By Jung Sung-ki
Staff reporter
Kim Yang, minister of patriots and veterans affairs, left Thursday for the United States and Canada to attend key events there to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.
During his weeklong stay, Kim, a grandson of Korea’s independence fighter Kim Gu (1876-1949), will meet with U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki and Suzanne Tining, deputy minister of Veterans Affairs Canada, to discuss issues of mutual concern, the ministry said in a news release.
Kim will attend a ceremony on Capitol Hill on July 26. The Korean War ended on July 27, 1953, when the U.S.-led United Nations Command signed a ceasefire treaty with China and North Korea. Both Koreas remain technically at war.
Last year, U.S. Congress approved the Korean War Veterans Recognition Act. U.S. President Barack Obama subsequently designated July 27 as National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day.
“Capitol Hill is a very symbolic and meaningful place for Korea and the Korean War,” a ministry spokesman said. “That’s why we plan to hold a ceremony to offer our deep thanks to war veterans from the U.S. and other U.N. allied nations.”
Kim will also join events organized by a South Korean naval training cruise in the port of Los Angeles on July 27.
Twenty-one nations under the U.N. flag sent their combat and medical troops to fight alongside South Korea against North Korea backed by China. The foreign nations also provided South Korea with aid for postwar reconstruction.
Throughout the three-year war, the United States dispatched 1,789,000 troops to South Korea, which was more than 90 percent of the total coalition forces involved in the war. About 37,000 troops were killed and some 92,000 were injured, according to government data. About 3,730 went missing in action, while 4,400 were held by communist forces as prisoners of war (POWs).