured and released from the POW camp

only after the armistice in 1953.

The reign of terror in Seoul continued until September.

I moved from one hiding place to another to escape from their incessant search

for young men to recruit in their army. It is the biggest irony of my war experience that

this escapade was made possible only through the help of several friends of mine who

happened to side with the communists.

In early September, the North Korean field hospital left our house and our family

was allowed to move back in. By this time I was so weakened from undernourishment

that I had to lie on bed. Local communists in the neighborhood once came to my house to

look for young recruits to the army but left without any word after seeing the emaciated

sick person I was.

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Even during the turmoil of war, there were some black market venders who

moved around houses to sell rice in exchange with almost any kinds of valuables; rings,

clothes, bracelet etc. These peddlers also carried the latest news of the war, most of them

baseless rumors, but some real news gathered by travelers from the war zone where the

battles waged. It was first through one of these rice peddlers that we heard about a huge

US armada being assembled offshore of Inchon, a port city 20 miles west of Seoul. There

was also a rumor of North Korean troops moving out of Seoul heading north.

Then one night around the 15th of September, through the eerie silence of the

night we heard what sounded like a distant thunder. It was the sound of naval

bombardment. The United Nations forces landed in Inchon! It took almost two weeks

before Seoul was finally captured. For several days prior to their entry to the city, there

was a continuous barrage of artillery fire first on the mountains surrounding Seoul and

then on the city itself. The barrage became so intense towards the dawn of September 27

that we could hear the hissing flight of the artillery shells over the roof. In the darkness of

our basement where we all took shelter, as we listened anxiously to the approaching

machine gun and rifle shots, we suddenly felt an earth-shaking jolt with a piercing sound

splitting through the sky. Our house got a direct hit! As the strong whiff of burned sulfur

drifted into our basement, my first thought was whether any part of our house remained

above us. Except for the sporadic sound of small arm fire, there was an absolute silence

surrounding the city. My brother and I cautiously climbed out of the debris of broken

glasses, pieces of wood and the mound of dust that was blocking the stairs. About a

quarter of our house was gone. As we stood there dazed at the ruins of our house, a lone

North Korean soldier, a boy barely seventeen or eighteen, was limping by our house with

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blood dripping from his wounded leg and weeping. He asked us the direction northward

out of Seoul and stumbled on. In the bright morning sky we saw a single airplane

dropping leaflets announcing the capture of Seoul by the UN forces

It was September 28, 1950.

Three months of communist occupation had finally ended in Seoul.

As soon as the fighting stopped in Seoul, one by one my high school friends

showed up at my house; Kyungwhan, Chul, Chongwook…How happy we were to see

each other again! We took turns to tell our stories how we survived the last three months.

We exchanged news about other friends. Some of them, like Yunsu, managed to escape

to Pusan before the North Korean forces entered the city. Some others, Pilkook and

Yongchan, were killed. Whereabouts of some friends were unknown. Presumably they

were forced into the North Korean army. While we were saddened at the news of our

missing friends, we all felt great relief and elation that our ordeal is finally over. The war

would be over soon. The school will open, and our life will be back to normal again.

Little did we know then that this was just the beginning of a war that will rage in

Korea for the next three years.

Prisoner of War

After the recapture of Seoul, a general mood of optimism prevailed in Seoul. The

UN forces kept driving northward, meeting practically no opposition. In less than a

month, a South Korean unit crossed the 38th parallel into North Korea. It seemed almost

certain that the war would soon be over when the victorious UN forces reach the Yalu

River and Korea will finally become a unified country.

It was about this time in early October that I decided to join South Korean army. I

saw a poster recruiting officers’ candidates with knowledge of English language. Since

the United Nations forces had mostly English-speaking troops from the United States,

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Britain and Canada, South Korean army was in dire need of liaison officers who could

coordinate operation with these foreign troops. All the candidates were thus required to

pass examinations in written and spoken English language. I was not quite sure if my six

years of high school English were good enough but I decided to give it a try. When I

showed up for the tests, I was amazed at the number of young people taking the exams. It

seemed as if almost all university students in Seoul were there. To me, the tests were

fairly easy. Simple translations between Korean and English, and some oral tests were

given by a Korean officer whose English, I thought, was not any better than mine.

About one hundred of us who passed the exams were immediately sent to a

training camp that the army set up in Myungdong Catholic Cathedral in downtown Seoul.

We were in the camp barely two weeks when half of the class was sent to the Prisoners of

War (POW) camp in Inchon. The rapidly advancing UN forces captured many North

Korean soldiers on their way. These prisoners of war were first assembled in the North

Korean harbor city, Chinnampo, and then sent by ship southward to Inchon. Our task was

to process these POW’s, that is, to interrogate them about their units, their organization

and where they were deployed and so on. After the processing, they were sent by boat

again to larger and more permanent POW camps on Koje Island, further south.

One day in early November, I was walking back to my quarters from the mess

hall. I saw a large group of new prisoners, several hundred of them, marching under

guards towards the POW base camp. The prisoners still wore their summer uniforms. In

North Korea, it can get quite cold in November. Almost all POW’s looked like

hunchbacks with swollen backs, because between the thin layers of their summer

uniforms they stuffed straws or whatever rugs they can find to fight the cold weather.

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Many had dirty towels wrapped around their ears. The marching column of these

“hunchback” prisoners in their soiled khaki uniforms presented an eerie sight. But to us,

it was almost a daily routine occurrence.

As I was passing them, I heard somebody in the column shouting, “Kongki!” As I

strained my eyes over hundreds of approaching prisoners, I heard my name shouted again,

and finally I saw somebody waving to me. I recognized the face of a high school friend -

Jongsu Kim!

Jongsu was a very close friend of mine, dating back to our grade school.

Originally from North Korea, he transferred to my school in Seoul when we were in the

sixth grade, the last year before graduation. This was in 1943 during World War II. In

spring of the following year, we both passed the entrance examinations to Kyunggi High

School, one of the most prestigious high schools in Korea.

World War II ended in our second year of high school. When Japan surrendered

to the Allies in August 1945, Russians occupied the North and Americans the South

along the 38th Parallel. Korea became a de-facto divided country.

It thus became impossible for Jongsu to visit his family in North Korea. He

supported himself through high school working as a live-in tutor. He often came to my

house to have dinner with us, and he looked upon my mother as his own away from home.

A good student, an excellent volleyball player, Jongsu entered Seoul National University

in May1950, one month before the Korean War broke out. In the initial turmoil of the war,

we lost contact from each other. And now five months later, here in a POW camp, we

bumped into each other, he as a prisoner, and I as an interrogator.

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As the column passed by me, Jongsu shouted, “ I am in the Second Company, the

Third Battalion.” I wanted to rush to him and talk with him. But there was a strict rule

forbidding any one but the security guards to enter the POW compound. How can I help

him?

I then remembered that a few days earlier I came across a grade school classmate,

Jungkook Nam, among the security guards of the POW camp. Jongsu, Nam and I were

all in the same class at Kyodong Elementary School in Seoul seven years ago. All I

remembered about Nam was that he did not go on to high school. He was now a sergeant,

in command of a platoon of POW security guards. I looked up Nam and told him about

Jongsu. Nam remembered Jongsu and was more than willing to help our mutual friend. In

the POW camp, cigarettes were very precious item and they served as the all-purpose

tickets to buy any goods and even favors. Nam would supply Jongsu with enough

cigarettes to last and also he will be our intermediary to exchange our message notes.

Several days later, Nam delivered to me a note from Jongsu in which he thanked

for our help and said his POW units would be shipped out to a more permanent facility

further south. He hoped to see me sometime under different circumstances when and if

the war is over. That was the last message I received from him.

I would see Jongsu two years later in Pusan, when President Syngman Rhee

ordered the South Korean security forces to release some 27, 000 anti-Communist

prisoners. Jongsu was one of those who were released then.

(When the UN forces negotiated for armistice with North Koreans and the

Chinese, the exchange of prisoners of war was a prominent issue of contest. North

wanted all their POW’s to be returned to North while South insisted that the prisoner

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repatriation be based on their free choice. Fearful that the American ally may

accommodate the North’s stand in order to speed up the cease-fire, President Rhee

ordered ROK security forces to release the anti-Communist POW’s. The incident almost

derailed the on-going armistice negotiation at Panmunjom.

This was one incident during the Korean War in which the two allies were pitted against

each other)

Jongsu had no choice but to join South Korean Army after his release. He served

out the rest of the war in South Korean army.

After the war, Jongsu became a successful businessman in Seoul. Every time I

visited Korea, we would get together for dinner or for a round of golf, and we would

reminisce about our school days. But somehow through our tacit agreement, we never

touched on one subject we shared in our past, our meeting at the POW camp in Inchon.

For him it was perhaps too painful even to recall the experience. I for one wanted to leave

him unperturbed in his memory of this painful past.

Separation from his family, North Korean prisoner of war, an officer in South

Korean army, a prominent business man who loved to play golf…

The turbulent life of Jongsu in many ways personifies the cruel political realities

of Korea that our generation had to live through.

Jongsu died of a heart attack in 1997.

Retreat from Seoul

After our temporary assignment in Inchon, we returned to our base camp in Seoul

and there in early December we were commissioned as lieutenants.

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By that time the tide of war reversed again, with the sudden onslaught of massive

Chinese forces. The advancing elements of the United Nations forces were badly

decimated and the retreating stragglers began to pour into Seoul. Just before Seoul was

abandoned for the second time since the war started, we were ordered to retreat to Taegu.

Before we left Seoul we were given an overnight leave. I rushed to my house at

Chungwoondong in the northwest corner of the city. My mother and brother were still

there, but they were getting ready to leave for Pusan in two days.

We all faced uncertain future. My parents had a friend in Pusan they can look up for

help but nothing was for certain. My brother, who was in his last year at Seoul National

University Medical College, was soon to join the army medical corps. When and where will

we be together again? What will happen to our house, which we were leaving behind

unattended? We spent a sleepless night. As I was leaving for the camp next morning, my

mother hugged me tightly and whispered softly words of prayers for my safety…

The evacuation of our army unit took place at night about a week before

Christmas, 1950. Two freight cars in a long military train were assigned to our unit; to

load up all our supplies and about hundred men! Two layers of rice bags were first laid

out on the floor and people piled up on top, our bodies touching each other and our legs

curled up to make room for more people. In the sub-zero weather, the unheated train

moved slowly towards Taegu. It was a tortuous five-day trip through the mountainous

central parts of Korea-from Chungnyung-Ni via Tamyang and Andong.

But our ordeal was nothing compared to the suffering of the civilian refugees we

witnessed on our way. The freight cars in our military train were at least covered from the

mercilessly cold wind, but the trains carrying the civilians had mostly open boxcars.

People were densely packed on every available square foot of the train. We saw mothers

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carrying their babies on back, desperately dangling on the side steps of the train. There

was overflow of people even on the rooftop of the train, precariously clutching each other

for balance…Those who could not get a ride on the train walked. On the snowy mountain

roads outside of our train, we saw long columns of refugees moving slowly towards south.

Kyunggi High School, Seoul, Korea

1948

In the Republic of Korea Army

1951

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Map of Korea

Where I was:

Seoul I was born here. War breaks out in June 1950.

Inchon POW Camp, Oct-Dec 50

Taegu and Taejon December 50

Chirisan Area The 11th Division Dec 50-May 51

Yangyang The11th Division May-Sept.51

Taegu Oct-Nov 51

Chinhae Korean Military Academy Nov 51-May 53

Pusan My parents lived through the war here. Leave for America, September 1953

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The 11th Infantry Division

About a week after we arrived in Taegu, I received my first assignment. I was to

report to the headquarters of the 11th ROK (Republic of Korea) Infantry Division in

Taejon, about 90 miles north of Taegu.

Several army friends gave me a send-away party at a small restaurant in

downtown Taegu. Next to our room was a noisy group of drunken American GIs. We

could not help hearing their conversation. They were apparently stragglers from the US

2nd Division, one of the units that were badly hit by the Chinese, north of Pyongyang.

They were saying that the US forces would be pulled back to Japan and now the fighting

would be carried out by the ROK’s alone. The sliding door between our adjoining rooms

suddenly opened, and one of the GI’s came in with a bottle of whisky, and said: “Hey,

lieutenants, here is our Christmas present for you! Good luck in your fighting the

commies! We are going home, Sayonara!” We received the bottle. No words were

exchanged.

The military situation at the time was so grim that his words about a complete US

withdrawal from Korea were quite believable. Later historical documents indicate that

this was certainly one of the options contemplated by the US Joints of Staff and the State

Department.

On Christmas Eve 1950, I left Taegu for Taejon with two other officers who were

also assigned to the 11th Division. As we drove north towards Taejon, we met column

after column of tanks, trucks, and artillery moving south. It seemed our jeep was the only

one heading north. As we were passing a village near Chupoongnyong, we came upon an

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eerie sight. The entire village was burning. Against the dark sky and illuminated by the

flame of the burning houses were silhouettes of drunken GI’s. Several cans of gasoline

were lying on the ground, that they must have used to set fire on the deserted farmhouses.

About 30 of them were standing in a circle around a burning house, with whisky bottles

in their hands; some of them silently, some of them shouting and still some shooting their

rifles aimlessly towards the sky. It was a sad picture of a completely disorganized,

defeated army.

When we reported to the 11th Division Headquarters in Taejon next morning, two

of us were told to stay at the Headquarters. Another officer, Lt. Lee, was sent to the 9th

regiment that was located further south in Chinju.

Looking back, it was a fateful choice. One was randomly picked to go and the

other two were as randomly chosen to stay. But two months later, Lt. Lee was ambushed

and killed by snipers when he was driving from Chinju to Taejon

The 11th ROK Division was a newly activated army unit with the specific mission

to wipe out the North Korean guerilla activities in the mountainous areas around Chirisan.

Even before the war, Chirisan was the stronghold of South Korean communist

rebels. When the UN forces landed on Inchon and recaptured Seoul, the North Korean

forces around the Pusan perimeter suddenly found their retreat route to the north cut off.

A large contingent of these North Koreans therefore moved to Chirisan and joined force

with the communist guerrillas who were already active in this area. These formidable

guerrilla forces threatened the security of the entire southwestern part of Korea. They

often raided military convoys on the main supply route from Pusan to the front further

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north. The remains of burned trucks after their ambush were familiar sights along the

main road.

There were several American officers attached to the division as a part of KMAG

( Korean Military Advisory Group). My primary work as an interpreter was to help the

coordination between this group and their Korean counter parts, the division commander

and his staff.

The relationship between the American and Korean officers was often a strained

one. Americans looked upon their Korean counterparts as ill-trained, ill-equipped and

poor cousins. Koreans resented this and despised the boorish behavior of some American

officers. The senior advisor, Colonel Rockwell, was a regular army man who climbed the

ladder to his present rank starting from an enlisted man. An ex-boxer and an alcoholic, he

certainly was not the model officer the US Army wanted to project to the Korean Army.

The Division Commander, Brigadier General Dukshin Choi, was a pompous man.

He was an officer in the Chinese army during World War II, who joined the newly

created Korean army soon after the end of WWII. He was very proud of the fact that he

was one of the very few Korean officers who attended the US Infantry School at Fort

Benning in Georgia. He never lost time to remind other officers of this fact, especially to

American officers. For some reason, these two men, General Choi and Colonel Rockwell,

hit off well. It may have been because Rockwell saw in Choi’s background something he

lacked, a formal military education, and above all the star of a general he coveted so

much. General Choi on the other hand, saw in Rockwell, somebody he can manipulate to

his advantage.

23

(It is one of the weirdest ironies of post-war history of Korea that General Choi, who later

became the South Korean ambassador to West Germany, defected to North Korea. He

died in Pyongyang in 1970’s.)

Colonel Kyungwon Park, the Chief of Staff, was an outstanding officer. Only in

his late twenties, he was highly intelligent, well organized and articulate. He was a

natural leader who commanded the respect of not only the Korean officers but also the

American advisors who worked with him. Through self-studies, he learned enough

English to converse and even banter with American officers. On one occasion, there was

a division rifle marksmanship contest. Colonel Park smiled to the American officers and

in a good-natured way challenged them in a pistol-shooting contest. Among twenty

American and Korean officers, he came out as the best shot. We sometimes played

friendly volleyball match, Koreans against Americans. Colonel Park always played the

center position and he was a fantastic athlete. With Colonel Park as the captain of the

team, the Korean team almost always won, much to the chagrin of Bob Porter, a GI who

was the best athlete of the KMAG group.

(Bob Porter was an enlisted man from New Hampshire. We became good friends because

we were about same age and we had similar college backgrounds. He went to Dartmouth

College before he joined army. Some 40 years later, through the help of my daughter,

Kathie, who was then working at Dartmouth College, I could locate him in Woodstock,

VT. We had a nice reunion but one day was too short for us to fill in the time gap since

we parted.)

(Colonel Park later served as a minister when Park Chung Hee was president of Korea.)

24

25

Guerrilla War in Chirisan

One day in January, three prisoners were brought to the Division Headquarters for

interrogation, one man and two women, all in their early twenties. From their demeanor I

could see that they were neither professional soldiers, nor ordinary peasants who were

forced to the mountain by the guerrillas. Under the dirty North Korean soldier’s uniforms,

the women still wore the blue high school uniforms.

It turned out that they were both former high school students from Yosu-

Soonchon area where there was a big communist uprising in 1948 two years prior to the

breakout of Korean War. They followed the communist rebels to Chirisan and stayed

there for these two years! Another prisoner was a student at the College of Veterinary

Medicine of Seoul National University who was forced into the People’s Voluntary Army

in Seoul less than a year ago.

While I interrogated them, I thought about my narrow escape from the North

Korean Army, my friend Jongin who saved me from this predicament, and Jongsu whom

I met at the POW camp. It was really a small accident in life, like an unpredictable

change in the wind direction that could have placed me in their position. The harsh

realities and the fickle irony that separated us deeply saddened me.

In the guerrilla warfare such as we were engaged in Chirisan, there was no clear

demarcation line between the enemy and us. Our division strength of three regiments and

several police units were too thinly dispersed through the vast mountainous area of

Chollado. The villages at the foothills of mountain were frequently raided by the

guerrillas for food and recruits, and often stayed occupied by them under the designation

of “Liberated Zone”. When our troops attacked them in these villages, the guerrillas

26

would retreat to the mountain taking the villagers as captives. Both sides committed

atrocities. When the guerrillas raided a village or a town, the families of the police and

the military, and there were many of them, suffered in their hands. Often they were

executed after being branded as the “enemy of the people” in a kangaroo court. This was

countered by an equally brutal punitive retaliation. In this cat-and-mouse type operation,

the civilian population was brutally victimized by both sides and lived through periods of

incredible suffering.

Korean War is often called a forgotten war. The guerrilla war in the Chirisan area

is yet the most unknown and undocumented part of this forgotten war.

The 11th Division stayed in the Chirisan area for four months During this time, the

Headquarters moved from Taejon to Namwon and finally to Chonju. Chonju, the capital

of Chonbuk Province, miraculously escaped the destruction of war and it still retained the

quiet charm of an old city.

One day, as I was driving through the streets of Chonju, I spotted a girl in high school

uniform who looked familiar. Even though I did not know her name I remembered seeing

her often near my house in Seoul. As I passed by her, she also recognized me and gave a

little bow.. I waved back to her. I was happy to see someone from my home in a strange

city. Next morning, Colonel Kim who was the G1 staff officer of the Division summoned

me. With a smile he asked me if I knew a girl by name of Tong Soon. I said I did not.

“But she says you were living in the same neighborhood in Seoul. She says she saw you

yesterday in downtown. Anyway, she is my sister-in- law. Why don’t you come to have

dinner with us tonight?” This is how I met Tongsoon, the beginning of our long

27

friendship Through her, I was introduced to a circle of students in Chonju. In my off-duty

hours I spent many hours with them. The month of April I spent in Chonju was a pleasant

change from the stark winter months in the ruined city of Taejon and the dusty provincial

town of Namwon.

(Tong Soon later went to College of Law of Seoul National University and became a

well-known journalist.)

Move to the Northern Front

In April 1951, the 11th Division moved from Chirisan area to the northern front

along the eastern seacoast. The entire division first assembled in the city of Taegu for

new equipment and supplies. Up to this time this newly activated division was very

inadequately equipped. Some soldiers even carried the WWII period Japanese rifles.

There were no artillery battalions attached to the division. Now all the old trucks were

replaced with new Nissan and Isuzu trucks. (During the Korean War, Japanese economy

had the best boom years since the end of World War II. The vast amount of war supplies

needed in Korea was ordered to Japanese manufacturers.) New artillery batteries of

105mm and 155mm howitzers were assigned to support the three infantry regiments of

the division. The troops first headed to the port city of Pohang and from there were

shipped to Kangnung. (The city of Pohang is now the center of one of the world’s largest

steel company. It is also the site of a prestigious university in Korea, Pohang University

of Science and Technology. During the Korean War, just a few months before we entered

the city, however, it was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the war. A memorial

tower prominently stands outside the city for the many student soldiers who lost lives

here.)

28

Our division was finally deployed over the area that is presently Sorak-san

National Park. This is one of the most beautiful parts of Korea, where the steep mountain

range that forms the backbone of Korean Peninsula, abruptly slopes down to meet the

blue waters of Tonghae or the Sea of Japan. I still remember the breathtaking scenery as

we moved along the seacoast. Sorak-san in April that year was burning brilliantly with

the red purple carpet of azalea.

29

The 11th Division moving north

of Kangnung towards

Yangyang.

My friend Bob Porter took these

pictures.

He gave me these pictures in

1987 when we were reunited for

the first time since the war.

30

My Brother in the War

When I was in Yangyang, I had an unexpected visitor: my brother Hunki. He was

an army doctor at the 3rd Division. This division was then located in the mountainous area

to the west of Yangyang. He somehow found out that I was at the 11th Division. When he

heard that the 11th moved to Yangyang area, he drove up to look for me. How glad I was

to see him! He told me that our family was then safely settled in Tongnae near Pusan. It

was the first time I saw him since we parted in our house in Seoul in December.

About a month after my brother’s visit, the Chinese and North Korean forces

launched a major offensive against the UN forces, the heaviest attack being directed to

the neighboring ROK III Corps to the west of us. My brother’s 3rd Division was part of

the ROK III Corps.

Under the pressure of this Chinese offensive, our division retreated to Kangnung.

One day a GI in the KMAG came to tell me that some people from the 3rd Division came

to look for me. I recognized one of them to be Lieutenant Kihyun Kim who was my

brother’s classmate at the medical college. I remembered him well because he frequently

visited my brother at our house before the war. Now he was an army doctor serving in

the same unit with my brother. He said: “Kongki, I have a bad news. I am afraid that

Hunki did not make it to come out of the enemy encirclement. It has been a week now

since the big attack and anybody who could escape must have shown up by now.” Lt.

Kim himself escaped the big offensive because he was in Taegu on business when the

attack came. Kim told me that my brother’s truck was in a long convoy retreating in a

single column through a narrow mountain road. Both sides of the road were steeply

31

sloped towards the high peaks of a mountain range. When the convoy approached the

village of Hyulli, the enemy attacked. A mortar shell hit the vehicle at the front of the

convoy. When the convoy came to halt, the enemy machine guns sprayed the vehicles

from the high grounds on both sides of the road. The trucks caught fire illuminating the

dark sky. With the roadblock ahead, only direction to run away from this scene of

massacre was towards the mountain, even though that was where the enemy was lurking

in ambush.

Among the soldiers Lt. Kim brought with him, there was a sergeant Min (Not

related to us) who was with my brother at the time of the enemy attack He was one of the

few who survived the enemy attack. He came out alive from the encirclement only a few

days earlier. According to him, my brother and several other soldiers from the same unit

succeeded to climb the first steep ridge and were about to cross a mountain stream when

North Korean soldiers ambushed them. Under heavy enemy fire at a close distance, my

brother’s group was scattered. Sergeant Min ran up a hill and finally collapsed to the

ground out of breath. He heard the enemy soldiers shouting to somebody,” Hands up or I

will shoot!” He was of the opinion that my brother was captured at this point by the

North Koreans.

Lt. Kim handed me a letter from my mother addressed to my brother. I t arrived at

the 3rd Division only a couple days earlier. My mother of course did not know about what

happened to my brother. She wrote that the family was now settled in Pusan and closed

with the remark that she goes to a nearby temple everyday to pray for the safe return of

her two sons from the war. As I read the letter I remembered my brother’s visit a few

32

weeks earlier. How can I break the news of his loss to my family, especially to my

mother? I could not stand the thought of seeing my grief stricken mother.

I went to see the new Division Commander, Brigadier General, Oh Duk Joon. I

explained the situation and requested a leave so that I can visit my family in Pusan.

General Oh was a very sympathetic man and gladly granted my request. He also let me

know that there was stragglers’ relocation center that has been set up in Kangnung. He

advised me to search for my brother there on my way to Pusan. Even if my brother was

not there, I might meet somebody who had some information about him.

Lt. Kim and his group would accompany me to Pusan. We first drove to the

stragglers’ relocation center in Kangnung. Hundreds of displaced soldiers from the III

Corps were housed in a huge compound of tents and being reorganized. My brother was

not to be found there. We decided to start for Pusan. Our plan was to go west towards

Daekwolyung, the major gap in the mountain range that runs parallel to the Korean

Peninsular, and then turn south towards Pusan. On our way, there was a farm house by

the road, where, according to Lt.Kim, his medical unit had stayed for a few days, when

the 3rd Division was moving northward a month earlier. We stopped at this house for a

short break. The owner of the house, a gentle farmer and his wife, who remembered my

brother, were deeply saddened on hearing what happened to him.

Facing the road and in front of the farmhouse, there was a well. We washed up at

this well and sat there watching the military vehicles on the road, some moving towards

the sea, to Kangnung and others heading westward towards the mountain. I still

remember vividly the moment when I saw an army engineer truck moving towards the

farmhouse. When it approached within a couple hundred yards from us, I spotted a single

33

figure standing on the open truck. When it was passing the front of the house, it was

almost simultaneous that the half dozen of us all called out and began to run after the

truck,

“Hunki!”

“Lt. Min!”

The truck kept going past us about hundred yards. And then he must have heard us. He

turned around his head and finally recognized us. It was my brother! The truck stopped

and he jumped down. We hugged each other and congratulated on his safe return. How

emaciated he was!

When all the excitement calmed down, he told us this story about how he

survived after the enemy ambush.

He and several stragglers he met in the mountain found a cave where they hid

themselves from the enemy. At night they would come out to have a drink from the

mountain stream nearby. They survived for about a week without any food until they

were rescued by an advancing Puerto Rican unit of the US 3rd Division.

With my brother now, our party first went to Taegu, where my brother reported to

the Army Medical Corps, and finally visited my parents in Pusan.

The encounter with my brother was such an improbable happening that even now

I often wonder what would have been the grief of my parents like if we just drove on to

Pusan without stopping at the farmhouse.

My brother’s health was badly affected from the malnutrition and exposure during

his escape and he lived most of his time in army hospitals until the war ended.

34

Pusan

Pusan was the wartime capital of the South Korean government. The city was

overcrowded almost to the point of saturation with the refugees from North Korea and

Seoul. No electricity and no running water. The streets were jammed with military

vehicles and decrepit city buses. The dominant color was the drab military khaki. And yet,

to someone like me who just came to the city from the frontline where no civilians lived,

Pusan had certain attractions. Occasionally I saw young schoolgirls, dressed in bright

colors, walking in the streets, laughing with their friends. Older women in flowing white

hanbok (traditional Korean dress) could be seen shopping in the makeshift food market

by the street. Small tabangs (teashops) were everywhere and they were doing thriving

business because they provided the only place where people can meet. There was even

music in the coffee shops. It was in one of these places that I listened to the LP disc, Patti

Page singing the melancholic tune of Tennessee Waltz.

It was weird to think that until only a few days’ earlier and only 200 miles away

in the same country, I was used to the incessant sound of artillery and aerial

bombardment. The glimpses of normal city life I saw in Pusan were in such a marked

contrast from the stark battlefield scenes I left behind. I realized for the first time how

deeply I missed a peacetime, civilian life. After a couple days stay with my parents, it

was difficult to leave Pusan and head back to the battlefront.

35

Missing a plane to Ft. Sill Oklahoma

About two months after I returned to my unit near Sokcho on the East Coast, I

was ordered to report to the Korean Army Headquarters in Taegu. It was in July in 1951.

The US and ROK armies embarked on a massive training program of Korean

officers at the Infantry School in Fort Benning, Ga. and the Artillery School in Fort Sill,

Oklahoma. An advance party of 15 officers each would be dispatched to the Infantry and

the Artillery schools to prepare the way for a larger group of officers to arrive later in the

program. The advance party will stay through the entire training program to serve as

interpreters.

I was one of the 15 officers selected for the Artillery school. We were scheduled

to fly out of a military airfield near Taegu within a few days. One day before the

scheduled departure date, however, I was unexpectedly called to the army intelligence

for interrogation. They wanted to know about some of my past activities in high school

before the war. They suspected me of being a communist sympathizer. Their suspicion

centered on an incident I was involved three years earlier in my high school.

An incident during my high school days

The division of Korea at the end of World War II in 1945 and the onset of cold

war almost immediately brought in the country a fierce and often brutal political strife

between the left and the right. The political left was for all practical purpose the

communist party. The political right on the other hand was a miscellaneous assemblage

of nationalists, landowners and, unfortunately, the people who closely collaborated with

the Japanese during their harsh colonial rule. It was this last group who was harshly

36

treated and expelled by the communists as soon as they established their political power

in North Korea. Naturally their hatred against the communists ran deep. It was often

misdirected even against any moderate, liberal groups who, they suspected, were

sympathetic to the communists. Unfortunately, this group became the nucleus of the

emerging South Korean police force. Even the high schools became the battle ground

between the opposite political forces. The communists organized students’ “Reading

Groups”. The rightists countered this by forming various “patriotic” youth organizations,

often in collaboration with the police.

In my third year in high school (At the time, Korean “high” schools ran six

straight years without division between the middle and high schools.), I was dragged into

an incident, which resulted in my arrest by police. I was then my homeroom monitor, a

student post appointed usually to the best student of the classroom. One day, an upper

class student told me to come to an important meting of all homeroom monitors that

evening at the home of one of my friends. I did not suspect anything of political nature

about this meeting. In addition to about twenty students from my high school at the

meeting, I noticed there was also a student from Seoul National University who I noticed

was an alumnus of our high school. He started the meeting with the statement: “The

American military government and its servants are about to force on us a new university

organization plan designed to deprive us of free student movement and the academic

freedom of professors. If we do not crush this attempt, all Korean students will be forever

enslaved to the US military. We must rise in a nation wide strike-involving all the high

schools and colleges.” It became obvious to me then that this man was a professional

communist organizer and most of us were duped into coming to this meeting. Then

37

someone among the group said, “ Look, the house is surrounded by police”. I saw

through the window of the living room a flashing red light atop a police jeep stationed

outside the house. All of a sudden, several uniformed policemen with rifles and

detectives with pistols burst into the room from all directions all shouting, “ Don’t move!

Hands up!” We were all roughly rounded up and taken to the nearby police station.

We were herded to a corner of a room and ordered to sit. Without any questions,

with no words whatsoever, two policemen began to beat us with bamboo sticks and rifle

butts. The beating went on for about ten minutes. Each of us was then taken in turn to

another room where a policeman asked all sorts of questions: whether we belonged to any

communist organizations, whether we knew who was the ringleader of that night’s

meeting. I told him that I was there thinking it was a school-related meeting of all

classroom monitors. I told him that I met the organizer, who was obviously a communist

from his speech, for the first time. The policeman wrote down all our conversation for

record. All of us, except the organizer and one other upper class student, were released

early in the following morning.

Little did I suspect then that this one incident would haunt my life for a long time

to come. Because of this “record”, I experienced a kind of Red scare reminiscent of

McCarthy era in the U.S. later on. One time a US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) team

came to my school for further questioning about that meeting. I was never appointed as

classroom monitor again despite the fact this appointment almost automatically was made

on the basis of academic performance. One homeroom teacher told me he would not

write a good recommendation for college because I am not politically “correct”. I was

38

miserable in the last two years of my high school. I often cut classes altogether and would

spend all day hiking in the mountains near my home.

And now on the eve of my departure to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, this incident came up

again. To the visiting army intelligence team I explained my involvement or rather non-

involvement in that meeting, as I have done so many times. It took several days before

they rechecked my story and they finally issued my security clearance.

But by that time it was too late. The military plane carrying the 15 officers (with a

replacement in my place) had already left for Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and USA. I returned

to the 11th Division at Sokcho on the East Coast and stayed there until August 1951 when

I was transferred to the Inspector General’s office in the Army Headquarters in Taegu.

39

A Fortuneteller in Taegu

My life in Taegu was a pleasant change from the one I had at the front. I now had

the luxury of living in a building rather than in a tent. More than anything else, I liked to

live among, and mingle with civilians. Taegu was a city crowded with soldiers, because it

was the site of Headquarters of Korean Army and the US 8th Army. Its civilian

population at the time must have approached a million because of the large influx of

refugees from Seoul and other northern cities. Shops, restaurants and movie theaters were

always jammed with people.

I had a rather boring routine desk job at the Army Headquarters from 8am to 6pm.

I had lots of free time after my work. A high school friend of mine, Kyuhoon Park, also

an army lieutenant, happened to be in the same building where I worked.

One day in September, another high school friend, Yongju Kim, who was an

officer with a medical unit somewhere up on the front, came to Taegu to procure some

medical supplies. After dinner at a downtown restaurant, three of us went to a coffee shop.

The dimly lit room had a narrow counter on one side, and several booths lined up along

the other wall with high partitions separating the adjacent units. As we sat in one of these

booths talking, I suddenly felt somebody tapping on my shoulder. Turning around, I saw

a man in his early forties looking at us over the partition wall from the next booth. His

face was sallow and flaccid. With a weak smile he whispered: “ I hope you will excuse

me but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. Can I join you for a short while

because I may be able to tell you something interesting? About you and perhaps about

40

your future.” We looked at each other and agreed to let him come over to our table. After

our long talk, we were about ready to leave the place anyway.

He introduced himself saying that he previously studied in Japan at a place called

“Takashima Research Institute of Fortune Telling.” He explained that Takashima School

is different from the conventional palmistry in that it divines one’s fortune not only from

palm reading but also from the presence of the entire person. He said he was ill and he

needed money for medicine. It was obvious he was in ill health because he kept coughing

as he talked, the kind of dry hollow coughs of a tubercular patient. With a weak smile, he

continued: “ I want to make a proposition. Let me tell you about your past. Completely

free. If you think what I tell you is true enough, you can ask me to tell about your future.

But this time you have to pay me a small fee. Fair enough?”

We looked at each other once again and almost in unison we agreed to his

proposal. I do not remember now exactly what he told me all about my past then. But the

fact that he correctly mentioned my having only one brother was good enough. My

friends also must have thought that there were at least no flagrant mistakes in his reading.

We were mildly curious and excited as he proceeded to tell us about our future.

He turned to me and studied my face intensely. He then asked me to open my

right palm. I saw his tobacco-stained fingers trembling while holding my hand. He looks

up to me and whispered: “ Lieutenant, I can see two things very clearly. First I see you

far, very far away from here and you will stay there. Ah, I also see a woman far away

with you. Secondly I can see you are a cerebral type of person. You will end up with a

profession requiring your intellect and will do well in it. By the way, you better forget

41

about amassing material wealth. It is not in your star to become a rich man. You will lead

a quiet, pastoral life in a country far away from home.”

At his remark that I will never be rich in my life, both Kyuhoon and Yongju

bursted out laughing. “Too bad about that, Kongki.” said Yongju “ O.K. it is now my

turn, old man. What do you read in my future?” he asked. The fortuneteller looked

closely at Yongju and studied his palm. As he alternated his stare between Yongju’s face

and his palm several times, there appeared a look of anguish in the fortuneteller’s

face. ”Well, what is the story?” demanded Yongju. The fortuneteller hesitated for a

moment and said, ”Sir, in your case I don’t get clear signs. So, I better not say anything.”

Yongju got very upset at this remark and said to the fortuneteller “ You are lying, old

man. You are a poor fortuneteller if you can not see clear signs, so I won’t believe what

you say about me anyway. So tell me just as much as you can read!” There was a longer

pause and finally with a determined look the fortuneteller told Yongju in a low whisper,

“ I don’t want to say this but there is a bad omen. A life of debauchery can ruin you. If

you want to avoid this disaster, you really work hard to discipline yourself.” Speechless,

Yongju glared at the gaunt face of the soothsayer and then shouted to him,” You no good

impostor! I know your kind. You dabbled in some amateurish fortune telling game and

use it on suckers like us to make some money!” “ I had enough of this non-sense. Hey,

Kongki, Kyuhoon, let’s go out of here and drink more somewhere else.” We went to

another pub and over a few drinks talked about the fortuneteller. We did not take him

very seriously then and we agreed that the man was mainly after some easy money.

42

That was the last time I ever saw Yongju. Two years after this meeting I would

come to America. After the war, Yongjin went back to medical school and started

practice somewhere in Seoul. That was all I heard about him.

In 1974-75 my family lived in Seoul for a year when I was an exchange professor

at Yonsei University. One evening I receive a call from one of my high school friends

about the sudden death of Yongju. At his wake I learned for the first time more about

Yongju’s life after the war. His medical practice did not go well. He also suffered heavy

financial losses from failures of some businesses he inherited from his father. He turned

to heavy drinking. “ The way he was drinking, I could foretell it would lead to a

disastrous end. Lately he started each morning with three or four bottles of Soju…” As I

was listening to my friends describing Yongju’s life in recent years, I could not help

remembering the fortuneteller we met in Taegu a quarter century ago.

I could not tell whether I believed in the predictive power of the fortuneteller.

All I knew was that a wasted life ended at an early age of 43.

43

Korean Military Academy

In the fall of 1951, Republic of Korea opened a brand new four-year military

academy in Chinhae, a beautiful coastal town near the wartime capital Pusan.

Before the war, Korean military academy had only one-year curriculum required

for second lieutenants. During the war, the duration of training was cut even shorter to

three months at the army infantry school. The objective of the new academy was to

provide a rigorous four-year curriculum to produce professional army officers. It was

modeled closely after the US Military Academy at West Point.

I would spend a year and half here at the Korean Military Academy, first as an

aide to the first superintendent Major General Choonseng Ahn, and later as an instructor

in the English department.For the first time since I joined army, my life in Chinhae began

to settle into a less hectic, more “civilian-like” pattern. There were several reasons for

this change. The four-year curriculum included many non-military courses, Korean,

English, mathematics, physics, chemistry. To teach these courses, the army brought to

Chinhae many officers with necessary academic background. Most of them were either

college instructors or graduate students before they joined army. They were young and

vigorous group of people, enthusiastic towards their new teaching jobs. Army also

recruited more established and older civilian university professors as part-time faculty.

There was a certain “academic” aurora about the place even though it was a military

institution.

By late 1952, the front line had stabilized once again more or less along the 38th

parallel. There were still intense fightings going on but the pendulum-like movements of

44

the two opposing forces across the Korean peninsular came to a standstill. Serious

negotiation for cease-fire was in progress at a village called Panmunjom. It was about this

time that Korean government allowed former medical students from military duty to

return to school. Under this new policy, my high school friends Yunsu, Kyuhoon and

Yongju all returned to their medical college in Pusan. On weekends, I often visited them

on their temporary campus in Pusan. I used to sit with them in the class waiting until the

class was over so that we could do things together in town. One could easily recognize

the older students who were just discharged from the military since they still wore the

army fatigues. They were boisterous crowd, laughing and talking loud outside the

classroom but at the same time seemed more serious and focused in class. Watching them,

I realized how keenly I missed school. In the preceding two years, the urgency of the war

did not leave me much time to think about my interrupted college life. But now sensing

that the war was definitely winding down, I wanted to explore the possibility of taking a

day off from my teaching duties to take some courses at a university in Pusan.

I heard that Yonsei University, my school before the war, also opened a

temporary campus in Pusan. I found it at a place called Yungdo at the outskirts of the

city-a cluster of army tents serving as classrooms. I recognized one of my old professors,

Professor Kiwon Chang, who was giving a lecture on calculus in one of these tents. As I

sat at the back row and looked around the room I thought how young all the other

students looked. They were only two or three years younger than I was but somehow I

felt much older than the age difference. After his lecture, Professor Chang announced to

class that he was giving a pop quiz. He wrote down ten problems on the blackboard for us

to solve. I was totally unprepared for this. After all I did not touch a calculus book, or any

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textbooks for that matter, for two years. Professor Chang recognized and greeted me

warmly. I told him I came to talk to him about the possibility of commuting from

Chinhae one day a week to take some courses. I also told him that I was totally

unprepared for the test. Professor Chang said that he understood my situation but advised

me to try to solve the problems anyway as a diagnostic test to find out where I stand with

the rest of class. He asked me to come back to see him again that afternoon. I struggled

for about an hour over the calculus test. After two years’ absence from school, it was a

slow process but I finally solved all ten problems.

When I visited Professor Chang in his office in the afternoon, with a smile he

handed back my test. On the front page was written in large letters a grade A with

additional comments “ Excellent work.” It is customary to grade mathematics or physics

test numerically. I wondered why he gave me a letter grade on my paper. Even though I

thought I did fairly well on the test, I knew it was not a perfect paper By giving a letter

grade, Professor Chang glossed over small errors in the paper and gave me the highest

letter grade A. It was his way to encourage me. He said, “ Kongki, since you are so near

Pusan, why don’t you plan to come to school on part time basis? I will make a flexible

schedule for you so you can make up for unattended classes by self-study. You can still

take the final examination and if you pass it you will get credits.”

Under this arrangement I attended classes two or three times, but in the end it was

not working out. My military duties put too many constraints on my free time, even

though it involved traveling to Pusan once a week.

By spring of 1952 there were increasing signs that the armistice talk at Panmunjum

would finally lead to the cessation of the two-year old war. In the mountainous central part of

46

Korea, however, heavy fighting still continued, both sides trying to win extra territorial gains

in order to improve their negotiating positions. It was about this time that Korean government

began to allow some Korean students to go abroad to study.

One day in February, I received a letter from my high school friend Chulwhan Kim.

He was leaving for America soon and it was an invitation to his farewell party in Pusan.

America seemed such a distant country to me then, not only geographically but the idealized

image I had of that country was so remote from the bleak realities of wartime Korea. Going

to America seemed an impossible dream, and yet here it was-my friend Chulwhan was really

going to America! Several high school friends gathered at a small Chinese restaurant in

Pusan. While we all congratulated Chulwhan, several other friends at the party, including

Yunsoo who recently returned to his medical college from the army, were also talking about

their plans to go to America. As I was listening to them, I thought about my own future.

With the war still going on, how many more years have I to serve in the army before I ever

would be able to go back to school? After the party as we walked in the dark streets of Pusan,

I felt depressed thinking about my uncertain future. Chulwhan must have sensed my

downcast mood. In an attempt to cheer me up he said: “Kongki, the war will surely end in

less than a year. I am certain ex-university students now in service will be soon allowed to

return to school.” He then explained how he won a scholarship to an American college. At

the United States Information Service Library in Pusan, he searched through a reference book,

“A Guide to US Colleges and Universities” to select about ten colleges he liked. He wrote

directly to these schools asking for admission and financial assistance. The probability of

getting a scholarship this way seemed very low to me. Even if I got one, I had another

problem Chulwhan did not have. My discharge from the military service presented almost

insurmountable difficulty. In spite of these doubts, Chulwhan’s advice stuck in my mind.

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My American Dream

Even before the war, America was a fascinating country to me.

My first introduction to America was through my father. My father spent three years

in America in the twenties. He was a student at a prep school in Germantown, Pennsylvania

and later attended a college in Roanoke in Virginia. He even had an American name, Phillip,

after his real name Byungsoo. He told my brother and me about little George Washington

telling truth about chopping his father’s precious tree. He also told us about Abraham Lincoln

and his emancipation of black slaves. (I later learned that the history of American Civil War

was much more complex than this simple version.) The first glimpse of American scenery

was a picture of my father at the Potomac River with a white domed building in the

background, a handsome man in his late twenties posing by a cherry tree in full bloom. There

was something romantic and fantastic about the whole scenery, the white building (I think it

was the Jefferson Memorial) and the glimpses of “westerners” in the background. I remember

looking at the picture, fantasizing about the remote country called America.

Other impressions of America, I got them mostly from reading.

Early in my middle school days, I was absorbed in reading the adventures of Tom

Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in the Mississippi country. I could easily place my friends and

myself in their adventurous saga.I was enthralled by the romance of ante-bellum South and

the epic drama of American civil War of “Gone with the Wind”. Reading Carl Sanburg’s

“Chicago” I was awed by the industrial might of America.

My contact with real America began after World War II when the American troops

came to Korea. As a fourteen-year-old boy, I remember standing in line with the huge crowd

along a main street in Seoul, watching the American GIs entering the city. It was like

watching Martians landing on the earth. The boisterous young soldiers, all tall and ruddy in

complexion, were in stark contrast to the subdued defeated Japanese soldiers. Even to an

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average man on the street, the superiority of American arms was obvious. We marveled at the

small army cars, which we soon found out were called “jeep”, darting with powerful

acceleration even when loaded with four big soldiers. The columns of trucks, jeeps and

armored cars streamed into the city, with a squadron of Grumman fighter planes flying low

over them… It was an overwhelming spectacle and an impressive show of America’s

technology and its power.

Throughout my high school days, from after the end of World War II until the

outbreak of Korean War, it was the era of Pax Americana. America was the unchallenged

supreme world power. It was true that the Soviet Russia confronted America with its

communist ideology and its vast military machinery. But America was the sole possessor of

atomic bombs and the whole world including even the Soviet block saw America as the

economic super power. This was the time of the Marshall Plan that effectively prevented the

collapse of starving Europe into the communist bloc. Looking back at that time immediately

after WWII, when I was in my sensitive teens, it was only natural that I felt the presence of

America everywhere.

I was very much aware of some social injustices existing in America. Even in his

most nostalgic reminiscences about his American experience, my father told us of the time

when he was refused service at a barbershop in San Francisco. Captain White, a black officer

I befriended during the war often told me about the racial discriminations he faced in the

segregated army. On the other hand, I was fortunate to meet Private Bob Porter at the 11th

ROK Division where he worked with the US advisory group. He was about my age, from

Hew Hampshire, and attended Dartmouth College before he was drafted. We often worked

together at the Division G3 section (Operation, Planning and Training) mapping troop

movements as we received telephone reports from the regiments and battalion out in the field.

In between reports, we talked about all kinds of subjects. We compared our school

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experiences. We told each other about our families. We debated over the relative merits of

socialism versus capitalism. Just as Bob seemed to be genuinely surprised at the extent of my

knowledge of world history and literature, I was impressed with Bob’s candor and openness

when I asked him about the racial and other social problems of American society. (Almost a

half century after the Korean War, in 1989, I met Bob Porter again in Saratoga, New York.

My daughter Kathie was then working at Dartmouth College. On a visit to Kathie’s I

remembered Bob’s Dartmouth connection and Kathie found his address at the Alumni Office.

I called Bob at his Woodstock, VT home. He had a daughter who was a student at Skidmore

College in Saratoga, NY, only fifteen miles from my place. On his next visit to her daughter,

we met.)

My overall image of America was that of a rich and dynamic country, an open society,

with all its great achievements and serious shortcomings standing side by side and for every

one to see; an idealistic country constantly in the process for changes. Above all, America

was a constant reminder to me of what Korea was not and what Korea can aspire to be. On a

personal level, America beckoned to me as a land of adventure and hopeful opportunity for

better education.

Amherst College

A few weeks after Chulwhan’s farewell party, I visited the US Information Service

library in Pusan. I searched through a college directory to select a list of American colleges.

Before the war, my father brought home an issue of Life magazine with a feature article on

American colleges. Somehow this Life magazine article etched in my mind the notion that

the most ideal campus in America must be located in New England and further it had be a

small liberal arts college. My search started alphabetically. Amherst College was chosen by

pure accident because the name was one of the firsts in the directory in alphabetical order,

which met my selection criteria of being a small New England College. Beyond that I knew

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absolutely nothing about the college. Amherst was one of the ten colleges on my selection list.

As I remember now, some colleges on the list were quite obscure schools, but at the time I

was not in a position to distinguish them. They were all great American colleges.

About the same time, my high school friend Younsu Koo was also applying to

colleges in America. He had an old typewriter at his home in Pusan. I would visit him on

weekends, and borrowed his typewriter to write letters to the selected American colleges.

I wrote about my desire to continue education at an American college and enclosed my

high school grades. I also explained that because of the war situation the exact date of my

discharge from the military service remained uncertain.

About a month later, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from Dean C.Scott

Porter of Amherst College. From the tone of the letter, it was clear that he was considering

my case favorably but he asked me to have an interview with a recent alumnus of Amherst

who just returned to Korea. His name was George Kim, Class of 51 now working at the Bank

of Korea in Pusan. After the interview Mr. Kim was then asked to write a letter of

recommendation to Dean Porter.

Mr. Kim was a man in his late twenties who, I soon found out, was an alumnus of

Kyunggi, the same high school I graduated from. It was clear that Mr. Kim was a very loyal

Amherst alumnus as he fondly told me about his Amherst experience. Mr.Kim talked about

the excellent faculty and the high academic standards at Amherst. He said that Amherst was

one of the hardest colleges to get in, and as such Amherst is attended by the graduates of the

most prestigious high schools of the country Mr.Kim asked me how confident I felt about my

English. He would feel more comfortable in recommending me to Amherst if somebody he

knew personally can attest to my English proficiency. It so happened that Mr. Kim was a

good friend of my English teacher at high school, Mr. Song Wook. Furthermore, my ex-

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teacher was then teaching at the Naval Academy in Chinhae and I saw him frequently in

town.

Mr. Kim must have written a strong letter for me to Amherst. Within a month or so, I

received a second letter from Dean Porter, granting my admission to Class 1957 and a

scholarship of $900. That stipend covered the tuition, room and board.

Looking back to the sequence of events that led to my admission to Amherst College,

I still ponder over the unbelievable luck I had. Would Dean Porter have acted so promptly on

my application if there were no alumnus like Mr. Kim who could interview me in Korea? A

foreign student from wartime Korea must have been a very risky candidate. The fact that

Mr.Kim was a Kyunggi alumnus was certainly an advantage, because he was uniquely in a

position to compare the academic standards of my high school vis-à-vis the admission

standard of Amherst College. To this day I am deeply grateful to Dean Porter and Mr.Kim

who had faith in me and gambled on me.

(Dr. George Kim, Amherst Class 52, later returned to America to earn a Ph.D. in

economics at University of Wisconsin. He is a former professor and dean at the college of

Commerce and Business at Sogang University in Seoul.)

My discharge from the army

Now I had to tackle the problem of military discharge.

I went to see Major General Chong-oh Kim, the superintendent of the military academy. I

showed him the letter of admission from Amherst College and requested a long leave of

absence for the duration of my study abroad. My argument was that my higher education at

an American university would prepare me for becoming a better instructor at the academy

when I returned. I do not think he was quite persuaded but rather amused by my argument.

Finally he said that even though granting a leave of absence to an officer during wartime was

unprecedented, he would not object if I could convince the people at the Army Headquarters.

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He suggested I make the request directly to the adjutant general’s office at the Army

Headquarters. At the time the Army Headquarters was in the city of Taegu, 90 miles north of

Chinhae. From Chinhae I had to hitch a ride to Pusan and take a train to Taegu. It is hard to

believe now that in 1952 this trip took almost an entire day. There were no regularly

scheduled train services during the war. Most trains were used to carry troops and military

supplies. I waited hours at the Pusan railroad station for a military train going in the general

direction of Taegu. Most trains went to Wonju, a city near the frontline, without stopping at

Taegu. But the train engineers were considerate enough to slow down the train near Taegu so

that the passengers could jump off the moving train. I made several trips to Taegu on these

trains to bring my discharge request directly to the Army Headquarters. It took almost a year

for my request to be reviewed by the army. Finally in May 1953 my discharge was approved.

Two months later, Korean war, the war that devastated the country for three long

years, finally ended.

With the end of war, the Korean government began to move from the wartime capital

Pusan back to Seoul. This meant that now I had to travel to Seoul to do all the necessary

paperwork to obtain my passport. During the war, Pusan had more than a million people

living in the city, about half of them refugees from Seoul. Now there was a big migration of

these refugees back to Seoul. It was an arduous trip to Seoul on a heavily congested, slow

train.

It was a sad homecoming to Seoul. Once a lively city of almost a million people was

now left in dark ruins. I went to visit our house at the foot of In-Wang-San, the mountain on

the northwest edge of the city. Our house, left empty for more that two years, was in

shambles, with about one-third of the structure blown away by bombardment. As I stared at

the address “52-29 Chung-Woon-Dong”, I had the feeling that I will not see this place for a

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long time to come. (I would see my house twelve years later in 1965 on my first return

from America.)

Sailing for America

Back in Pusan, I booked a seat on a freighter-passenger ship, The USS Hurricane,

bound for Honolulu, Hawaii. The exact time of departure was unknown because the shipping

company was not certain when loading the ship would be completed. Telephones were rare in

Pusan in those days, so I had to go to the shipping company every morning to check out the

time of departure. When I checked in the morning of September 2, I was told this time that

the boat was leaving at 5 PM that same day! I rushed home to tell my parents. Somehow my

friends found out about my impending departure and about twelve of them were waiting for

me at the pier.

It now takes a 14-hour direct flight from Seoul to New York. It is not uncommon

these days for a Korean student studying in America to fly to Korea to spend their summer

vacations at home. But in 1953 when it took more than a week by boat to the West Coast,

going to America conjured up in my mind an image like a space travel to a distant star. It was

not until 1965, twelve years later, that I returned to Korea with my family, my wife Yungwha

and my six-year-old daughter Kathie.

As we shook hands, one of my friends asked me,” Kongki, when are you coming

back?” “In four years, after I finish my college.” I replied. I hugged my mother and told her I

will come back soon, even though I knew for sure that it was not going to be soon. Finally

the time came to board the ship. One of my friends shouted: “ Let’s give Kongki big cheers!

But Kongki, you never forget to come back to us!”

As the ship slowly moved out of the Pusan harbor, I stood on the deck and waved to

them, my parents, my brother and the crowd of my friends. I saw my brother running until he

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came to the end of the long pier, stopped and waved his hat. I was standing there at the stern

of the ship, until the people, the harbor and the land gradually faded into the dark blue

expanse of the sea.

Voyage to Hawaii

The SS Hurricane was an 8000-ton freight ship with six cabins. There were eleven

passengers, all Korean students going to America for the first time, six women and five men.

When the ship was sailing past the shores of southern parts of Japan, the flickering

lights of the Japanese towns looked beautiful and almost unreal. Our eyes were so used to the

darkness of night in the wartime Korea.

There were some interesting people among the crew. The Chinese steward in his

fifties had a gentle dignified demeanor about him. He told us that he came to America as a

young man from Shanghai and served in the merchant marine during the WW II but would

not tell much beyond that. I do not know if he saw in us the image of himself when he

migrated to America as a young man, but he was very kind to us throughout the voyage.

When we left the boat in Honolulu, he gave us his Brooklyn address to visit.

Among the kitchen crew, there was a stateless man, an Eastern European. Because he

did not have any passport, he could not land at any port. The ship was his permanent

residence. Then there was an Italian sailor who liked to sing. Atop the tall sail mast that was

swinging dangerously with the huge waves, he would merrily sing Santa Lucia and other

Italian folk songs. We would often sing with him.We became quite friendly with the crew.

We even entertained them with a song and dance show, all the women in our group wearing

their colorful Korean dresses- chima and jogori.

The sudden change of diet from Korean food, basically vegetarian, to the rich

American food, was a challenging experience. In the wartime Korea, meat, eggs and milk

55

were hard to get. In the first few days of our voyage, therefore, we looked forward to the

juicy steaks and heaps of French fries served in the dining room. Towards the middle of the

voyage, however, we got tired of the rich American food. One evening one of the girls came

to dinner with a jar of kochujang, the Korean red hot pepper sauce, and passed it around the

table. As the pungent aroma whiffed inside the dining room, the chief steward asked if he

could have a taste of it. He took the jar to the kitchen and after a while, the entire kitchen

crew came out making some comments about the condiment, ranging from “ Strong stuff.

How can you stand it?” to “ Very good. We have something similar to this in Louisiana”.

Thus we were introduced to tobasco sauce which soon became our dietary necessity through

the remainder of the voyage.

We spent most of our time lounging on the deck. Feeling the ocean spray and

watching the silvery flying fish leaping over the waves, the recent memory of war seemed far

away. We exchanged our stories. About our school days before the war. How we survived

the war. We talked about our future.

About 10 days after we left Pusan, the captain announced that the ship would be

arriving in Honolulu next day. About four o’clock in the morning there was a knock at the

door and a porter said, “ You can see Hawaii now.” We all jumped out of bed and rushed to

the deck. Far out beyond the dark sea we saw faint flickering lights on the horizon. The

excitement of approaching America was too much for all of us to return to our cabins. As the

morning dawned, we saw a fleet of fishing boats passing by our ship, the crew waving at us.

The silhouette of a city gradually emerged and grew bigger in our view as the ship moved on

towards Honolulu. As I watched the stream of cars speeding on the highways, white, red,

blue and all different colors, for the first time, I knew I was now in America. Strangely, this

colorful contrast to the drab, khaki monotone of military vehicles I was used to seeing in

Korea was my strong initial impression of America

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It was a glorious morning on that day, September 12, 1953. So here we were. We

were finally in the United States of America. What would lie ahead for us in this strange land?

With a mixed feeling of excitement and some trepidation for the unknown future, I was there,

standing on the deck, watching the approaching skyline of Honolulu against the bright

sunrise.

Voyage to Hawaii

On the USS Hurricane