because you are a propaganda piece for them, much more so than in the field. abuse would have been in in world war two. so that's a little bit of a new and a new dimension, but perhaps to develop more because japanese use some as propaganda pieces. if we're talking about it, the sort of soldier level of just typical privation of military life, i think that undernourished men is probably a better term than in starvation because you know, if we are operating in in north korea in the fall of 1950 and it's getting cold, we probably don't have enough sea rations and and, you know, other other kinds of food to sustain us to to get three meals a day. but we're much better off than our enemies. we are not necessarily prepared for the elements because you're talking about horrendous winter weather, you know, and just the and and the other point i make, and it's not just this war, but many others as bad as this is for the american soldiers, it's

usually 2 to 3 times worse for their enemies who aren't as well supplied, who aren't well uniformed and and so, you know, it's all at all in the like anything of this whole the point of this is all in the perspective. so i want to be mindful of our time. i really appreciate the way that we've sort of expanded and the lens here. so we're focused in in the ways that the individual experience is so nuanced and complicated and affected by by so many decisions that other folks make. so thank you. again, let's take our panelists. we've called this year's symposium korea the first forever war as a way to focus our attention, the war's lasting legacies. and so in our third and final panel of the day we'll think

about the ways that the war continues to shape world geopolitics military thinking and families. and one of the things that people probably know about the korean war is that it never officially ended hostilities terminated and an armistice signed in 1953 by north korea. the states and china significantly, not by south korea. that armistice made permanent what had been a temporary divide between, north and south korea, and it left an unstable truce in its place. and in the 70 years since, millions of people who through and fought that war have attempted come to terms with it. and while nations have also attempted to deal with the legacies of war left and our panelists here have left or bring wealth of scholarly and practice experience to our discussion of the war's wide ranging legacies. and i am delighted that they are here with. so to my left is frank m, who is

senior expert on northeast asia at the united states institute of peace where he works to reduce tensions and enhance peace and stability on the korean peninsula. he's advised the department of defense us army general counsel for secretaries of defense and served as head of delegation for level negotiations with the republic of korea. megan is a strategic analyst with defense research and development canada and is an adjunct professor of war studies at the royal military college of canada. she's a specialist military, mental health and resilience and is the author of scars. this trauma in the korean war nan kim is associate professor of history at the of wisconsin. milwaukee, a scholar of korea. korean war families memory and the environment. she's written extensively about the wide ranging repercussions of the korean war. she's author of memory

reconciliation reunions in south korea. and last not least, is brian brian linn, who is the ralph arts home best professor in liberal arts at texas a&m university, a military historian of the us army, the cold war and the pacific. he's the author of elvis's army guys and the atomic battlefield and most recently, real soldiering, the us army and the aftermath of war. so on last panel get we'll talk about legacies but before we get there we might begin a little bit in the war at the time of the war. a lot of people feared that it might be the beginnings of world war three. and so how did go from a war that at that was elicited great fear to something was forgotten or maybe not known in the first place. was it truly forgotten. was it forgotten by some? was it remembered in other ways?

yes. i'll start. thank you so much, sara and you and the schmitt family for finding opportunity here. i'm not history in, but i've very much enjoyed the first two panels. just feel like i'm learning a lot. coming. come here. some, everyone. i'm so last year we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of the korean and what i've noticed is the that the u.s. government and the south korean government have commemorated commemorate in this occasion is primarily through the military aspects. so a celebration of the u.s. south korea alliance, a celebration of the mutual treaty and the sacrifices of the service members, the veterans, and also to be forward looking a celebration of the the future of the alliance, the enhancement of military defense and deterrence

capabilities, and those are all things that need to be commemorate and celebrated. but what i think is also over is overlook is the importance diplomacy. right? because recall that the two militant, the military commanders of the two sides used diploma si during the war to end hostilities are hostilities that had millions of casualties. the two military sides use diplomacy to end the war right. that should be noted. it should also be noted that in the armistice agreement that the two military sides recommended a political conference to settle the korean question the issue of unification of the two sides. so that is something needs to be remembered. the before the armistice was

signed president eisenhower went on tv and he the nation and i'm just going to paraphrase but he basically said that now the carnage of the war is ending and then the of the conferences is about to begin. let's use hopefully have the wisdom to recognize that diplomacy is important so that we can use that to avoid conflict the hostility before rather than after the futility of battle. so this is something that i want to highlight. again, it's that i think is not recognized as much today. and it's something that we should be focusing on in the contemporary times. yeah, just picking up on what frank mentioned about diplomacy, ironically i think some of the language of diplomacy has an impact on how the war is perceived by people in the west, in western countries. so not just the united states,

but the u.k., canada, australia, all of these countries that are sending troops. the language is previous panelists have mentioned includes described as a police action, as a limited war. so back home, obviously, that has an impact on how the public perceive what the conflict is. it really doesn't highlight brutality of what we've heard described. it doesn't give the impression that i think we all know that the war is extensive with millions of casualties involved. so that's an important part of it. another important part that has already been highlighted, as well as the of this this is only coming years after the second world war and. the footprint is different. so the number of western troops that are sent to fight in korea. is starkly disparate from the number that participate in world war two. so a good example of that is with the number of american troops, 16 million americans serve in uniform. the second world war, and it's about 6 million during korea.

and while that's still a big number, it is starkly disparate. and you start to see that as well in some of the other countries involved. so for the u.k., there's about 6 million troops in uniform, the second world war, and that shrinks down to about 60,000 in korea. so the domestic footprint simply isn't there. and it's really interesting doing interviews with veterans of that conflict that when they initially were called up to go to korea or they volunteered in some capacity, many of them didn't where it was in the first place. and why they would be going there. and you can see that in families and friends, especially at home. if you didn't have a link to the war, it didn't have that tangible impact on your life that perhaps the second world war had. and i think also the of the fighting is an important consideration. so when you think from 1951 to 1953, the fighting along the 38th parallel and it's about

fighting over a negotiating table essentially. so you are fighting to establish a line, to be able to take back maybe a hill or a few square miles of territory. you're not in the same sort of dramatically mobile fighting that's happening during the latter phases, especially of the second world war. so it doesn't get reported in the same way that the second world war would be. in fact, korea is probably more similarities with later conflicts that all of us are familiar with, like and afghanistan than it does with the second world war. so at least for western countries part, what plays into this idea of the forgotten war is that timing, the type of language that's being and just the footprint of what kind of impact it has on people's lives. thank you so much, kevin. and history and family and so much for opening the space for discussing and remembering the

korean so the premise of the question harks back to the debate we've had over calling this the forgotten war, the unknown, the never known war. i will mention, though that this wasn't war that perhaps again comparable to some contemporary wars we've encountered. this was a that was being forgotten in real time. the first reference to the war as the forgotten war dates to 1951 in the u.s. news and world report. so i think my colleagues can also refer more to what was factoring into the the disinterest a relatively speaking, the again earlier in the first panel when i did the i had mentioned not having the congressional there wasn't the large popular discussion about the stakes, the war. and so therefore it could be

downplayed and and again and sidelined. this was traumatizing also for the who returned and to encounter that relative disinterest when they had lost, you know, their buddies or themselves had their lives on the line and gone through extreme suffering and in the frontline, in the battlefield. so this forgetting also and some of the implications for this has to also do with the the count of war deaths, which is one that is strike in the range that. the number of war deaths with regard to the korean war is egregious. and compared to other modern wars. there's a book by john timmerman, the deaths of others talking the fate of civilians in

these forever wars and refers to the korean war as the closest to guessing in of the actual number deaths and in this in the reason for that has to do in part with the nature of warfare. first of all the time at which although there had been earlier dissent against one more engagement in the war in the us when the fighting stabilizes is when americans start to become disinterested. of course, it's also rise of television. this is the war following world war two. but that was the time also that the war becomes very deadly because this the period of the strategic aerial bombing and so this notion of korean war being forgotten in the mid perhaps in the u.s. is something that you can't with the fact that korea this was a total war and formative for both north and

south. and so the we've already discussed the fact so when i was referring to this range i will say that i've also encountered this in teaching like course on the korean war this discrepancy between used for the military histories and then social history. i'd say that it's fairly common. the range will go from about 2.5 million to 4 or even 4.5 million. so if we can just stop for a moment, right. we're talking about a margin of error of 2 million people. and that's just chilling in its own right. and why is this the case in in a sense, this is also a factor of the cold itself. right. and the given that the vast majority you have the aerial that are indiscriminately, you know, targeting both civilians and combatants. but what this as well is that

what we're having as a result of this discrepancy is some erasure of the vast impact. what teach my course on the korean war? i ask when you know, we start with a diagnostic and maybe could just ask in your head before coming to symposium and just before they even start the semester what they estimate number of deaths would be in you know, to 40300 to 400000. 3 to 4 million people. and my students, of course, the the global the number because the is that if it were such a large war they would have heard more about it. and this is unlike world war two and the vietnam war. the korean war is overshadowed by these other conflicts, both in terms of historical and in popular culture.

and so one thing to mention is, the like, again, the number of this not because the the war swept up and down the peninsula, it also in that in in these this retributive violence that occurred, you have these massacres that occurred on all sides. so in the social history of the war, this notion of it rather than you have the ongoing debate between what extent it was an international war, a civil war, it was also a war against civilians, against this indiscriminate violence on all sides or war against society. but that discussion which has come up number of times already in the earlier panels, was taboo up until the nineties. really, again another casualty of the cold war is that history. and it was silence. so that this is both in the respect of the massacres that had as the result of the korean

war and even the of no country that came out. that was the pulitzer prize was in 2000. so this is relative reason that this is coming out, entering into the historical record in historical to debate. well, i've always not like the forgotten war since i actually study the forgotten war, which the campaign in the philippines. so the second thing i'd also say is having studied the postwar experience of the us army, every war is veterans come back convinced that they're not being paid attention to. okay, this is not world war one. the good war korea, this is the experience. okay, you come back convinced that your service isn't being recognized whereas the parades, you know, where's where's the glory? and so the fact that the korean wars are war veterans are ticked off. welcome to the veteran experience. you know, that's that's what had

happened the in terms of the impact of i would just say i'm terrible with numbers so i actually wrote these down but in terms of like the war these are fiscal us budget in 1950 so that would end in june 1950, 140,000,000,002 years, 1952 400 billion total personnel. the us armed forces in 1950 1,500,000 1952, 3,600,000. total member the united states army in 1950 600,000 and of truman. it had it way it would have been cut down to almost 500,000. 1952 over 1,600,000 in some sense. it is a forever war because it sets the the cold war parameters of a of a us military that's no

longer sort of saying, well, we can stay in the united states and bomb people from from a distance, but have a permanent presence. and so i'll end with one last statistic, u.s. armed forces in europe in 1950 are about 80,000. in 1952, it's 240,000. so that permanent overseas presence of the united really starts existing. you want to say that's a forever war because. it's still continuing now. and i say that, yes, that we respect korea. the forever war. so if we think about what states and nations sort of learned from the korean war, whether that's again, the united states, north korea, south korea, china, soviet union and in canada of anyone, what lessons since states take away, what did they learn? did they remember? what did they forget.

you know, i can been on this. okay. so trying to think about this one, especially because i am not an american historian. so i was looking at this more from a british commonwealth perspective. so uk canada, australia and new zealand and what what the war would have meant to them. and looking at it from that perspective, i suppose you could look at it as for them. an exercise in coalition warfare and the dynamics of coalition warfare and of collective security. so a test of collective security early already been mentioned is a very early test for the united nations now for the commonwealth and for actually many of the countries that form un coalition behind the united states. i think this is also a pivotal turning point. so this is when there's a shifting balance in power in the world by this point. so by 1950 the united states has clearly the superpower and many of these countries, the postwar

defense and security is really still taking shape. i think it's already been mentioned. nato has been formed in 1949, but really it's only on paper at that point. it really hasn't taken the shape that we would understand today. the australia and new zealand united states security treaty. so the ans this treaty isn't signed until a year into. the korean war. so 1951. so in other words the cement has not dried this. so it's still still taking shape. and for many of these the reason why they contribute forces to the korean war. yes, it is about communism, curbing communism globally, but it's also about realizing how are we going to secure our own defense and security moving forward and recognizing that their relationship to the united states would be very important in doing so, moving forward. so that's of the dynamic of that. and i think it's especially important when we think that we're again at a moment where

there a lot of forces shifting when it comes to in power, who is a superpower, how the balance of power exists globally, and korea provides, an example of how often times middle powers will behave in that kind of situation and the dynamics of coalition. i think another point from a more military perspect is looking at how changing political objectives can really extend a war for a prolonged period of time, which arguably is a lesson we may not have learned very occasionally. it could, yes. so i think the previous panels address this quite. but i from the the south korean the north korean perspective, obviously there's lessons learned about the importance of, you know, support for major powers alliances. you north korea was relying on china and russia south was relying on the united states. there's also lessons

self-reliance. i think north korea in particular recognized the the the the the need to take security into its own matters. the lessons of nuclear weapons. and we're seeing it today. there there are vigorous commitment to maintaining possession of their own nuclear capabilities, because that's the ultimate guarantor of their own security right. i think from the us perspective, there's a variety of lessons. the two major ones, you know, the importance of deterrence, right? and gregg brazinsky talked about the atkinson speech in january 1950, the defense perimeter. korea was left out and how a lot of people thought that that gave the green light to kim sung and stalin to invade north korea. right. and so we see the and legacy of that today where there is considerable importance and a value placed on us force posture dispersing u.s. in the region so

that we're not caught off guard. and if there's ever another contingency, we don't have all sudden mobilize force from the us. but you know, we have at least some level of forces that can provide a trip wire and and provide the defense and deterrence of the korean peninsula. i i've also mentioned the importance diplomacy. that's the other major right. there is a study that conducted by the center for strategic and international studies in d.c. in 2017 that demonstrated a very strong correlation between periods of us, dprk engagement and lower levels of north korean provocations, because we need to think empirically about how we get north korea to stop acting provocative ways, how to point out some periods that are very revealing this so that period from 1994 to 2002, an eight year

period in which we were inflamed, the agreed framework that the u.s., the dprk had bilaterally signed and then 22 is basically the end of the agreed. but during that eight year period, we constantly negotiating with the dprk to implement that framework and during that period that year period, one missile test right. zero nuclear tests, no production of fissile material from titanium reprocessing. right there's periods in more recent years too, in 2011, when we negotiating with north korea in the lead up to the leap deal in 2012, no missile tests in 2018, we in negotiations with north korea in the lead up to the singapore summit and the hanoi summit the next year, zero missile tests. right these are this is empirical evidence, right. not just gut feelings about

what's good what can deter, but proof that we should be studying the role of diplomacy in reducing tensions on the korean peninsula. right. what about the situation? so the period from 2012 to 2018, so this is a six year period in which the leap day deal had collapsed. the obama administration frustrated that north korea seemed to be reneging on its commitments. and so we started a global pressure campaign against north korea that included diplomatic isolation ramping up our military demonstration. so the deployment, strategic assets like carrier strike groups, b-52 bombers, as well as applying economic sanctions, all of this to pressure north korea, right. 2012 to 2018. also during that six year period was an absence of engagement the longest absence of engagement over the last 30 years. what happened during that year

period? during that period was what was until that point the greatest advance is in north korea's nuclear programs, right. three, five nuclear tests and over 100 ballistic missile tests. another period time from 2019 to the failure of the hanoi summit until the present day. so about five years we seen record breaking numbers of north korean ballistic tests as well as very rapid gain in north korea's military capable cities across a wide rate of domains, you know, hypersonic missiles and solid fuel missiles. submarines launch missiles. i think this is i would point out to, again, importance of diplomacy. and that is a lesson that we need to emphasize more and more. in addition to the value of defense and deterrence. so there's a famous routine

about lessons that you've learned from your mistakes so well that convinced you can repeat every one of them. and, and to a great lesson of korea, to the eisenhower administration and into much of the us military is more wars on the periphery don't get involved in the asian landmass. and of course we've seen well that works out, but the what you do see the korean war is is the new look the reliance on atomic weapons because there's sort of conviction that you cannot match the soviet slash communist access with of either personnel or materiel. and so you have to you have to have more firepower or better technology. and and more mobility. and so from that to this day, a

united states military on, you know, heavy firepower or high technology and getting what you want to call it air, land battle or multi-domain operations actions or so forth. this this, that, you can move very rapidly out of the way of the enemy and hit them with firepower, which i would not say has worked out all the to to our advantage at all. but it does much of this does from the korean war war. so think i'm also going to push back against lessons framework because of its implication that it implies that this is a war that has reached a resolution that we can look back on. and so how do we reflect instead upon an unresolved war?

and i'll refer actually from since frank? so it gave us such a i a sweeping and thorough analysis on the state level i'd like to consider on the level of society and maybe anticipating the question also about families and to bring us to an iconic moments when so both, you know, north and south, there was a real coming out of the experience of the period of fighting 1952 1953 into this period of reconstruction. and we're dealing with that. both koreas are modernized on the backs of a of a traumatized population where the losses cannot be reckoned right. the the fact that there isn't a sorting of who survived and who died during the war.

the that and so how this comes plays out you have to go forward 1983 and this iconic moment that of what's called the yes telethon. and so in south korea there had been a commemorative program that was scheduled to only take to last for 90 minutes. and as part of that, they were going to hold up these have members of families who were separated between north and south, hold up signs and and have these ability to try to connect members of families that had been divided during chaos of the war. there was a groundswell reaction because this was the first time that they used live television to have people in different parts of the country be able to recount this. the stories or memories of those that they were still searching for. and in the end, instead of 90

minutes, this telephone went on for over 450 hours and resulting almost thousand reunions. what is extraordinary is that these were not reunions of between north and south. i'll refer later to my my books research on north south every year families these were separated families who were in south korea but they were never able to find each other. and why is that the case? part of it might have been because the we have a child who was lost and so they may have been illiterate. there had been newspaper campaigns. and so that had been sort of a released pressure, though, that there had been some measures. it didn't have the sensational impact of what became a national phenomenon, where people were just glued to the television. some studies said, and about almost 90% reported having

watched the part this this telephone. so the reason why the analysis in terms of why these families had been able to find each other, does go back to the level of what the states did, which is that there had been a system of kind of guilt by association or implicate of guilt where if you had a family member who, let's say you were part of a family member of someone who was missing during the war or who was known to have gone to the north or leaves to gone to the north, then that would be a a put you in a category that would restrict your own life chances, meaning you would let's say you'd have to pass passed them in an exam know and in order to work for a large but by the time

of the interview they would do a background check and you would not be able to advance so or you not be able to choose you know travel abroad. so you would be a second class citizen essentially. and so that meant families who had to make a choice between whether they were going to restrict the life chances of their you know, surviving relatives or give up on searching for claiming the family member who had died or who had was missing during the war. so you can imagine what a grave existential crisis this this created and so on. similarly, on the north there's a system called a sangam where the advantages and disadvantage is according to the system of how loyal they were. and then if had family or you were a from the south that

created it also complications so this meant in other that there was a suspension in the division again from after 1945 with the dividing of the parts 38th parallel. and again that kind of entrenched along the military demarcation line up until signing of the armistice, there was still some movement across the border, but with the armistice it was really a ceiling, the border. and it did not only mean not traveling across. it meant no phone communication, no letters, no way in which. without some risk, you could get news. and so people who were lost to each other again, these migrations. the crossing of this dividing line had no intention and no expectation that this would continue decades into the future.

right. this was just temporarily in order to flee. right. fighting or because of rumors of that, that the conflict would go nuclear. so that's the other reason why you had a mass exodus also going south. so by the end of the war, 1.7 million estimated of were a region outside of their place of origin. and so can extrapolate from that, you know, how many you know in estimated the phrase was used as 10 million separated families. it's hard to actually determine number in terms of those who were surviving today. it may be for 43,000 because that generation passing away and in the u.s., maybe a hundred thousand. so that sort of anticipating sort of the next question that they wanted it, i think that's a great segway because we started with states and nations, but individuals who experience who

fight wars, who live with their consequences. right, who live with the legacies and so are there ways of thinking about the ways that north and south koreans, the ways that americans have sort of grappled with the legacies of this war as individual lives as families, maybe in popular culture with we started with k-pop earlier. so that's terror assault. but are ways in which individuals grapple the legacies of war and is similar to the way that states think about war or not connected public culture or ahead of what i find fascinating in some ways is that the you get later people say, well, i never about this or it was but if you look at the like the korean war movies that come out these are not sugarcoat it at all these are very grim movies almost

always at the very unit level steel helmet, men at war where you've got a psychotic, you know, an officer of being psychotic. bridges of toko ri, which is about a poor guy from the national or a reservist who gets called and killed pork chop hill, the most of these movies emphasize lies. the futility, the conflict. like no one really knows why they're fighting there's there's no speeches like there are battleground. and why are we here now of or so forth. it's it is all about the loyalty to your unit and taking a hill or flying a mission and not to be there. and i think in some ways, everyone says that's a vietnam era legacy to movies.

but i think that idea really comes from the korean. in fact, i had a hard time and i still haven't found a positive korean movie know and so i think that sort of disillusionment and the way that hollywood starts portraying war really does begin with korea. and looking at this from a medical perspective can be a really interesting way to approach it and to eventually get to the individuals who korea. a transformative moment in battlefield medicine. this is where you have the interaction, the more systematic introduction of penicillin and other antibiotics, battlefield medicine that only been industrialized, produced in the latter phases of the second world war. so this is when you get it actually implemented on an industrial scale, you have

innovation in battlefield surgery. so the very famous mash units are there in korea doing their job, really innovating surgically. you see innovations in plastic and blood transfusion technique. and that means that a whole lot more people are surviving than ever before and going on to very productive lives in many cases. it also means that they have to live, with the very complicated legacy of those physical injuries as well, those psychological injuries. well, korea comes long before the recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder. we're going to have to wait until vietnam. and then the interaction of ptsd into recognize psychological treatment is only a 1980s. so mental illness is still very heavily stigmatized in the 1950s. and there's really an expectation that people will just deal with their problems. and for some people that, you know, they go on to thrive and to and to be able to deal with

those and on their own. but other people suffer greatly from the legacy of their war. it's variance. some of them deal with through substance abuse and other types of behavior that is very for their families. and you don't see that recognition of that of korean war veterans in the same way as you perhaps see it with. and i think one of the more striking things, though, with was doing interviews with veterans i had the opportunity to speak to a lot of them about their war experience, and it just had such a lasting on who they were as individuals. i remember talking a man who served as an ambulance orderly. and i think he was about 19, 20 years old when he went to korea. and when he came when, he went to korea, i should say. he said that he was a very happy go lucky. he was somebody who was always positive, optimistic. and he comes home. he does have a successful life,

goes on to marry. he has children. and by all accounts, on the surface of it, it looks like a very successful life. but one thing that he said to me really stuck with me and it was that i just wasn't the same person again, the when he came home. yes. he went on to be successful. but that happy go lucky guy who went there 19 or 20 was not the person came back. and i think that's that we have to think about is that yes battlefield medicine for example can save a lot of and allow them to go on to live very productive lives. but at the same time, there's these lasting sometimes really intangible impacts that we can't necessarily see but are nonetheless there for the rest of the person's life. right. so this isn't my area of expertise, but i mean, and there's others who can speak more the the the lasting impact on human lives, legacies. right. and we've already discussed a few of them, but there's also

know mixed race babies from the war. uh, adoptees adoptions from the war. the impact there's you, the prostitution around military in south korea from, the war that lasts to this day. we've talked about the divided families not only in south korea, but korean-americans, over 100,000, as far as i know, who are still not able to connect with their kin in north korea because of the current political stalemate. and, of course, the families of p.o.w. m.i.a. who still cannot account their their loved ones in north korea, the service members from the crew, because we cannot conduct the remains recovery operations due to the political stalemate. those are lasting human costs that linger to today today. thank you, frank, for i think

that that's a really nice lead into what i'd like to do is try to the individual level in terms of the impact in korea but also from the perspective here been talking quite a bit about these figures and make it a little less remote so one thing i'd like to there was a reference to 911 earlier and i'm going to try to help to to as a thought experiment perhaps so that the impact of this unending war could perhaps hit a little closer to home in the sense i was in los angeles during that morning of 11 and i was visiting friends and. i was so struck. i'm a native new yorker, so it was it really was shocking as it was for all of us. but when there were signs of family members who were

searching for those at the time, remember, we didn't know there wouldn't be survivors. and so there is that moment of uncertainty and hope of really trying to to to connect with those who we, you know, we didn't what their fate was. and i saw this sign and i was trying to tell these friends that this is also something that in korea, but decades later, where still searching for family members. and if you could imagine that these family members who are looking and holding up signs and having information to desperate for any shred of of hope of their family members survive. but imagine that they have given up their the loved ones that they've given them for for dead and mourn them.

and 50 years later realize that all this their family member has actually been alive and in cuba. i mean, essentially it's a not a perfect analogy, but in other words, close enough that you could have been you could have been in touch that the the border between and south is impossible for south korean citizens. but it's this is it's really something that's shocking that this maintained so that level of no contact and no no word of survival and that again just shows the entrenchment of the the division that in that continued but that level and so is what happened in 2000 when you had the first reunions between north south separate families there one sorry there was one reunion that occurred in 1985 in the wake of the kbs telethon. they one exchange.

but that was at the height of cold war, right, in 1985. and it actually due to the military exercises and the tensions that the talks broke down. so it didn't continue. but beyond one very brief reunion. and so subsequently was with the after the north-south summit meeting that occurred in 2000, june of 2000, that you had your first inter-korean submarine family that were sustained. and what this also meant at the time was that there had been previous agreements that had been signed between north and south, but those who were, again, just ordinary people, for them to find, especially those who hadn't even been expecting that there was somebody who was still alive and realizing that they affected by this division, that i think really opened up

this space that, you know, reconciliation or, reunification could be possible because it was so groundbreaking. i also want to make one other reference about the dissolution ment or the cynicism with regard to portrayals in u.s. culture that the fact that the this kind of demoralizing effect of the of the way which the war was was raised and the was waged had to do also with the level of education. the irony here was that even though korea sets precedent for a distant, you know, waging battle, a distant location in name of national interest, right. this is a new concept. and at the same time. right. nato also, they are arming battalions in europe as well. but the soldiers in in europe

actually receiving more of a political whereas the rank and file soldiers in korea were simply sent and to just end one other anecdote when i teach my course on the korean war and i encountered just a member of my community and he was a korean war veteran and he did you have some veterans who audited my class and but what he told me, what was just so striking he was in his late seventies at the time is some years ago and he said even though i fought in the war, we never really knew what was about. and so we teach our students through histories or primary sources. but one of the things i'm trying to say is sometimes the people who are actually on the ground may not have actually known what were fighting for. and that very much the case and i think that contributed shaped the experience and how that

korean war was portrayed in culture as well. so we this morning with the very unfair question of when did the korean war begin and like to think a little bit about it ended while recognizing that officially it has not ended. but maybe if we could think, are there ways in which the war did end in unofficial ways or in capacities? are there things the war that ended. i'd say sort of the focus is definitely respect to western europe. in terms of sort of they sort of start perceiving the threat. there's a lot more on character guidance which some people might call indoctrination. so that people will know what

the enemy is, what they are fighting for. so there's i think and this very difficult to talk to to people who didn't grow with conscription. there's a far more focus on that you give your 18 to 22 year olds to us. we will make them better people. and so there's much more emphasis on education on training and so forth. and this has to do with with conscription as a national obligation. but i think what's also not recognized is that conscription was seen as a way of fighting the cold war so that certain people went into the armed forces and, certain people were deliberately selected out of the armed as being more important for national. the group that did the least

military service were farmers, which is sort of interesting because people think of that as the bedrock american patriotism, so forth, but actually if you're from south dakota and you're a farmer, you're not going to go into uniform. the other thing that and this is my favorite and general hershey, the head of the selective service, used to tell us stories when sputnik went up there was an enormous concern about america falling behind in mathematics and science. does that sound familiar. and and the reason was there were too many female in high school and they didn't get science and math. we needed to have more male teachers and and so he said so they they made males who went in to teach the high school level science and technology exempt from conscript ation and three years the number of male teachers had almost doubled.

and i think that's is so much about conscription and about national service is it was intended and about sort of that you everyone says it's a conformist generation. i think they were so far than so many people give them credit but that's sort of what national but that was accepted because that was national service and i think if people want to talk about getting that, if we are in that stage, america needs to revive. they really need to understand it in that picture, you know that service to the nation comes out of that sort of korean conscription really starts with the korean war. but it was always seen as we're fighting a long war 30, 40, 50 years. i mean, this is eisenhower saw it and we to be strong all across so much nowadays we need to be strong in one area, but not we don't have to be a strong society. you know, eisenhower said we win the cold war by becoming like

this. the soviets will have lost. and i think there's too little vision nowadays of if you are involved in a war, what that can do to your society which i think, you know, as eisenhower, as someone who had been to war and really in a way that i think people have sort of forgotten now and i'm going to get off the pulpit. but that's you know, i would hope that obviously the war has ended. the hostilities have ended. there's there's no media attention on the war like there is on, say, what's happening in gaza or ukraine in but there is this pressing legacy right that there is continued in hostile relations between, the united states and north korea. right. that has not ended. you know, there's i engage with north korean officials in dialogs and one often tell them

is that the united states does not have permanent enemies. we have permanent interest, but we don't have permanent enemies. right. and we been able to have normalized develop comprehensive strategic partnerships with past like vietnam like japan. why can't we do the same with? north korea, obviously, there is there's a lot of complicating factors, but this is what i tell. what i tell north koreans. and i think one of the reasons obviously people will say is, well, north korea is threatening us and they have nuclear weapons. right. so we how do we normalize relations with a country that's threatening us and has nuclear weapons? and that seems a plausible reason, except for the fact even before north korea develop nuclear weapons in the late eighties or early nineties, the us still didn't try to normalize relations with the dprk. right. so from 1954, the geneva

conference where we're trying to have that political conference and it failed and there was no resolution even from 1954 to 1992 when we had senior level talks for the first time with the dprk 38 years, the u.s. did not try to normalize relations with north korea and why is that probably a lot of reasons, but couple that come to mind is one unlike vietnam that a unified and so only dealing with one country we were dealing with north korea and south korea so we had to manage our relations, our allies south korea and south korea and north korea were engaged a serious competition, legitimacy on the korean peninsula right. and so it's hard for the us to try to engage with the dprk when south korea, our ally is telling us don't engage you know we'll do we'll also settle things out at a inter-korean level but don't them villages me the

legitimacy they're looking for because you know we're the we're the the korea that has the democracy and a market oriented policies right so that's that's you know we're trying to balance our alliance with south korea. and the other one, i think is the presence of the courts of our posture in the region. right. u.s. forces in korea because there times where north korea reached out to the us in the night, starting in the 1970s, they tried to replace armistice regime with a peace regime. and we essentially ignored north korea. i think some of it is because north korea wired to include the withdrawal of u.s. forces. south korea on the agenda. that's something that was required in the armistice agreement. the withdrawal of forces and the u.s. had interests in maintaining our troops there for a variety of reasons. and that's something that we do not want to address the time. it's something that we don't want address today. right.

and so i think those are some of the again, the lingering legacy of the korean war. yeah, i like to look at this in slightly different way. so to to at it from the perspective of memory. so if you look at it in that way, the war really has a very slow and in the sense the people, the soldiers and the civilians who participated in it are either very elderly this point and many of them have already. so you could say that it's it's starting to end by slowly dying of living memory of those people who are directly involved in war at the time. but it also continues in really unexpected ways. and i think last night's keynote really spoke this is that it's it does continue in ways that you would not expect. so i think it would have been the the p.w. and mia accounting agency a few years ago. i remember seeing a story about the recovery of american remains and, repatriation of those same remains. what really struck me and again,

it was emphasized last night's keynote is, that over 7000 americans simply just didn't come home. and we're missing that for their families and friends. the war never really ends. it continues in very unexpected ways. they don't have a confident answer to the question what happened to the person that sent to korea? and obviously for many koreans, as we've already heard, the war continued indefinitely because we don't have the type of satisfying reunion at the end, the war, to be able to that experience for them. so while the war is passing out of that living memory, it does continue in some very unexpected ways. from that alone. that's a very fitting way. i think, to wrap up our program, because we had referred earlier that despite the differences on all sides, there's a consensus

that we should honor the dead. and i feel that this is something that we can trace back to. so after the signing of the armistice as the and even going back to 1948, in terms of the formation of the two korean states, it was based on the premise that each the sole legitimate right state that it was these were exclusive and that they claimed the sovereignty of the entire peninsula. and so that continues even up until again i'd say that change maybe in 1991 when both koreas are admitted to the to the united nations. and so the united nations is recognizing them, as two states implicitly, they recognize each other. so they're simultaneously in the north and south into the un. but i'd say in terms of official policy changes in the year 2000, as i was mentioning the policy

of mutual economic prosperity and reconciliation really dates from this decade from 1998 to 2008, but it was 2000 in the lead up to summit meeting that was discussing the olympics. you have the two north and south korean teams marching together in the sydney. and it's also in 2000 that the south korean government are following on don barry's presentation and the keynote from last night that also the south korean teams can excavate, offer remains and has been continuing up. just there was an announcement last week in terms of resuming this follows the pendulum's of north and south but i'd to actually end with an on a note of on the side of being aware of the consequences of forgetting

because we at a moment a very consequential moment in terms of studying the korean war because, you know, is a time when we're all on edge. right. given the we have both the war in europe and also in the middle east that there it it's it seems to be unbelievable. we're also at this stage where it's not unimaginable that there could be another conflict between the u.s., china, whether it's the taiwan, taiwan, south seas or these these are flashpoints that we have to look at and with this sobering perspective that one receives from studying and not forgetting korean war, unfortunately, i wish that bruce cummings be here today. he has been someone who has been eloquent and also extremely

compelling in terms of helping, you know, the broader american public, understand what it means to have forgotten this very formative war. and when aspect is that as we heard in the first session, and particularly gregg brazinsky, how formative if the prc was, you know, established 1949, 1950, this was a formative conflict as as being able to and, you know, resist this and the confrontation between. the new newly formed prc, the u.s. so no chinese person is unaware of fact that they that their country had fought against the u.s. but it's it's common among u.s. students or just u.s. sens. against and general not to be aware that that the u.s. has

fought a war against. and this another reference i'd like to suggest a book kevin rudd called the avoidable war a conflict between u.s. and china is not inevitable but it's certainly something that we have to be able to understand within its fuller historical context, including the resolve by military leaders at the time, the mid-20th century, that we would not engage in another war on the asian landmass. it would be an incredibly catastrophic and so to understand a more managed sense of competition between the u.s. and china in a way that could not spiral into this tensions that we're seeing now, as well as the fact that we absolutely need this cooperation in order to as in two large nations, very powerful nations, as well as

other powers, we need to cooperate because we have mutual interests, for example, to address the challenges of climate change and also to avoid the next pandemic and in general to or in order to preserve a sense of peace so that we can fully honor the dead as well as the legacies of what conflicts have taught us right. well, let's take a few questions again that come to the microphone please introduce yourself. bring on ask a. hi, my name's craig gordon wong. i'm studying rhetoric here and tcu and i had a question for frank about negotiating with north korean officials so don't know a lot about the is as to

the peace but i was curious i'm sure part of your job you have certain rhetorical strategies that you use when i've been talking with north korean officials or any group of people right you have certain ways that you interact and. so i was curious when you do that you know you're also speaking on behalf an administration and. so my question was they i assume, help decide the topic of discussion will be when you go over there to talk with them, with officials. but i'm wondering, do they also try and influence some of your rhetorical strategies or the ways in which you exercise diplomacy. okay. so engage with the dprk official was only once in an official capacity in 2016 and then okay and then in a non-official at a think tank. but when i was at dod in 2016.

i engage with them and then a couple of times in 2018, i'll is that the dprk? dprk very tough negotiators and they like to start by all their grievances and. you basically just have to let them air it out. and once you let them do that and there's a certain amount of trust that's built and, then you get to the real issues. right? but they need to go start, you know, all the bombs were dropped in in the korean war and the threat to use nuclear weapons in the 1950s and the stationing of u.s. tactical nuclear in 1958. and so they would go through the whole litany and history. right. and you have to let them get through that before you can actually get to the real issues. but i do want to address that? we didn't really address it, but nance started to address that a little bit. is the contemporary issue of the threat today because we talk about the cold in the past, but

what may be a new cold war today because we have we talked about the us-china there's also renewed dpr uk russia collaboration that are just in blatant violations of un security council resolution where north korea is now supplying artillery ammunition to russia in the ukraine war, they're supplying ballistic missiles that are being used by russia. russia and china are providing aid to north korea in terms of satellite technology, but also humanity sharing nutritional assistance, multilateral sanctions at the u.n. security council are, at this point feckless because russia and china have vetoes. and so they've been vetoing u.s. resolutions against, north korea, for their provocative behavior. it hearkens back to. the 1950s when, you know, russia

boycotting the security council. right. so you have this dysfunction. the security council, you have a realignment between china and north korea. you have the same strengthening of alliance and the trilateral cooperation, us, south korea, japan, even in inter-korean relations. north korea has recently that they are abandoning their long standing policy of peaceful unification with south korea. not only that, south korea's that they have dismantled agencies that deal with the kaesong industrial complex, which like the in the inter-korean industrial complex, they've also subsumed their korean peninsula peace bureau in their foreign ministry under a broader diplomatic strategy bureau. so they're also mirroring north korean actions. so they're now essentially. expressing very hostile efforts

at reunification. so it's a very. threatening period right now. and so that's why the lessons from the cold war are the lessons of the korean war are very pertinent today. hi, my name is laura wood and. i'm a professor emeritus and an to you my is a little bit thinking compared heavily so i used to study east germany and some of the similarities between the divided and divided germanys, for example, the refusal to recognize the holstein doctrine by the by the west to keep anybody from recognizing east germany. east germany became a big purveyor of weapons to countries hostile to the west. how do you think or the impact would be when you see the fall of the soviet union and the reunification of germany, east germany in become subsumed right they lose all there's great by

the way a pop culture on prime now called a divided together about coming get back together and it's kind fun if you haven't watched east and west germany and trying to find all the weapons at the end of the east germany. but how do you think maybe north korea sees that relations and what happened to east germany at the end in this sort of unification? because it doesn't bode well in some ways for side you're going to in fact disappear here so there's no incentive to sort of bring down that in the future. i can jump in 50 words or less there. thanks so, i mean, if you look at some the strategic document, first of all, it's hard understand what's specificity and clarity, what north korea thinks. it's such a opaque country. but if you at some of the joint

alliance documents, the the 2009 joint vision statement between u.s. and south korea or last year's joint declaration celebrating the seventh anniversary of the korean war, there are references to the u.s. supporting a unified korean peninsula that is democratic and under market principles right. and to us, that that just sounds like a explanation of our policy. certainly something that south korea likes to hear and there's does not seem anything hostile about that when north korea hears that, that is a very hostile statement. right. because when say you want a unified country under principles, you're basically saying you want regime change and you to end the kim regime. right. so i can see how they look. past examples of reunify nation and basically boding very poorly for the continuation of the kim

dynasty. you know i don't know. i think germany is a great example of that ideology does matter and if you if you're a true believer then history is moving in a scientific way towards the eventual communist society. so how do you explain these epicycles were communists revert back to capitalism? and i think just the tendency is to become more ideologic cl to be more convinced. you're right, even if everyone else is wrong and and was just guessing from, you know, as a historian, i would say that the the answer is that they're just going to shut down. that explained through marxist theory and insist that the only way to last it out is this is you know it's absurd christian theology this is another test or you know but we're going to continue towards the eventual

winning of society know it's coming because it's all scientifically proven. thank our panelists and. and so that brings us to the end of another lance corporal, benjamin schmitt symposium on war, conflict and society. we want to thank you whether you're here or joining us on c span for choosing to be with us. think about the causes, the experiences, the legacies of the war. i would remind everyone that is an annual symposium and so we will be back next year and we would love to you join us. thank you again, dr. david and theresa schmitt, as well as the frost foundation, texas, the society for military, tcu at college, about sorry, that was really terrible my employer. thank you. tcu.

that's we hope to see you next year. thank you.