Jihoo Yun - Korea -1950's

The Korean war began in 1950, and while the date is often remembered, many of the personal stories behind it are slowly fading. Countless individuals sacrificed and many experiences deserve to be remembered. 

When the war started, my grandfather was a teenager, he was at school. Suddenly, the government handed guns to students like him and enlisted them with no training. They were directly sent to the front lines facing the combat forces of North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union with a brutal number of 75,000 soldiers later growing to 135,000 after the arrival of the UN. 

The war started. There was constant gunfire. Survival became the only goal. Every young person was standing in front not knowing what to do; most of them died in the front; they were like human shields. But, my grandfather hid below a rock, and by pure luck, he survived. After hiding there for a long time, the battlefield was silent. There was no sign of life. Then, the North Korean army started marching toward the land, checking if anyone survived. They shot at the river and across the land just to wipe out every remaining life.  But, luckily my grandfather survived that. 

Many people just focus on the government, generals, and battle when they talk about war. But, they forget the fact that a teenage student was forced to fight with zero training in the front of the battlefield, in which most of them died. Of the thirty students from my grandfather’s school, only three survived.

I am a teenager right now in 2025, and just the pure thought of me standing in front of the whole army fighting,  I can’t imagine. The reality of it is cruel, inhumane, and almost unbelievable. Often people just forget about this fact, try to hide away, or justify the act itself by their own standard of “righteous”. But, this is something we have to face, know, and something that we have to preserve for the people who have fought in the war and for the future generations to know. 

I deeply show respect to the people who have fought in the war, and I think we have a responsibility to prevent future mistakes like this because they were told it was for the greater good, but in reality, it was nothing more than annihilation fueled by human cruelty.