Detained US vet: back story

Newman, 85, formerly trained guerrilla group

SEOUL: An 85-year-old US veteran being held in North Korea spent his war years in one of the Army’s first special forces units, helping a clandestine group of Korean partisans who were fighting and spying behind enemy lines.

Now South Koreans, who served with Merrill Newman, who is beginning his sixth week in detention, say their unit was perhaps the most hated and feared by the North and his association with them may be the reason he’s being held.

‘‘Why did he go to North Korea?’’ asked Park Boo Seo, a former member of unit known in Korea as Kuwol, which is still loathed in Pyongyang and glorified i n Seoul for the damage it inflicted on the North during the war. ‘‘North Koreans still gnash their teeth at the Kuwol unit.’’

Some of those guerrillas, interviewed this week, remember Mr Newman as a handsome, thin American lieutenant who got them rice, clothes and weapons during the later stages of the 1950-53 war, but largely left the fighting to them.

Mr Newman was scheduled to visit South Korea to meet former Kuwol fighters following his North Korea trip. Mr Park said about 30 elderly former guerrillas, some carrying bouquets of flowers, waited in vain for several hours for him at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on Oct 27 before news of his detention was released.

Mr Newman appeared over the weekend on North Korean state TV apologising for alleged wartime crimes in what was widely seen as a coerced statement.

Mr Park and several other former guerrillas said they recognised Mr Newman from his past visits to Seoul in 2003 and 2010 — when they ate raw fish and drank soju, Korean liquor — and from the TV footage, which was also broadcast in South Korea.

Mr Newman’s family has not been in touch with him, but he was visited at a Pyongyang hotel by the Swedish ambassador, his family said, and he appeared to be in good health, receiving heart medicine and being checked on by medical personnel.

His family hasn’t responded to requests for comment on his wartime activities. Jeffrey Newman has previously said that his father, an avid traveller and retired finance executive from California, had always wanted to return to the country where he fought during the Korean War.

Newman served in the US Army’s 8240th unit, also known as the White Tigers, whose missions remained classified until the 1990s.

His military records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show he served on active duty from September 1950 until October 1953, much of it in Korea, after which he was a reservist for nearly four years.

Analyst Cho Sung-hun, who interviewed Mr Newman for a book on guerrilla warfare during the Korean War, described him as a ‘‘gentle American citizen’’ and said North Korea should not trigger new tensions with his detention. North Korea has detained at least seven Americans since 2009 and five of them have been either released or deported. Korean-American missionary and tour operator Kenneth Bae has been held for more than year.