Cold War's first hot spot

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
Two area men who were in the thick of the Korean War -- one as a Korean teenager and the other in Army intelligence -- have no problem remembering that so-called forgotten or unknown war.
The Korean War, officially a United Nations police action fought in the early 1950s, was the first major armed confrontation of the Cold War between the forces of democracy and communism.
When North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, the United Nations sent troops, led by the United States, to aid South Korea. North Korea was backed by China and Russia.
'Forgotten'
The Korean War is known as the forgotten or unknown war because it rarely rises to the level of World War II or the Vietnam War in the American public's consciousness.
But for Dr. Paul Jong Won Lim of East Liverpool and Harold G. Baringer of Canfield, memories of those days remain vivid. Lim was a young teenager in Korea during the war, and Baringer was drafted into the Army and served about 13 months in Korea during the war in Army intelligence.
The relatively short-lived conflict -- from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953 -- was a horrific killing field.
According to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration, the United States military suffered 33,741 battle deaths and 2,827 nonbattle deaths in the Korean War Theater of Operations, and 17,730 nonbattle deaths outside the Korean War Theater.
Troops from many nations besides the United States were killed and wounded in the conflict that began 56 years ago today. A cease-fire was declared July 27, 1953, but the war has never officially ended.
The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea remains heavily defended, with U.S. troops still stationed there more than half a century after the shooting stopped.
Military losses were huge, but it was the civilian population, caught in the middle, that died by the hundreds of thousands.
An estimated 2.5 million people died in the Korean War, including 1 million South Koreans, some 85 percent of whom were civilians. An estimated 1,130,000 North Korean soldiers and civilians, which represented about 11 percent of the nation's total population at the time, died. China lists 390,000 military casualties, including 110,400 killed in action, 21,600 who died of wounds, 13,000 who died of sickness, and 25,600 missing in action or prisoners of war.
Dr. Lim was 15 when North Korea invaded South Korea. His family fled from their hometown of Kaesung, South Korea, now part of North Korea, to Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
Dr. Lim, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Youngstown, is the main speaker at the Korean War Veterans Mahoning Chapter 137's Laying of the Roses Ceremony today at 1 p.m. at the Korean War Memorial at Mahoning Avenue and Wickcliffe Circle in Austintown.
Baringer was drafted into the Army, trained in intelligence and became a specialist on the Chinese military. He is treasurer of Korean War Veterans Chapter 137.