Remembering the Forgotten War

I was 17 years old when I visited the Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C. My family and I were taking a long road trip from Colorado to NJ and decided to take the southern route which meant through Florida to visit a family there and then up the Eastern coast. Even though I was a senior in high school I don’t remember much about that whole trip, but I remember D.C. I remember this memorial. It commemorates the sacrifices of the 5.8 million Americans who served in the U.S. armed services during the three-year period of the Korean War that began on June 25, 1950. 36,574 Americans eventually died in hostile actions in the Korean War theater. Looking up at the huge stainless steel statues anchored to the ground among patches of Juniper bushes separated by polished granite strips, I felt remorse at the loss and sacrifice, but a strange guilt, too, because I didn’t know the story, really. Perhaps it’s fitting in many ways, how the Korean War is also known as the Forgotten War.

According to historian Melinda Pash who has written a book on the conflict, In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War (New York University Press, 2012), people worried that American involvement would usher in the same type of rationing and full mobilization that had characterized the World War II. She explains that when this failed to occur within a few months most Americans turned back to their own lives, ignoring the conflict raging half a world away. Newspapers continued to report on the war, but with the entrance of the Chinese in late fall 1950 and the resulting stalemate in late 1951, few Americans wanted to read or think about Korea. Unless they had family in the service, people seemed to forget the war.

Although my father was born a year before the war and my mother shortly after the signed armistice, it is clear that they have not forgotten the Korean War. They immigrated to the U.S. with me as a baby in 1979, but we have only recently begun to talk about how the last remnant of the Cold War has shaped them. I sometimes would ask them about comfort women and military war brides, and how these women were treated during this time. There are echoes of it today, here on U.S. American soil, and I feel the grief and fear etched into my own skin. Perhaps, understandably, they are reluctant to talk about some of the darker aspects of this war, especially the mistreatment and abuse of Korean women, and how the church was (and is) often complicit in their marginalization. Like many in their generation they seem to focus on how South Korea was saved from the evil dictatorship that rules North Korea.

As a young adult on a spiritual heritage trip I visited the DMZ, the 38th parallel that is the border barrier between the two Koreas. I still cannot shake the memory of that eerie quiet and fragile “peace” amidst the strangely tranquil land, lush and green, replete with the sight of birds above us that flew so freely and easily over the border.  Even though my parents long for reunification they are adamant that if the U.S. and UN Allies had not intervened they would be communists and not Christians. But it isn’t so black and white, and that’s why I think it’s important to understand the role of religion in shaping the perspectives on these “peaceful” interventions by the U.S. in Asia, not only in Korea, but Vietnam, and other countries who’ve experienced the trauma of war.

I recently came across some digital archives that hold news clippings from 1950, when the Rev. Soon Hyun and the Rev. Sa Yong Whang, both retired ministers of the Korean Methodist Episcopal Church in the US wrote an open letter. It was an “Appeal to the American Brothers and Sisters” asking for U.S. American Christians to “urge your President and Congress to stop the armed intervention for the lives of millions of the Christian and non-Christian brothers and sisters in Korea.” This floored me. It was different from what I hear in my parents’ perspectives. Rev. Hyun viewed the conflict as a kind of spat between siblings: the invasion of “Southern Korea by the Northern Korea troops was purely a family dispute for the purpose of reuniting a divided nation. We are seeking a United Republic.” They end the letter with strategic quotes by Abraham Lincoln, Confucius, and Jesus Christ, each an exemplary, calling for peace.

In other words, Korean Christians, and in particular, Korean clergy activists in the U.S. were calling for peace, specifically, without U.S. intervention. They didn’t think that Korea needed the U.S. to help, as they had achieved their own independence. But what kind of political future did they imagine for the burgeoning nation-state? These Korean American clergy imagined something outside the burgeoning world created by the Cold War--beyond the binary of the Soviet Union vs. the U.S., communism vs. democracy. The kind of peace they advocated was Christian, but it was global, not American, and it was one they sought that would not be at the expense of their people’s self-autonomy. But this appeal didn't land for their U.S. American Christian counterparts for whom a particular kind of Christianity was deeply entangled with being an American. And this entanglement meant inserting themselves into any conflict that threatened their American way of life, both here and abroad.

This particular kind of Christianity actually required and called for involvement in the Korean conflict, and would be the beginning of the U.S. emerging as a moral authority and mediator whenever a threat to democracy materialized in the world. Democracy and Christianity became synonymous. And my parents consumed this, too. Along with many in their generation, they continue to insist that without U.S. intervention they would not be here today and that the alternative is incompatible with their Christian faith.

And yet, they do mourn the sacrifice, too. By Americans. By Koreans. Why the divide? I asked when I returned home to them after my trip even though I vaguely knew the answer. Even then I could see how torn they were by its terrible necessity. I would see how it would haunt them, too, because it haunts me. Peace will not come so easily.