Korea 60 Years Later: Was My US Marine Dad's Sacrifice Worth It?

June 25th is fast approaching and I hope this year, given the international tensions all around us, we pause and consider that it is not just another day but the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

When the 300,000 troops of the North Korean People’s Army supported by tanks and artillery violently smashed across the 38th parallel to invade and overrun most of the South, they unleashed a conflagration that would grow to be a three year bloodbath pitting the forces of Communism and the Western Democracies against each other for the first time. (It would also be the first time that the nascent United Nations would commit military forces to halt the aggression of one nation against another, showing that the UN must be backed by military will to be effective.) After initial see-saw fighting down to Pusan, then up to the Yalu River after the Inchon landings, and then back down again after the massive Chinese intervention, the fighting settled into a brutal stalemate along a line that eventually would mimic the original pre-war border. When the fighting finally ended in July 1953, the war left in its wake four million military and civilian casualties, including 37,000 American dead and another 100,000 wounded. South Korea’s army would suffer almost 1 million casualties, the other UN nations’ a combined 17,000 as well. An estimated 520,000 North Koreans and another 900,000 Chinese were casualties.

One of the wounded from that war was a young Second Lieutenant Jack Schaeffer from the 1st US Marine Division, my father. In his more reflective moments, usually after a pint or three, he would tell me bits and pieces of what he saw and did there. Needless to say, they were disturbing. And the one thing I believe always went through his mind was this: was the sacrifice made by him and his fellow soldiers worth it?

The answer lies in the contrast between the two nations six decades later. The tragic fact is that every day 23 million North Koreans are forced to endure an horrific existence in what can justifiably be classified a slave state. I will not get into the nitty-gritty of the starvation, exposure, poor health conditions, the physical and mental abuse, the forced labor camps, and general privations these isolated people suffer as this has been well-documented.

When you compare this dismal picture with the vibrant and modern South, the true value of the Allies’ intervention in 1950 reveals itself. I could list all of South Korea’s accomplishments, including its economic prowess, its high standard of living, its relatively free and open society and juxtapose that against the hermit kingdom north of the DMZ but I think this famous satellite photo says it all:

Guess where South Korea ends and North Korea begins?

So here then in black-and-white is the legacy of the US-led military action to stave off flagrant communist aggression and protect a vibrant society so that it could develop unmolested by those in Pyongyang who would like nothing more than to bring the South under their control by force. Like all conflicts, the Korean War had its ugly moments, but the overall value of our actions, and the service we performed for humanity, cannot be denied. There are in fact 48 million people living in sunlight today thanks to men like my father.

The strangely underreported sinking of a South Korean naval ship Cheonan by a Northern vessel in March is but the latest in a series of bizarre tantrums on the part of Kim Jong-il to get noticed. He wants something. But what he wants, no one can say. After all, it’s hard to read the mind of a sexually deviant murdering lunatic. And even if we could, we simply do not wield the military power (or the political will) in the region needed to contain him. The sad reality is that with regards to North Korean affairs, the Chinese call the shots now. And given that Beijing likes having a buffer between Manchuria and the free nations, especially Japan — cynically condemning millions of innocents to hell on earth to protect their selfish aims — do not hold your breath waiting for them to sit on the lillipution miscreant in Pyongyang, or his son and heir, Kim Jong-un, any time soon. So with North Korea, as with so many other rogue states, we find an example of where the rubber of Obama’s sense of his ability to use his charisma as a foreign policy tool, meets the road of the reality that it is a very dangerous world in which not all leaders want what we want… and in fact care little for our way or life or human rights as a whole.

The President seems to operate under an assumption that international conflicts are mere “misunderstandings” and that if we talk just it out, we’ll get back to a harmony that he believes is the natural state between nations. Unfortunately, as the date June 25, 1950 reminds us, history teaches otherwise.

If Mr. Obama remains feckless in the face or Kim’s tiresome threats and provocations, if he fails to stifle their nuclear ambitions, he will join a long succession of ineffectual administrations that spans decades and both political parties. Still I think it is time for the intellectual-in-chief to retire the “yes we can” teleprompter and instead seriously consider the nature of the despots he is trying to engage be they in Pyongyang, Caracas or Teheran. And if he takes anything constructive away from his dealings with any of them, I hope it is a deeper appreciation of the misery that great swaths of the world’s populations would be subjected to without America’s imprint. At least, I would like him to admit just once that no other nation in history has sacrificed so much for the benefit of others.

Maybe the next time he embarks on one of his Apologia Americana tours, Barack Obama might first fly at night over the sprawling city of Seoul with its skyscrapers, bright lights, vibrant colorful streets and teeming masses of free people – and then cast his eyes northward to peer into the dark void in the gloomy distance beyond the DMZ. Perhaps then he may reflect upon the fact that the United States made this contrast possible. That the country whose standard he now bears has done a lot of good in the world. And that six decades ago, proud Americans like Lt. Jack Schaeffer, USMC, bestowed upon the South Koreans a precious gift of freedom and prosperity as their legacy, giving meaning to their grim suffering far from home, in a foreign land, for future generations they would never knew.