Friend or Foe
Heroes Remember
Friend or Foe
Transcript
For many years before the war, the country had been under
Japanese colonial rule but Korea was one, united. Differences
in ideology had been born after the country’s division but
there is essentially no physical difference between a
North Korean and a South Korean. As you may imagine,
this makes things especially difficult and dangerous for foreign
combatants who can hardly tell the difference
between friend and foe.
There were a lot of young Koreans who helped soldiers.
Two Korean boys who helped in the Canadian camp.
And it was all young people—14- or 15-year-olds or even younger.Young boy standing inside a camp.
We had Korean houseboy look after our tent all the while we were there pretty well. His family was down in Seoul.Boy sitting on hood of a jeep with two soldiers.
We all paid him a little bit every week. He’d take his money and go home and look after his family. I think they gave them, I don't know how many Wons… A couple bucks a day. A buck a day for them was total euphoria, so they clamoured to work for us. They did our laundry . . . Dug holes in the back, carried in rations and brought jerry cans of water. I had a Korean, but he was killed while he was with me, unfortunately. He was a young guy, about 15 or 16 years old. He was being fed by the Army, and he was the one who carried the roll of wire. We didn't overload them with work. We asked them to do what they could under the circumstances, and they did it well. It was good for them, because they got food. It may not look like much but food was already a lot.Koreans digging a small trench along a road.
That's how a few illegals who worked against us might have slipped in. There were some plans we made that the enemy had been warned about, and we assumed it wasn't our guys who told them. When you'd see somebody who was old enough to be in the army or in something connected with the army, but he wasn't, you'd wonder why. You'd wonder why he wasn't engaged in something to support the effort? He immediately became a suspect, even if he was a refugee. The others, what they called "line crossers".Man by a river, carrying two water pales.
These were the people who could do us harm. They crossed the lineKorean men lined up smiling at the camera.
as refugees and then they were in a position to send information to the other side. If you’re North Korean, South Korean, there’s no difference in them. Some of the South Koreans, what we thought was South Koreans, were soldiers by, farmers by day, soldiers by night but they were North Koreans. You’re walking up the road. All of a sudden a guy bend over and ‘pfft’! The way I looked and the rest of us looked at it you couldn’t very well trust any of them, because the enemy used to walk through the villages dressed the same as the people down the village or from the hillside and stuff like that, so you just had to be careful because you didn’t know who was the enemy orKorean refugees carrying their belongings.
who was the friend, see, this is the whole thing.People along the shoreline.
Description
Korea_friend_or_foe
Meta Data
- Medium:
- Video
- Owner:
- Veterans Affairs Canada
- Recorded:
- February 3, 2010
- Duration:
- 3:38
- Person Interviewed:
- War Korean
- War, Conflict or Mission:
- Korean War
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