Korean+War+Interview+Project+Kristin+Chung+B+Block

=__Revisiting The Korean War: __= =__ //An Interview With Kim, Sun-bin// __=

INTERVIEW PODCAST
part 1:media type="file" key="Korea Interview With Grandma 2.mp3" part 2:media type="file" key="part2.mp3"

SUMMARY PODCAST
media type="file" key="Korean War Summary Podcast.mp3"

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Before we start, can you provide us with a little bit of background information regarding your name, age, job, ect…? (Present and during the war) 2. How old were you during the war and where were you living in? 3. How did you first become aware of the war? 4. What was your reaction to the war when you first found out that it was happening? 5. How did the war affect your family? Did it have a different affect on each of your family members? 6. How come your brother did not cross the 38th parallel to the South with the rest of your family members? 7. Wasn’t it dangerous traveling from the North to the South? 8. What sort of memories can you recall about your journey from the North to the South? 9. What your the most unforgettable image of the war? 10. Were you exposed to the incidents of violence during the war? 11. How did your life change before and after the war? 12. What do you think were the losses of the war? 13. Do you think that the war happened for a justifiable reason? 14. The war hasn’t permanently ended yet, and North and South Korea is just in a resting stage of peace. What do you think we should do in order to permanently end the war? 15. Is the unification of Korea practical? What are your opinions about unification?

ANALYSIS QUESTIONS
My grandmother’s experience was still very clear in her mind since she had been twenty years old during the war. Her testimony was a special case because she successfully managed to cross the line from the North into the South. From what we learned in class and especially from the book Still Life With Rice by Hongyong Lee, we learned that many people in the North desired to cross the 38th parallel and wished to flee to the South in hopes of becoming free. The North Korean government provided them with no food, they constantly accused civilians of being anti-communist, and came to every house to recruit men into the army. The biggest reason however, was that the North Korean government was not honest to their citizens, and deceived them of true North Korean intentions. So that is why my grandma considers herself very lucky to have survived the war by being dropped off in the South one day. Her experience of boarding the ship explains how civilians in the North could be saved from the war by moving to the South. People like the reporter that my grandmother mentioned in her interview, helped save the lives of millions of innocent civilians by persuading the UN to bring back people back South in the LST ships instead of bringing machines, guns and food supplies.
 * 1) How does your interviewee's testimony fit in with what you have learned about the experience of civilians?**

After North Korea’s first attack that pushed South Korea’s army all the way down to Busan, the UN troops came in South Korea’s aid. With the help of the UN troops, South Korea started to move forward all the way into North Korea. This event of the UN troops coming for the aid of South Korea triggered the Chinese entrance to the war. With the Chinese troops the North Korean armies were revived with extra supplies of weapons and food. In order to take these supplies away from the Chinese, the UN sent the LST ships, but it ended up being used as a ship that transported North Korean refugees to the South. Some people knew the seriousness of war, and realized it would be wiser to choose the lives of millions of civilians over military tactics.
 * 2) Using your background knowledge try to contextualize their testimony. How do you think major events of the war affected their life at the time?**

My grandmother considers herself very lucky to have survived the war. It was at the right timing when the UN soldiers put my grandmother and her family on the ship to flee to the South. Since all her family members were fit to go, she was able to board the ship and avoid the actual battlefield of the war in North Korea. She was safely dropped off at Guh-jae-do, and she was also very lucky that her father could serve as a medical doctor on the hospitals. It was very hard to get a job, but her father helped the family survive from starvation during the war. Not after long that she came to the South, she even witnessed a bomb dropped near her house at a friend’s house. She was very lucky to have avoided these bombs although the armies had no intention of bombing civilians. Because it was such a long time ago, they could not get a good aim on things and sometimes made mistakes.
 * 3) Hypothesize or explain how you interviewee was able to stay out of danger.**

ESSAY
At the age of twenty, my grandmother, Kim Sun-bin, had to witness the cruelties of war and the separation of a single nation into two separate nations. Through her recollections of the 6.25 Korean War, I was able to view the war from a different perspective than from those of textbooks. My grandmother was a civilian of North Korea at the onset of the war, a refugee in the South during the war, and a South Korean after the war. Her journey through Korea took me through the whole country and made me realize that these memories of war and history should be preserved to remind people of the pains and grief of Korean civilians during the war. Since the war has reached stalemate in 1953, nothing except the two countries growing more and more separated has been taking place. The Korean War isn’t just a long gone history; the effects of the war still exist today and it is really up to us to come together as one people and try to resolve the problems.

The North Korean government was very deceiving and untrustworthy to its citizens. When the war first broke out, my grandmother had no idea. It was only when war seemed apparent that they finally announced that a war has erupted in Korea. All of a sudden, in everyday lives of the civilians, planes and guns could be heard. The situation worsened as the war continued, and so many civilians had to pay the costs of war. First, my grandmother was put on a ship to flee from the North to the South. However, while boarding the ship her little brother could not make it on, and since then, they have been separated by the great barrier standing between so many other families. Although she was able to hear that her brother was still alive in North Korea, the barrier still stands between them, leaving other families was well hopeless and helpless of their inability to go and meet their family members who are just across the 38th parallel. Numerous families are still separated today, wishing that someday they would be able to see the faces of the ones they love.

When she came form the North to the South, the UN army had been trying to stop the Chinese army and made efforts to take away their weapons and food supplies. They burned all tanks and guns, and spread the rice on the floor with dirt so the Chinese soldiers could not eat them. In the winter, instead of walking on snow, my Grandma said that she had to walk on the carpet of white rice covering the floor. So many people were starving, but the war made it impossible for them to be supplied with adequate food and shelter. She said the UN refugee camps were overcrowded and that huge population of people of course, could not be fed and taken care of properly.

Living during the time of war, you were never safe. Sounds of bombs and planes were unavoidable, and sometimes the bombs would be dropped on places near the civilians. The bombs were a big impact around the area, and she mentioned people who lost their arms and were injured because of even the debris that flew from the bombs. Apart from the bombs however, there was a greater fear in becoming accused of being a communist. The communists had been delivered with the millions of North Korean refugees that moved down to the South. My grandmother said that people were constantly coming to investigate people, and taking anyone who seemed guilty into prison.

Through this interview with my grandmother I was able to revisit the Korean War in the most realistic point of view. Learning from my grandmother who has been through the war, and has lost so many things, I realized that the consequence of the war has continued to affect us even up until today. The war separated people of the same race, and what once used to be a united country, into North and South. This barrier that blocks the two sides is so high that we are not able to see what is going on just across a few miles, and it is so undeniably sedentary that we cannot possible know when it will be removed. The Korean War has not ended, and it is up to us to try and amend the damages it has brought that still continue to exist today. I believe that this interview helped me understand the Korean War and its consequences, and understood the importance of preserving history for the future generations.