I am so very thankful for all the Korean War veterans, for without their sacrifice and defense of the Korean people during that conflict My wife would not be here and therefore none of my daughters or grandchildren. Ive mentioned before but it is for me worth repeating that my mother-in-law Lee-Yon-Bong had to take her 3 children, the youngest being a baby carried on her back and walk from just north of the 38th parallel, (SokCho-si) right on the border with North Korea down to Pusan. The children carried what food they could find on their heads and slept with their shoes as pillows on the ground, getting up each time the shooting/bombs got close and continue on their flight to stay ahead of the communist forces. They made it to Pusan and what was known as the Pusan perimeter, the last small piece of South Korea that did not fall. General MacArthur had staked out this one city and the surrounding rice paddies from which he would mount the counter attack which included the Inchon landing. During this early part of the conflict my father-in-law had been trapped behind the enemy lines. As a South Korean policeman he would have been executed on sight by the communists. He and another man managed to ex-filtrate back to the South Korean/U.S. Side by moving through the mountains traveling only at night in the dark. He managed to locate his family in Pusan set them up in I-RI and continued to fight with the South Korean/U.S. forces. My wife was born right as the war was ending, her oldest sister who was 9 at the time of the war and the oldest of the three children that had made the walk to the Pusan perimeter currently lives in Dallas TX. She is back in Korea today visiting her sister that was the baby being carried by my mother-in-law on her back during their flight to stay alive. The third child that made that trek was a brother approximately 4 at the time, he passed away later from Malaria. Of the 10 children my mother-in-law gave birth to, only 4 remain alive, my wife, Hyong-Suk, (Suki) and 3 of her sisters, Song-Ja, Hyang-Soon, and Hyong-Mi. Two live here in America and two live in Korea. Last year the 4 sisters spent a month together traveling throughout Korea. In August Song-Ja will be coming to Peachtree City to spend a few weeks with us, and I look forward to asking her what she can remember about their walk to freedom. My mother-in-law and father-in-law had lived with Suki and me for over 10 years and shared many stories about the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Russian troops coming in after the end of WWII, the invasion from the communist North Koreans, the invasion of the Chinese Communist army after they entered the war and life in general growing up in such a volatile period of Korean history. Once again a big THANK YOU to all you Korean War veterans, you saved many lives and certainly impacted mine.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 16:17:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015