How vets see Korean War Armistice

The new Korean government will hold a massive ceremony in Seoul marking the 64th anniversary of the July 27, 1953, signing of the Military Armistice Agreement that ended the Korean War.

Only a fool would suppose that most Koreans believe that it truly ended the war. But those who fought in it certainly do.

Today, multitudes of young Koreans then unborn grouse and criticize the United States for not attaining victory against the North Korean regime, and instead spending two years negotiating a ceasefire while thousands of soldiers died on the stationery front lines.

Many of them actually believe that ending the war in an armistice caused the two nations to become permanently separated.

Moreover, those who study the matter know that the South Korean government was opposed to a negotiated armistice. The government headed by Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, had demanded a drive into North Korea and all out victory in a war that had killed a million South Korean citizens.

Indeed, the Republic of Korea did not sign the armistice agreement. It was signed by military officers of the United Nations Forces, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Peoples Republic of China. It is not a diplomatic document between nations; it is a military armistice between the belligerent armed forces.

But those who decry the agreement never saw the horrors of that war. Nor did they see South Korea as it was then; a terribly poor nation given up to mostly feudal-type farming such as had been done for five millennia.

All soldiers fought and suffered in it wanted the war to end. Few who fought in that war liked to see it end in what today is too routinely called “a stalemate.” The job of the soldier is to win at war, or perish trying to win, and that was the belief of most of them.

But even if the allied armies had occupied and subjugated all of North Korea and turned the peninsula back into one nation with one government, the war would not have ended for those who fought in it.

Thousands of the veterans from the nations that came to South Korea’s aid still are living in that terrible war. Many still suffer their wounds.

Many more suffer wounds of the mind. They cannot sleep at night when battle scenes, or those from a prison camp, or of images of the dead bodies all around, or of blood on their own hands come to mind.

And such thoughts do come, relentlessly, even though three generations have grown up since they fired their last shots, or were shot at by an enemy that seemed rapacious for their blood.

The same is true of their South Korean comrades. Many South Korean veterans are in hospital beds this day, still hurting from their wounds.

Old and honorable

The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs (MPVA), which provides hospital and financial support for those veterans, is also the ministry that is planning and will manage the July 27 Armistice commemoration extravaganza.

The MPVA has invited 150 vet- erans from 21 nations, plus dignitaries from abroad to fly to Korea and participate as the nation’s guests of honor.

It focuses on the tragic historic date of June 25, 1950, on which armored columns of North Korea soldiers suddenly invaded South Korea, bent on destroying its government and placing the people under control of a communist regime. For that commemorative program, just completed, 120 veterans were invited: 90 from the United States, and 30 South Korean veterans who now live in overseas nations.

The veterans are generously treated and the government subsidizes their travel expenses by partially paying for their air fare. Those who come here for the July 27 ceremony will stay mostly at the Grand Ambassador Hotel, which has been hosting returning United Nations veterans for the past 42 years since the veterans revisit program was established by an act of the National Assembly in 1975.

They will join with, and hopefully mingle among, the venerable veterans of the Republic of Korea Army. The ROK soldiers not only fought beside them, but in the later years of the war, young ROK soldiers actually served as augmentation troops within the military units of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States and some other nations.

Meaningful reunions

Throughout the war unarmed porters from the Korean Service Corps slugged the heavy loads of ammunition, the coils of barbed wire and other heavy supplies for every allied army unit in the front lines. And hundreds upon hundreds of those unarmed warriors were killed in action.

It is only in recent years that the Korean government, through the MPVA, has been holding a major celebration commemorating the armistice. That began in earnest in 2003. In that year, marking the 50th anniversary of the armistice, the event was colossal in size.

However, it was not until 2013 that the event took on a diplomatic tone and was in fact an outreach to the governments of all 21 U.N. allied nations that had supported South Korea during the war. It was a colossal event, staggering in grandeur for all participants.

Dignitaries from all of the U.N. participating nations were flown to Korea. VIP groups, including high ranking ministerial level representatives from every nation were met at the airport by official MPVA delegations and diplomatic and security teams.

They were escorted in limousines under tight security to the five-star Grand Hyatt hotel atop Mount Nam. There were several hundred of them. There was one veteran among them in that same VIP status who represented all of the world’s veterans from the U.N. allied nations. Security was tight. Plain clothes federal agents patrolled the halls near the VIP rooms. Trained dogs were brought into the dining venues to sniff for possible explosives. So those 150 aging veteran warriors, when you see them, try to understand and appreciate that return to Korea in their final twilight, as representatives of all of their comrades who served here three generations ago, and by their presence and their outright gallantry, ensured the freedom of this magnificent nation.