Steve+Kim+-+Korean+War+Oral+History

Korean War Oral History Interview
Interview part 1:media type="file" key="Korean War Interview JSK.mp3" width="240" height="20" Interview part 2: media type="file" key="Korean War Interview JSK 2.mp3" width="240" height="20"

Today, June 2nd, I interviewed my mother's side grandmother about the events that happened during the Korean War.

1. Please tell me your name, age, and some background information. Name: Bong Kyung, Park 박봉경 Age: 78 (16 when the war started) Has 2 older brothers, 1 younger brother who died about 10 years, 1 son and 2 daughters.

2. Where did you live when the Korean War happened? I lived in 혜화동 near the 삼성역 when the war happened and I was 16 years old back then.

3. Since you lived quite close to the 38th parallel, you must have seen and experienced quite a lot. Could you tell me about how it was like when the war began? It was a Sunday when me and my family heard that a war has been started, we were all eating lunch and then. My brother, who was a soldier (국방경비대) at the time was called to quickly return to the army to fight against the North Koreans. So after we sent him, we had to go hide somewhere but outside it was all filled with sounds of gun firing and cannons shooting. However, we managed to move to a relatives house nearer to the Samsung station that day. After two days, the North Korean army(인민군) came and they mostly rode on horseback. When they came, they opened the 서대문 jail, and the prisoners welcomed the north koreans. When I went out the next morning, I saw heaps of dead bodies on the streets and around the 청경원 area, there were literally mountains of bodies piled up. The river that flowed there turned red with blood. After the place is taken over, the North Korean Army would take the middle-high school boys to make them fight for them.

4. So you were moving from place to place to flee from the soldiers... how far did you go? On August 11th we started to head to our hometown. At the time, the Han river was really shallow so we could walk across the river, the water just coming up to our waist. So we crossed the river and arrived at 송파. We stayed on the shore, which was very big at the time, and the airplanes started flying over us. We were told to wear white clothes if we are not in the army to stay safe, so we took out our PE uniform which was white. As we waited there for a while, the airplanes flew above us a few times and went by. Everyday, little by little and avoiding the North koreans, we walked all the way to 상주. However, my grandfather living there at the time was at a quite high social status so people were trying to capture him to find out where we were. So we had to move again and this time we crossed the Nak-dong river and by the time we arrived there was the 갑오전투 going on there. It was one of the most fierce battles. Because of the war, we had to return to 상주 so as we were trying to move on to our hometown, we crossed the Nak-dong river back and forth 4 times. 3 days before 추석, we saw the North koreans retreat and soon we heard the news that our army was winning. When I was returning to 대구, I saw the mountain covered with dead bodies, who were mostly captured students.

5. Do you know what kind of work the North Koreans made the students they captured do? Well they were all forced into labor first but eventually the would all go out in the battlefield to fight for them. That's why so many students died in the hands of their own countries soldiers.

6. So then was this the end of the war? Is there more to this? Yes, our army was able to fight all the way to Pyung Yang but the Chinese soldiers pushed us back again and our soldiers had to retreat on January 14th. This time, they couldn't leave behind the students (제2의 국민군) because they would be captured and killed again. So they had to flee and at the time I was the president of the 청주부인회 so everyday, hundreds of people would come and we tried to provide them places to sleep and food to eat. This was very hard because we couldn't get a lot of food. Many died of the freezing coldness or starvation during this period. The only thing we could give them was riceballs(주먹밥).

7. During the war, were there a lot of soldiers from foreign countries? Of course, there were lots of Americans, Chinese, Japanese and so on. The Americans helped us and the Chinese helped the North Koreans. One thing I noticed about the Chinese was that because they had a large population, they just came rushing at us without any weapons. However, they would position students they captured with their uniforms on in the very front lines so it was hard to shoot at them so our soldiers had to retreat a lot.(인해전술)

8. Did any of our family members die? No, nobody died but my grandfather went through a lot of hard times. He almost died when trying to come back to his hometown.

9. So were the people not so motivated to fight for the country? Kind of, because look at our situation: we had not weapons, not enough food, and it was likely to die if you go out to fight. The weapon for example, we had guns that could fire 1 at a time but the Chinese, they had machine guns that would fire 50 bullets at a time.

10. How many countries came to Korea to fight? There were more than a hundred countries that came to fight for example Thailand, British and Turkey. Now they are all poorer than us. Even Haiti, where recently an earthquake passed by, came to help us.

11. Anything else you would like me to know? Among all the stories about the Cheon Ahn ship incident, you know how people say it's a plot by a group of people so they would get more votes for the election day? They are all communists(빨갱이). You should never trust those people. It's all the doings of the North Koreans. I can't believe how some people can't realize all the hardships we went through because of the North Koreans and still believe that it's not their doings.

Okay... Thank you grandma for being my interviewee, I learned a lot from your stories!

__**Reflection:**__

From this interview assignment, I really leaned a lot more about the Korean history and how our ancestors think about it. It was very interesting to find out about the stories behind the general events we learn about and how they got involved in it. I didn't realize the seriousness and the impact it had on people when I just learned it from the textbook but after this, it felt more real and more part of me. The thing that interested me the most was how so many countries got involved in the war in Korea. I first thought that it was just the Koreans, Americans, and the Russians who were involved in the war but as my grandmother said, more than a hundred countries came to fight in this small peninsula. It feels like the whole world is coming to our country to fight. Also, the fact that Haiti fought for us back then made me want to help them the more for their earthquake; it was hard for me to realize how such a poor country now could have helped us in the past. Although I learned a whole lot of things about history and people, I think what's more valuable to me was that I was able to have a time to talk to my grandmother together and it made me realize how she knows a great deal about things going on around us.