11/11/11: 'Turn Toward Busan?'

By Andrew Salmon

At 11:00 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, the thunder of artillery ceased and silence fell over a devastated continent. After four years of unprecedented carnage, World War I was over.

Alas, this manic apocalypse would not be “The War to End All Wars.” The devilry would be repeated two decades hence, on an even greater scale. Even so, World War I stripped war of its glamour: the scale of the devastation and the butchery left the victorious nations numbed.

In the years since 1918, France, the U.K. and the nations of the Commonwealth have marked the hour with Remembrance Day ceremonies, including moments of silence to recall the sacrifices of their soldiers. In 1954, one year after the Korean War finished, the United States designated 11/11 as a national holiday, “Veterans’ Day.”

The date 11/11/11 holds no particular meaning for South Korea. (Albeit, as a Japanese colony at the time, it could claim to be on the victorious side: Tokyo fought with the Allies in World War I.) Yet this year, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs is urging persons to “Turn Toward Busan” as the sacred hour strikes. Busan is the home of the U.N. Memorial Cemetery, the resting place of those free-world soldiers who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War, but who never went home.

I am in two minds about this.

Simply put: 11/11/11 recalls those lost in all wars since 1918. So why turn toward Busan? Why not turn toward Ypres, Passchendaele, Verdun, Alamein, Cassino, Normandy, Kohima, Iwo Jima, Dien Bien Phu, Hue, Falkland Sound, Falluja, Helmand or a thousand other slaughter grounds where the troops of the nations that observe the remembrance have spilled blood?

There again, the silence that will spread as 11:00 a.m. strikes across allied nations today provides a unique private minute for citizens. While they sit in schools or offices; while they stand in factories or in shops; while they sit in transport or at home; it is entirely up to them what they think ― or in which direction they face.

And it is worth lingering on what happened here in Korea between the early hours of June 25, 1950, and midnight on July 27, 1953. For the countries that dispatched combat troops to help defend the Republic of Korea ― countries as far afield as Australia and Luxembourg, Columbia and Ethiopia ― this was not a war of self-defense or national survival.

It was on the one hand, a war of principle to resist aggression, fought under the banner of an organization in which enormous hope was invested in the post-1945 era. On the other hand, it was also a war of realpolitik, designed to embed those nations more closely into alliances with that anti-communist bulwark, the United States.

And it was a cruel, cruel war. All veterans recall the poverty of the populace, the pity of the refugees, the barren terrain, the killing winters. Thinking soldiers realized that the U.N. Command’s combat methods caused horrific “collateral damage” and noted the corrupt, brutal behavior of the South Korean regime. While every veteran I have ever met saw North Korea as the aggressor, few were under any illusion that Seoul harbored a true democracy.

So was it worth it? After all, for over three decades after the war ended, Seoul would be run by authoritarian leaders who (successfully) prioritized economic growth, but who repressed ― and indeed killed ― their own people while crippling democratic movements and institutions.

Yet the Korean Peninsula bears out the Reagan-era “Kirkpatrick Doctrine,” which argues that right-wing dictatorships are vulnerable to political change, while left-wing, totalitarian dictatorships are not.

Seoul’s dictators disenfranchised but enriched their people. When those people finally stood up, Korea’s last ― and he will almost certainly be the last – dictator wisely decided not to use force, and gave in to the people’s demands for free elections.

Not so North Korea, perhaps the world’s most reform-resistant society. Its people were never enriched. Successful only at the maintenance of an odious dictatorship, notorious for its threatening behavior and trapped by its own rigid dogma, Pyongyang oversees one of the poorest, most isolated nations on earth.

These realities grant post facto nobility to the fading warriors of the U.N. Command. Their war is not celebrated in literature, film, song or mass media the way World War I, World War II, Vietnam, the Falklands or even Iraq and Afghanistan are. Instead, the simple justice of their cause ― embodied in the prosperous, free and future-focused land that is South Korea, compared to the poverty-wracked, fearful and backward society that is North Korea ― is their legacy.

The fight these overlooked veterans fought is surely worth one minutes’ reflection, once a year. As 11 a.m. strikes on Remembrance Day/Veterans Day, “Turning toward Busan” will be a personal choice. For those of who choose to live in South Korea today, I suggest making it.

I will.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.