The one time it was a bad deal was Exercise Foal Eagle, which I have already described. Over those two weeks I experienced to a very small degree the legendary misery of Korea: the bad weather, the pervasive and light-killing haze, the cold. I say it was a very small degree, because there were hot showers available, and we did sleep in tents, and the food was passable. Really, the only missing "luxury" was laundry, but one can fit clothes for two weeks into a single seabag. It wasn't all that bad. And there were some benefits as well, such as character-building, some decent flying (including a chance to look over the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea), and a chance to live near actual Koreans. Shopping in their stores and using their facilities is a long step from the tourist-centered places we were used to visiting.
But the best glimpse I had of Korea was a visit to it's capitol, Seoul.
I don't pretend to understand Korea very well. From my time in Yechon (during Foal Eagle), I noted a determined aspect to Koreans--an America-like emphasis on success, fiscal and military. I'm sure there are regional differences between South Koreans, but to my occidental eyes Seoul is the center of the nation. Under the guns of the North Koreans it lies, threatened and defiant, and it has reinvented itself during the long years since it last was destroyed--1953--as a center of industry, finance, and culture. Hemmed in by Korean and American military bases and known for having the most exciting nightlife north of Bangkok, Seoul seems to represent the challenge and triumph of Korea. And so I was eager to go.
But before I continue, I should admit that I know embarrassingly little Korean history. Up until 1945, I know, it was traded between and influenced by various Chinese and Japanese empires, both of which hated. Upon the Imperial Japanese surrender which ended the Second World War, it was partitioned as Japanese territory (which it had been for the past 13 years) into two "administration zones," the north part overseen by the Soviet Union, the south overseen by the United States. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Zone decided to set itself up as a hard-line Communist regime, while the South became a representative democracy. And in accordance with Communist ideals, which mandate that the remainder of the world be brought into the Communist fold by any means necessary, in 1950 the North Korean government decided to use force to unify the divided country. The Korean War began.
Most of what I just related I learned in the National Museum of the Korean War, a remarkable tribute to Korea's struggle for freedom. Monumental statues depict the Koreans who fought and the places they fought, with not a few reminders that the conflict was in essence a Civil War that split families and tore a people apart. Most poignant were photographs of students rallying in South Korea to ask American help in stopping the invasion from North Korea. The war was much more to South Korea than a political stand against an undesirable government, it was a life-or-death struggle for that highest human desire, freedom. This messy, brutal attempt at domination represented the true threat of Communism in that time and tested the American Exceptionalist perspective which promised to aid other nations in their quest for freedom.
Initially overwhelmed by Soviet-armed and organized North Korean military units, the small American units and the entirety of the South Korean military was pushed back to a small pocket in the southeast corner of the peninsula, dubbed the "Pusan Perimeter." It is hard to imagine today, and hard for me to express in words, how frightening this must have been for other small nations around the world abutting Communist states. With one greedy bite, a Soviet-backed state looked to crush a free people into submission to the Communist ideology. Anodyne statements to the effect that "communism is all right in theory" or that "we shouldn't interfere with others' rights to choose their own government"* forget the desperate struggle of South Korea to resist wholesale and brutal colonization by another power. I think it fortunate that the United States rose to the occasion and broke the pressure on the "Pusan Perimeter" with an amphibious landing at Inchon, where along with South Korean units the Marines encircled the invading armies and began pushing them north.
The rest is not quite just history. China came to the aid of international communism, attempting to help the fleeing North Koreans finish the fight they started. The battle of the Chosin Reservoir was fought against overwhelming Chinese reinforcements before the armistice was signed, splitting North and South Korea again into two countries. Wholesale destruction of Seoul and other cities in South Korea as well as hundreds of thousands of refugees strained national resources, and the constant (and vocalized) threat of further invasion from the north made recovery even more difficult because of the need to maintain a modern and powerful military. And yet in the years since the armistice, South Korea has rebuilt their land and their economy, they have hosted the Olympics, and they have sent troops to aid American campaigns in the Middle East.
Freedom in South Korea is manifestly not simply the state of affairs. It is not something that simply exists. They fight and sacrifice for freedom every day, serving mandatory enlistment and running an economy that can support the military they need to protect themselves and their choice of government. And yet they are still at war, for though the armistice is still in effect, a truce has never been signed.
We say often in America, "freedom is not free." We mean it, I think, and we intend to remember that the path toward human liberation has been contested each step of the way by people and entities that desire power over others. But the simple and stirring truth in the statement came upon me like a conversion as I toured through Seoul's national museum of the war. The bitter and appalling struggle to resist tyranny, the surprising gratitude which venerates those from other countries who fell in their struggle (in the case of the United States, the fallen are recognized by individual state), the triumphal development of modern arms to continue to protect this abstract concept of freedom--there, in Seoul, it is demonstrated just how costly and precious freedom actually is.
*I don't advocate the forcible reconstitution of other countries to American civic structures. I am making no statement here except that it's important to protect countries from any forcible reconstitution of their civic structures, especially totalitarian ones.
