My father (bottom row, second from right) and I both spent considerable time in Seoul, he as a soldier in the Korean War, myself as a marketing person in the display industry. The Korean War, as is any civil war, was a great tragedy with 1/6th of the Korean population dying. When my father was in Seoul, there were virtually no buildings standing. Today it is the home to millions of people and millions more in the immediate surroundings. Though no one can say what is in the heads of the North Korean leaders, or even our own leaders some times, most of the threats coming out of the north have been directed at the US rather than at the south. One can only hope that any linger sense of Korean nationalism keeps the north from targeting south and rolling back 60 years of recovery.
Monday, April 15, 2013
A New Korean War?
My father (bottom row, second from right) and I both spent considerable time in Seoul, he as a soldier in the Korean War, myself as a marketing person in the display industry. The Korean War, as is any civil war, was a great tragedy with 1/6th of the Korean population dying. When my father was in Seoul, there were virtually no buildings standing. Today it is the home to millions of people and millions more in the immediate surroundings. Though no one can say what is in the heads of the North Korean leaders, or even our own leaders some times, most of the threats coming out of the north have been directed at the US rather than at the south. One can only hope that any linger sense of Korean nationalism keeps the north from targeting south and rolling back 60 years of recovery.
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Two back stories: 1) most of the men in the picture did not come back from Korea. 2) My father managed to get a promotion, to corporal, at a time when the very idea of a black person having authority over anyone White sent some people catatonic. The promotion was significant enough to have been mentioned a book about the battle for "Pork Chop Hill"... the reason that most did not come back.
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