Dozens of American veterans of the Korean War and their families turned toward South Korea and offered a salute Tuesday in honor of U.S. and other international troops killed while fighting alongside the Asian ally.
The tribute, held on Veterans Day, was part of the “Turn Toward Busan” event that South Korea has helped organize not only at home, but also in the U.S. and other wartime allied nations every Nov. 11 to honor those killed while fighting under the U.N. flag during the 1950-53 conflict.
Busan is home to the U.N. Memorial Cemetery, the only U.N. cemetery in the world.
“I know today on Veterans Day the ‘Turn Toward Busan’ is being done all over the world. It’s being done by all the nations that fought in the United Nations during the war. We certainly wanted to be a part of that,” said Larry Kinard, president of the Korean War Veterans Association.
“To me, that’s one of the best things we can do to help the world remember what we did in Korea 60 years ago, and we wanted not to be forgotten but remembered as the forgotten victory,” he said during the ceremony at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington.
Kinard said that Korean War veterans were the “first to plug the leaking dike of communism after World War II and to face that menace head on and to help preserve order and freedom in the world.”
As part of the U.S.-led Allied Forces, 21 countries helped South Korea repel invading troops from the communist North, with 16 of them sending combat troops and the five others providing medical assistance units. Nearly 38,000 U.N. troops, most of them from the U.S., were killed in action.
Built in 1951 by the U.N. Command, about 11,000 soldiers killed in the war had been buried in the U.N. Memorial Cemetery until 1954. After the war ended, most were repatriated home, leaving the remains of some 2,300 troops from 11 nations, including England and Turkey.
The “Turn Toward Busan” event was first held in 2007 at the suggestion of Vincent Courtenay, a Canadian veteran of the Korean War. South Korea’s government took over as the main organizer the following year in 2008 and has helped plan the event since then.
The Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war. (Yonhap)
