Hopes for peace overshadow anger 50 years after Korean War
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SEOUL -- South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told thousands of military veterans Sunday that national security must be maintained despite moves to reconcile with communist North Korea.
The president spoke on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a conflict that cost millions of lives and left a nation divided.
"We cannot afford to relax" until reunification and permanent peace between the Koreas is achieved, Kim told an anniversary ceremony at the War Memorial Museum.
"Firm security should be sustained; peace can be guaranteed only through tight defense posture," said the 74-year-old president, whose June 13-15 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il caused euphoria in the South over the prospect of easing tensions on the Cold War's last flashpoint.
The three-year Korean War fell between World War II and Vietnam, earning it the moniker of "Forgotten War" in the annals of American memory.
Attack came as Koreans slept
Fifty years after North Korea attacked the South as Koreans slept, Korean War veterans from the United States and elsewhere gathered at former battlegrounds this week to remember.One American veteran brought the South Korean flag he saved from his days as a U.S. marine in the early 1950s; another returned to the port city of Inchon where his flotilla launched the daring landing that would change the course of the 1950-53 war.
"I take exception to the ignominious label of 'Forgotten War,"' said retired Rear Adm. William T. Thompson, who brought Navy veterans to South Korea for Sunday's 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war. "It was a cornerstone in the fall of communism. It was the first time we stepped up to Stalin to stop his attempt at world domination."
But even as veterans revisited old battle sites and peered across the Military Demarcation Line to communist North Korea, celebrations for Sunday's anniversary were muted, with both Koreas seeking small but symbolic ways to begin repairing five decades of enmity.
Anniversary celebrations canceled
During the historic summit, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il announced that he had canceled war anniversary celebrations. The South canceled its military parade and battle reenactments as well earlier this week.
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Even at the truce village of Panmunjom along the world's most heavily fortified border, propaganda broadcasts that earlier pierced the countryside quiet have halted.
And on the streets of Seoul, jubilation over signs of reconciliation overshadowed bitterness over the war.
Seoul's vendors hawk key chains and T-shirts featuring Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in the embrace that took the world by surprise. Department store mannequins are dressed in the Mao-inspired jackets that just years ago might have branded the designer a communist and landed her in jail.
"When countries have been at war for 50 years and they're concentrating on peace rather than war, then I would think that doves and olive leaves are a little more important than parades and the display of military power," Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., said Saturday. Rangel, who described his one-year tour in Korea as "a nightmare," was traveling with 12 other Korean War veterans visiting South Korea for the war anniversary.
Modern Seoul does not resemble Korea of war years
Fred Machado, a U.S. Navy veteran from Fresno, California, said simply returning for the first time since the war and seeing this once dusty, ravaged country transformed into a bustling, thriving democracy was commemoration enough."I remember Inchon being devastated -- nothing there," Machado, 68, said Friday during a trip to Panmunjom. "I remember young children starving to death, begging. I used to fill my pockets with everything I could and give them to the kids."
Seoul, with its skyscrapers, luxury cars, restaurants and five-star hotels, looks nothing like the Korea of war years past, he said. Other veterans crinkled their noses, remembering the stench of manure and the bitter cold of Korean winters.
"The Korean people are doing well, and that makes me feel good. We did the right thing," Machado said.
"The men and women who died over here did not die in vain."
