WAR AND REMEMBRANCE
By Donald P. Gregg
The U.S.-Korea Review,
May-August 1999
[Editor’s Note:
Donald Gregg was the President and Chairman of the Board, The Korea
Society, at the time of this writing.]
In mid-June, at the Mansfield Center
of the University of Montana
in Missoula, my wife and I took
part in a unique effort to explore the Korean War and its continuing
influence. The format was a
conference-cum-dialogue involving Koreans and Americans who had fought in the
war, as well as those who had written about its impact on individuals and
families, in fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
The conference in effect brought together some of those who had ordered
the attacks, fired the mortars and driven the tanks and those upon whom
violence and its after-shocks had been inflicted. What I heard was fascinating and profoundly
informative.
The memories of
the retired soldiers were vivid and in some cases inspiring. What came through clearly from the
recollections of the American fighting men was that they had no idea whatsoever
of why they were in Korea,
or of what the war might be accomplishing in a broader
sense. They only knew that Korea
was an awful, dangerous place they had never heard of and that the sooner they
went home, the better. The possibility
that the Korean War could become the keystone for winning the Cold War was
beyond their comprehension.
Korean military
recollections, eloquently voiced by General Paik Sun Yup, contained strong
elements of satisfaction that South Korea
had been preserved, tinged with deep regret that the peninsula was to remain
tragically divided. General Paik’s
presentations were particularly stirring, embodying his courage as a soldier,
his wisdom as a commander, and his gratitude to America
for its intervention.
The Korean
writers present, with the marked exception of Richard Kim, struck very
different notes as they focused on personal tragedies inflicted upon them and
their families by the war. North Koreans
were seldom if ever blamed, and Americans were rarely if ever praised. War was the villain, and in a variety of ways
the war was depicted as having been the fault of the Americans, either because
we stupidly divided the country in 1945, or because we intervened in a civil
war that, had we not intervened, would have long since been settled, with Korea
re-united one way or the other.
As I listened
to these fine writers, and read what they had submitted, I thought: "We
Americans think of ourselves as firemen who bravely kept the Korean house from
burning to the ground, and here are the Koreans
complaining about water damage from our hoses."
The Korean counterpoint to that thought is contained in an excerpt from
Hong Sung-won’s magnum opus South and North. In it a Korean becomes angry as he hears an
American complaining about primitive conditions in wartime Korea. The Korean berates the American for his
complaints, saying that the only reason that America
intervened in Korea
is that Korea
has great strategic importance for the Americans. The Korean then says, "You are like a hunter
who has killed a tiger for its skin and then complains because the meat tastes
bad."
This experience
in Missoula helped me
understand why, when I was American ambassador to Korea,
I was never able to make a previously announced visit to a major university
campus. I was often invited, but
threatened riots by student groups would cause the invitations to be
withdrawn. I was resented as the
representative of a foreign presence that was seen my students and intellectuals
as being deeply disruptive to Korea,
and to the process of being Korean.
The Korea
Society has already embarked on a long-range effort to put the Korean War into
a clearer perspective for Americans; the veterans who fought there, and their
grandchildren now in school. I now
realize that the war is not clearly understood or appreciated in its broader
context by many Koreans. The war kept South
Korea free. Today, thanks to the efforts of its people, South
Korea can become the hub of Northeast
Asia, and the center of regional development. That is worth celebrating, but for that
celebration to take place, and for the U.S.-Korea relationship to fully mature,
both people need to take a fresh look at the war they fought together so
gallantly. The Missoula
conference was a significant step in the right direction.
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