I’m currently working on a project that has taken me down a path I haven’t trod in years. As a kid I was fascinated by the Vietnam War and the U.S. experience there. I watched movies about the war, talked to veterans, and even played boardgames of varying degrees of complexity designed to simulate what at the time was considered the longest U.S. war.
If I’m honest today, I’d have to say that I hadn’t really given the topic much thought since I was back at the Academy, nearly 30 years ago. It was about that time, after all, that my heart was captured by the seductive lure of ancient and medieval Asian history. I guess I just never returned to the interests of my youth, including the conflicts that occurred during the Cold War.
Yet my current research changed all that and led me once more down that dark jungle path. In the process of reaching out to veterans of that war, I was made aware of a little known museum and center for meeting and learning here in Korea. A place dedicated to the Republic of Korea’s contribution to what I’d always considered a U.S. conflict.
With the timely passing of typhoon Khanun, and a free weekend looming, my wife and I joined every vehicle in the country, it seemed, heading north. Yet I couldn’t help noticing that the closer we got to our destination, the lighter the traffic, until by the time we arrived, the road belonged to us entirely. Pulling in, at what was once a ROK Army training base for deployments to Vietnam, ours was one of only three cars parked in front of the Vietnam Veterans Meeting Place, deep in the mountains northeast of Chuncheon. Noting the grass growing wildly between concrete slabs and the relative emptiness of the site, I found myself wondering if Koreans too wanted to forget the war in Vietnam. Nonetheless, I was in for an eye-opening experience.
What little I knew of Korea’s participation in that war was limited to the vague operational-level activities of combat units. That said, for me, an American born in 1972, a mere year before the U.S. withdrawal, the war was an American one. In fairness, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But I was about to receive a bit of an education.
The armistice permanently pausing the Korean War in 1953 had left South Korea confident. With U.S. and United Nations assistance they’d become the first nation to successfully defend against a communist take-over. But the see-saw war had left large portions of the southern half of the peninsula under North Korean control long enough that tens of thousands of journalists, religious representatives, and anyone resistant to the cause of socialism either dead in the street or abducted to camps in the north. Few were ever seen again. The grueling nature of this war left South Korea in 1954 rabidly anti-communist, and willing to fight the red peril anywhere it raised its ugly head.
It was that year, 1954, when ROK President Sygman Rhee first offered to send Korean troops to assist with nascent U.S. efforts in Vietnam. The U.S. at the time had hoped such assistance would not become necessary. Few if anybody in 1954 saw that the U.S. would be pulled further and further into the morass of a bloody Southeast Asian war. And nobody at the time sought to widen the scope of any conflict there.
Yet it was only a year later that President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group, intended to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. This generally marks the official beginning of U.S. involvement in the war as U.S. advisors found themselves increasingly in combat situations while leading and advising ARVN units fighting a growing insurgency. As the U.S. commitment grew by leaps and bounds, so too did the need for additional forces and capabilities.
In February 1964, then, the ROK deployed its first military unit to Vietnam, aptly named “Dove Force”. The unit consisted of engineers, a MASH element, military police, an LST, and liaison staff, and was assigned to non-combat counterinsurgency operations in the Bien Hoa region of South Vietnam. Dove Force built schools, cut roads through the thick jungle, and medically treated over 30,000 civilians, all part of the “hearts and minds” campaign being carried out in order to win back the support of the rural populace.
In 1965, U.S. President Johnson asked ROK President Park Chung Hee to contribute a combat division to Vietnam. Negotiations followed which resulted in the deployment to Vietnam of the ROK Army Capital (Tiger) Infantry Division and the ROK 2nd Marine Brigade, the Blue Dragons. By the end of that year, the ROK had deployed over 18,000 military personnel to Vietnam. In for a penny in for a pound, South Korea was now fully stuck in to the growing conflagration.
The ROK contribution to force levels in Vietnam would fluctuate over time, but generally increase until two full infantry divisions and a host of support units were deployed there. This included a Navy and Air Force contingent as well as the ever-present Marine units.
Having moved beyond the generally humanitarian efforts of Dove Force, the ROK contribution certainly wasn’t limited to rear echelon operations. ROK combat units were engaged in some of the nastiest fighting of the war, and acquitted themselves very well indeed. So well in fact, that already by 1966 Time Magazine reported “Captured Vietcong orders now stipulate that contact with the Koreans is to be avoided at all costs—unless a Vietcong victory is 100 percent certain.”
The harsh discipline imposed upon deploying ROK soldiers and a tough, combat-oriented mentality earned during their own war against communism, made the ROK troops formidable adversaries indeed. Recognizing Korean operations as “extraordinarily thorough and effective”, with increasing regularity U.S. commanders placed ROK troops in difficult situations with hard to achieve missions. Noteworthy ROK-led operations included the Battle of Bong Son, the Battle of Tra Binh, the Battle of Duc Co, and Operation Hong Kil Dong. In operations like Van Buren, ROK Blue Dragon Marines teamed up with U.S. 101st Airborne troops to clear Tuy Hoa in Phu Yen Province, occupied by the infiltrated 95th NVA Regiment.
The 9th (White Horse) Infantry Division arrive in Vietnam in 1966 and deployed to Dar Loc Province. Initially conducting area security missions, the following year the men of the White Horse joined several offensive operations, including Operation Oh Jac Kyu, a surprise attack on the 95th NVA Regiment in Phu Yen Province. Joining with elements of the Tiger Division, White Horse swept Phu Yen province clear of NVA during Operation Hong Kil Dong, accounting for some 400 enemy killed for a surprisingly low cost in Korean casualties. There in Phu Yen and throughout the war, ROK troops maintained a ferocious reputation both with allies and enemies alike.
It might surprise you to learn that Korean forces remained in Vietnam until 1973, making it Korea’s longest war since defending themselves against Mongol depredations in the 13th Century. It might surprise you even more to learn that Korean forces made up the second largest contingent of foreign troops in the country, after the United States. In fact, by the end of Korea’s involvement in the conflict some 320,000 military personnel had cycled through the combat zone. Yet this scope of involvement came at a cost, for South Korea suffered over 5,000 dead and just under 11,000 wounded throughout the conflict.
And what did Korea gain as a result of this sacrifice of its youth? In a word, money. Money to build industry and infrastructure following 50 years of Imperial Japanese domination. Money to fund recovery in a nation ravaged by three years of war. Money to lay the foundation of the very modern nation one finds in South Korea today.
While former enemies like Germany, Japan, and Italy all benefitted from the anti-Soviet inspired economic benevolence of the United States following World War II, little was being done to invest in the Republic of Korea’s future. The ROK’s enthusiastic and extremely effective contribution to U.S. efforts to contain the spread of communism in Southeast Asia brought much needed capital to the nascent democracy. It also brought respect. The world’s view of Korea transitioned from “victim state in need of saving” to “ferocious defender of democracy” during the course of the Vietnam War.
In a very real sense, then, it can be said that South Korea’s Vietnam veterans—many of whom suffered and continue to suffer PTSD-related symptoms—paved the way for the “Miracle on the Han” that would become the modern nation pulsing with life everywhere around me today. Within a single generation, these men and women pulled their nation out of post-colonial poverty, transforming their homeland into the 10th largest economy on the planet.
As my Vietnam project progresses over the coming months, I expect I’ll learn much more about the lives, the deaths, and the full range of human tragedies endured by Korean soldiers transported to the mountains, swamps, and jungles of Vietnam. Through this weekend’s trip, simple as it was, I’ve already gained a new appreciation for the ROK contribution to “our” war in Vietnam and I expect my view of that conflict will continue to evolve as I gaze into the aging eyes of those who experienced it first-hand. In so doing, I hope to gain just a little more insight into what makes the Korean people who and what they are today. And just maybe, a bit more understanding of what makes people who and what we are always.
M. G. Haynes