Former student soldier talks about 1950 Korean War
- 4 years ago
[6.25 기획]“내게 주어진 마지막 책무”...아들과 전우 자료 찾아 나선지 20년, 인천 소년병이 기록하는 6.25
The three years of the Korean War in the early 1950s affected every aspect of Korean life... and even teenage students joined the army to fight in the war.
One of those student soldiers is now in his late 80s and has been collecting data to document the history of his fellow comrades.
With him,...Choi Jeong-yoon walks through the lives of student soldiers.
South Korea's western port city of Incheon was once a ferocious Korean War battlefield where in 1950, UN forces counter-attacked the North's military.
Here is a special place striving to capture the lives of forgotten war heroes.
In this dental clinic, a man who joined the army while just a student has collected information about the lives of 200 Incheon middle and high school students who fought as soldiers alongside him.
"When situation got worse after the Chinese army came in, many young students joined the volunteer corps to protect their homeland. After four years of service, I was discharged as the war ended."
Lee was one of 2 thousand students who walked 500 kilometers to Busan to join the army.
As the memories of that time were getting blurry, Lee wanted to know exactly what happened to those young men.
He traced the footsteps of each individual with just a recorder in his hand and the help of his son who made space for him at his dental clinic.
On his journey, Lee came across abandoned graves and heartrending stories of fellow comrades.
"All those people I met... they didn't like thinking about the past. The memories are just too painful. But they testified. I keep searching for the history. That's the last duty I have in this world, so people remember what we did."
With thousands of articles and pictures from the 1950s, the Incheon Student Soldier Archives opened in 2004 and were officially registered as a museum 11 years later.
"These people died to protect our freedom and democracy. They're no longer alive, but with the archives, their lives persist in our memories."
The father and son will keep working to give names to those who died in battle and fill in the missing pieces of history.
Choi Jeong-yoon, Arirang News.
The three years of the Korean War in the early 1950s affected every aspect of Korean life... and even teenage students joined the army to fight in the war.
One of those student soldiers is now in his late 80s and has been collecting data to document the history of his fellow comrades.
With him,...Choi Jeong-yoon walks through the lives of student soldiers.
South Korea's western port city of Incheon was once a ferocious Korean War battlefield where in 1950, UN forces counter-attacked the North's military.
Here is a special place striving to capture the lives of forgotten war heroes.
In this dental clinic, a man who joined the army while just a student has collected information about the lives of 200 Incheon middle and high school students who fought as soldiers alongside him.
"When situation got worse after the Chinese army came in, many young students joined the volunteer corps to protect their homeland. After four years of service, I was discharged as the war ended."
Lee was one of 2 thousand students who walked 500 kilometers to Busan to join the army.
As the memories of that time were getting blurry, Lee wanted to know exactly what happened to those young men.
He traced the footsteps of each individual with just a recorder in his hand and the help of his son who made space for him at his dental clinic.
On his journey, Lee came across abandoned graves and heartrending stories of fellow comrades.
"All those people I met... they didn't like thinking about the past. The memories are just too painful. But they testified. I keep searching for the history. That's the last duty I have in this world, so people remember what we did."
With thousands of articles and pictures from the 1950s, the Incheon Student Soldier Archives opened in 2004 and were officially registered as a museum 11 years later.
"These people died to protect our freedom and democracy. They're no longer alive, but with the archives, their lives persist in our memories."
The father and son will keep working to give names to those who died in battle and fill in the missing pieces of history.
Choi Jeong-yoon, Arirang News.