2 Generations, 2 Different Perspectives On Korean Reunification

National Public Radio ^ | May 16, 2018 | Jean H. Lee

[2ndDivisionVet]

Fleeing war in North Korea in 1951, my aunt and her siblings scrambled aboard an American cargo ship pulling away from port, her parents and grandmother shouting their names to keep track of them in the chaos of the evacuation. They made it. But their grandfather stayed behind in Wonsan to protect the family property.

He thought his family would return. They never saw him, or the rest of their family in North Korea, again.

As the leaders of North Korea, South Korea and the United States discuss denuclearization and a possible peace treaty to formally end the Korean War of the 1950s, I wanted to check in with my aunt, a child of the war who was born in North Korea, and her millennial daughter Euni Cho, who grew up in democratic, thriving South Korea.

Foreign journalists have described the way South Koreans feel about the blossoming detente in dramatic terms: Euphoric. Giddy. Emotional....

[2ndDivisionVet]

I thoroughly enjoyed serving there for two years and that was when it was much poorer and primitive than it is now.

[MeganC]

My husband’s father (who died in 2011) served in Korea in the US Army’s 50th AAA from sometime after Chosin until the Armistice and he thought the South Koreans were wonderful people and he also thought that the ROK troops were ferocious.

The South Koreans had some people from their consulate come give my husband’s father a medal for his participation in the war and for helping a bunch of people over a collapsed bridge somewhere. It was really sweet and I’ll remember their graciousness the rest of my life.