War’s Witness : Visit to Monument Rekindles Kim’s Memories of Bravery, Horror in Korea

By the time he turned 12 in early 1951, Jay C. Kim had experienced a lifetime of agony and fear.

The terror of a Communist takeover in his native Seoul, South Korea, in the preceding months had sent his father into hiding and forced Kim, an only child, to take care of his ailing mother.

Then one day early in the Korean War, as the family’s wood-frame house burned to the ground, his fear disappeared--at least for a few moments. U.S. Marines were marching down the street in the first liberation of Seoul.

“My house was burning down and I was trying to save as much as I could,” Kim recalled. “As I was rushing back and forth, carrying things from the house, I heard people shouting that the U.S. Marines were coming down my street. I dropped everything and ran into the street full of gunfire with tears in my eyes, screaming with excitement that these brave soldiers had come to save our lives.”

As he got his first look at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, the memory and emotion of that liberation day came rushing back to the Diamond Bar Republican and first Korean American elected to Congress.

The memorial, which will be dedicated next week by President Clinton and South Korea President Kim Young Sam, sits on 2.7 acres in West Potomac Park near the Lincoln and Vietnam memorials. It includes the sculptures of 19 ground troops, clad in foul-weather ponchos, steadfastly marching toward an American flag. Military archive photographs of more than 2,400 support personnel are etched into a black granite wall. At the end of the mural are the words: “Freedom is not free.”

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Kim, whose district includes parts of north Orange County, said he hopes the monument serves not just as a reminder of the soldiers from the 22 nations that fought the Communists, but also demonstrates the appreciation South Koreans have for American soldiers.

“My whole loyalty is to America, and remembering all the soldiers who lost their lives during the Korean War,” Kim said. “It’s the United States of America who protected and kept Korea from Communists. They should not be forgotten.”

Kim’s thoughts raced from his childhood, when communism was clearly the enemy, to the present post-Cold War era in which pragmatic world trade politics has blurred the lines of division between democratic and communist governments.

The United States, for example, recently eased some economic sanctions against North Korea after four decades of chilled relations.

“I’m not sure North Korea has changed. We tend to forgive too quickly too often,” Kim said. “We need to remember our history.”

Thinking back to 1950, Kim recalled the loss of his freedom and how his family was unable to escape Seoul.

“Our government led us to believe we were OK. Then on the third day [of Communist aggression], we were surrounded by [North Korean troops]. From that day on, we were living under a Communist regime in Seoul,” Kim recalled.

“A lot of people don’t know what communism is all about. There’s no human rights, there’s no freedom,” he added.

His father, a businessman with a law degree, was forced to flee, and their home was marked with red tape to signify the house of a government enemy.

“We were pretty well-off, and that’s why they went after us,” Kim said.

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On the day the American troops marched into Seoul, Kim rushed to the street and cheered. He picked up a couple of pieces of chewing gum thrown into the crowds by the soldiers.

“It was delicious . . . spearmint, I believe,” Kim recalled. “[The soldiers] were very brave, I’ll tell you. I was so proud of them. I will never forget that as long as I live.”

Within weeks, however, Chinese Communists entered Korea, and the people of Seoul were forced to evacuate in January, 1951.

“We escaped and we became refugees by walking to the most southern part of Korea,” Kim said. They left their home with nothing but the clothes on their back.

The armistice ending the Korean War was signed in July, 1953. It had been the United Nations’ first multinational military mission.

Kim came to the United States in 1961.

Decades later, as a member of Congress, he thinks about Bosnia and the failure of the U.N. peace mission there. “I can’t believe the U.N. troops are losing. I am ashamed. I have never heard of that,” Kim said.

Deciding a course of action in Bosnia is not as easy as it was in Korea when communism was defined as the enemy, he conceded. “In this case, I’m not sure what we are trying to do.”