Memorializing the ‘Forgotten War’
The Korean War Veterans Memorial, located in Washington, DC, was built to commemorate the Korean War, a conflict frequently referred to as America’s “forgotten war”. Here, we explore how effectively this memorial compels visitors to remember those who served as well as the context of their service. But first, we provide a brief historical background of the Korea and the conflict that divided it.
A Brief History of Korea
The history of the Korean Peninsula is plagued with violent, disruptive politics, characterized by expansionary quests for land, resources, access, power, and regional and global stability. The substance of this history will enable us evaluate and critique the ways in which the Korean conflict is memorialized in the United States, a nation which invested with blood in the Peninsula’s division.
Korea Before the War
- Until 1945, Korea was a Japanese protectorate. During Japanese rule, Korean national liberation movements became a popular mode of resistance. However, such movements were met with force, particularly in 1919 when, after millions of Koreans participated in independence rallies, Japanese military and police forces allegedly killed over 7,000 demonstrators.
- In August 1945, on the eve of Japanese defeat at the end of World War II, the USSR and the US invaded Korea. The two global powers met in the center of Korea, at the 38th parallel. This marker served purely as a military mechanism that made no political or economic sense, as it cut through entire towns and even in one area a factory.
- Although both powers reassured the world that Korea would become “free and independent in due course", the division had “a paralyzing effect upon the political, economic, and cultural welfare of the country,” and the two world powers were unable to agree on a provisional government.
- When it became clear that the US-USSR talks were breaking down, the US went to the UN, from which the USSR was excluded. The UN passed a resolution in November 1947 calling for elections in Korea, and in May 1948, elections were held in the South to the exclusion of North Korea.
- Syngman Rhee, a nationalist leader, was elected to rule South Korea, although conditions of violence cast doubt on the election’s legitimacy. In August of 1948, the Republic of Korea was formally transferred power, and US forces left soon after. Rhee proceeded to wage an aggressive anti-communist campaign against leftist elements in South Korea, killing many and driving others to the North.
- In 1946, the Soviets selected Kim Il-sung, a communist guerilla who had fought alongside the Chinese in the Second Sino-Japanese War, to head the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee. Kim enacted land reform and nationalized the North’s industries, causing as many as 400,000 land and business owners to flee south. In September 1948, North Korea officially declared statehood as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with Kim as premier, and Soviet forces left.
War
- Tensions between Kim Il-sung and Rhee grew. In 1950, just five years after the “end” of World War II, large-scale conflict broke out.
- Although most historians attribute the War’s outbreak to a North Korean invasion, there is reason to interrogate this assertion a bit further because on the same day that the United Nations received notice of the North’s aggression, it also received notice a Southern aggression. Using this data, several scholars have cast serious doubt on why the North Korean report was never taken seriously.
- Nevertheless, the UN accepted South Korea's claim and condemned the North’s “invasion.” South Korean forces were promptly put under the United Nations Command for Korea, and President Truman ordered forces to the area.
- Offensives and counteroffensives continued like a game of tug-of-war, moving back and forth until finally, the conflict began to stabilize along the original 38th parallel.
- In 1953, an armistice was signed and a demilitarized zone was created. In the end, an estimated 2.5 million Korean civilians and over 60,000 American soldiers were dead or missing. A formal treaty was never signed and the two Koreas are technically still at war.
- Although the story of the Korean War is complex, we can determine four controversial or ambiguous elements
- The exact causes of the Korean War are issues of contention.
- Both USSR and US officials actively suppressed opposition groups.
- Korean division can be assumed to have played a fundamental role in the future of the Peninsula – a future which saw both a communist dictatorship in North Korea and a bureaucratic dictatorship in the South.
- North and South Korea are technically still at war with each other, as evidenced by recent border conflicts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2AWzNlu5hg
Media and the Korean Memorial
If there is ever a chance to reopen an analysis of a controversial event in national history, it would perhaps be during the construction of a national memorial dedicated to that event.
Early Coverage
- Prior to 1990, media covered the progression of the memorial only infrequently, more often than not dedicating small blurbs to describing procedural developments in the memorial’s approval stage.
- Starting from 1989, numerous articles began being printed about the memorial, and a public narrative started to formulate around the centripetal notion of Korea as the “forgotten war”
- In these articles, we see the development of a powerful metaphor: the absence of a memorial is the physical manifestation of the absence of memory.
- The Army Times: “Veterans and others are determined that such a national memorial does not meet the same fate as the Korean War itself, which has been called ‘the forgotten war.’”
- US News and World Report: “Forty years later, the new memorial will honor [the Korean veterans]. But can it force us to remember them?”
- Throughout the entire period, Korean veterans are presented as a uniform group with a singular desire, while everyone else is a separate group with a singular lack. Reconciliation requires with a memorial, but apparently not a public discourse about the War itself.
- Forgetting requires an explanation of why, which many articles provided readily.
- Army Times; “no ticker-tape parades, but no spit. Attitude [towards the war] was ‘who cares?’”
- The Miami Herald: “It got lost somewhere in the mist separating the country's recollection of the great, noble struggle of World War II and the tumult and controversy of the TV war, Vietnam.”
- The Associated Press in 1990 explained: there were “no patriotic ditties and no anti-war songs, either. There were no parades and no draft card burnings.”
- News media framed the entire problem - that the nation has forgotten the war
- "forgotten" is not the same as “neglected”, which implies culpability.
- New media framed the cause of this problem - that it was lost in the emotive extremes of the wars preceding and succeeding it
- not because the war's controversial beginnings or ambiguous results might have disrupted the priorities of a burgeoning military-industrial complex on track for Cold War internationalism.
The Memorial
- Once proposals for the memorial became more formulated, reporters turned to it en masse. They encountered controversy, but this controversy related not to the specific challenges of memorializing a devastating, ambiguous war. Instead, it focused on exaggerated internal disputes between architecture and designing firms charged with developing the memorial.
- In 1995, in the months leading up to the memorial’s dedication, the press printed an onslaught of articles effectively representing the apex of the entire narrative.
- A headline from The Miami Herald in 1995 reads: “Korea: The Forgotten War No More.”
- One from USA Today: “After 42 years, generation being recognized.”
- The front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer: “At Last, America Remembers the Forgotten War.”
- Thus, we have an entire narrative event unfold:
- The identification of the problem (the forgotten war; the offense)
- An explanation of the offense (the War being overshadowed by other wars)
- The delineation of the solution (the need for a memorial)
- The potential breakdown in the entire process (the controversy)
- Finally the culmination (the resolution).
- The culmination itself was not just a dedication, but a public purging.
- Prisoners of war were interviewed to discuss their experiences of violent nightmares.
- Veterans explained their emotions on CNN ,
- The injured lamented their stays in the hospitals
- Families of MIAs confessed their frustrations with the government’s inability to locate their loved ones
- The Army admitted to racism as a motive for disbanding a Korean Wat regiment.
- However, much of this public purging was too little too late
- It was glossed over with a mantra of “freedom is not free” rhetoric.
- The stories were explored the week before a memorial’s dedication.
- Such profoundly meaningful subnarratives had no chance of being etched into the memorial itself for the veritable eyes of future generations to take home.
- Located on the Washington Mall near the Lincoln Memorial and across from the Vietnam Wall, the Korean War Veterans Memorial features 19 military-clad US soldiers of varied ethnicities from the Air Force, the Army, the Marines, and the Navy, all marching forward in a “symbolic patrol” upon a triangular segment of land. To the north of the triangular space is a granite curb listing the 21 nations that supported the war effort, while to the south rests a black granite wall. Its polished exterior reflects the images of the 19 soldiers and contains images of other military personnel sandblasted into its surface.
- Photographs of service members were the models for the faces in the wall, while the sculptor, himself a veteran of World War II, used photographs of individuals with whom he served alongside. Walkways surround the triangle, and erected out of its apex, towards which all of the steel soldiers march, is an American flag.
- The tip of this triangle protrudes into a “pool of remembrance”, the north side of which contains the numbers of South Korean, United States, and United Nations troops that died, went missing, or were held as prisoners of war during the conflict. Looking around at the memorial, one feels an overwhelming sense of presence.
Everything feels realistic.
- But, tropes are everywhere
- The pool’s south side is a black granite wall, upon which is written the phrase: “Freedom is not free”.
- A plaque at the point of the triangle, directly below the flag reads: “Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met.”
- The National Park Service’s pamphlet describes how the US military fought to protect South Korea from the North Korean communist government who, “in the early morning hours of June 25, 1950, launched an attack into South Korea.”
- The National Parks Service’s Korean War Veterans Memorial gives this description (emphasis ours): “Here, one finds the expression of American gratitude to those who restored freedom to South Korea. Nineteen stainless steel sculptures stand silently under the watchful eye of a sea of faces upon a granite wall—reminders of the human cost of defending freedom. These elements all bear witness to the patriotism, devotion to duty, and courage of Korean War veterans.”
- This is an uncontroversial and unambiguous reading of the Korean War.
- Here, an unprovoked and violent attack on freedom justifies a violent response, even if we know nothing about the culture.
- Korea’s previous unification, the US’s role in its division, and the fragmentation of independence movements are issues that are not even remotely addressed.
- Without a public discussion about the War, the narrative embodied in its memorial was left up to 12 Korean War veterans, many of which worked for the Defense Department at the time. Is the way they remember it the way the nation should remember it?
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B-Q6RbYhAXf6MTI0YzRhNmQtOGYyZi00ZTFmLTg5MTUtNGU5ZGQ3NTg3OTRl&hl=en&authkey=CO6-hocL
