Veterans Revisit a Nation Worthy of Their Fight

Buddy Savetz was dazzled by the bright lights of modern South Korea even before his flight landed. Seoul’s Inchon Airport, his wife whispered as they arrived, made New York’s John F. Kennedy look like a Third World airport.

“It’s a modern metropolis. Who would have believed it?” said Savetz, a 72-year-old gift shop owner from Merrick, N.Y., who last set foot in this country more than half a century ago as a GI.

More than 1,500 veterans of the Korean War from about 20 countries are convening to commemorate the July 27, 1953, signing of the armistice, which stilled the guns but did not officially end the war.

It is a bittersweet time for a celebration. The current crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is a blunt reminder that all is not yet resolved.

But the veterans, most of them visiting for the first time since the war, are thrilled to see the radical transformation of South Korea. The high-rises, the wide boulevards, the traffic jams and the sharply dressed youths all are revelations to veterans, whose memories are stuck in the grim 1950s.

Charles Ehredt, 73, a retired hospital administrator from Altoona, Pa., recalled with vivid detail how the streets of the South Korean capital were dirt roads lined by poplar trees and how the main waterway, the Han River, had no bridges except for a pontoon built by the U.S. Army.

“There were refugees everywhere -- old people dying by the sides of the road, women having babies by the roads, people carrying the wounded on their backs,” recalled Ehredt, who was visiting the Korean War Memorial museum in Seoul.

As for his reaction to the modern capital, he exclaimed: “I am elated! It is proof, if there were any doubt, that the efforts of the American troops were not in vain.”

There is a clear political message in what the veterans are seeing here. South Korea’s per capita income of $10,000 is roughly 15 times that of North Korea. And South Korea is one of the world’s largest exporters of automobiles and semiconductors, while North Korea has closed most of its factories for lack of electricity.

“When you see what has happened in the last 50 years, it is amazing to see what democracy has achieved compared to communism,” said Lewis Joyce, 71, of Tampa Bay, Fla.

That message was reinforced at a lavish banquet Friday night at Seoul’s Hyatt Hotel honoring veterans, from more than a dozen countries, who fought in Korea. Speakers ranging from former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to South Korean business leaders thanked the veterans for their contributions to South Korea’s prosperity.

“Here we are enjoying ourselves in the Hyatt hotel, while the people of North Korea are suffering,” said Pyo Hack Young, a sponsor of the United Service Organization in Korea.

The Federation of Korean Industries helped pay for the trips of hundreds of the veterans, whose names were drawn by lottery.

The celebrations are gratifying to the veterans, who have sometimes complained that their sacrifices have received less recognition than those of World War II or Vietnam combatants. Nearly 34,000 Americans died during the three-year conflict.

“When we came home, we weren’t spat at, we weren’t applauded -- we were just forgotten,” said Savetz, who noted that he rarely talked about the war with his family and friends. “Maybe it is because the war was never officially over and could always start up again.”

In anticipation of the festivities, North Korean officials have seemed surly, calling the main event scheduled Sunday at Panmunjom, the site of the truce signing, a “dangerous act.” The North Koreans are planning their own commemoration in their capital, Pyongyang.

Another discordant note has been an undercurrent of anti-Americanism.

Even though South Koreans have been unfailingly kind, often cheering as veterans go by in tour buses, many younger people resent the American role in their country. In recent months, South Korea has been rocked by large demonstrations against the continuing U.S. military presence. That is troubling to many veterans.

“Idiots,” is how Savetz characterizes the anti-American protesters. “Some people don’t know when they’ve been handed the keys to the kingdom,” he said. “If we weren’t here 50 years ago, they would be part of North Korea now. It’s pitiful.”

Philip Datz, a veteran from Beaufort, S.C., said he was troubled earlier this year by footage of anti-American demonstrations in South Korea. “It was pretty upsetting to me,” Datz said. However, he added that people had come up to the Americans to thank them.

He said he was approached on the street by an elderly man who just kept repeating the words, “Thank you.”

“I think that was all the English he knew,” Datz said, “but it was enough.”