[KS] Brian Hwang's Discussion Question (Tae Gyun Park)

[don kirk]

By "forcefully mobiilized in combat units," you mean they were draftees whose units were sent there, right? That would make sense since two big divisions were in Vietnam, the White Horse and the Tiger. Wouldn't think all or most of them would have been "volunteers" though special forces may have been mostly volunteers, not sure. (Korean forces in Vietnam totalled 50,000 or more troops much of the time. The term "forcefully mobilized" would seem to be another term for drafted. All young Korean men were subject to the draft. Still are -- though some think of ways to avoid it.)
Don Kirk

--- On Sun, 4/15/12, tae gyun park <tgpark3 at gmail.com> wrote:


From: tae gyun park <tgpark3 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [KS] Brian Hwang's Discussion Question (Tae Gyun Park)
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Date: Sunday, April 15, 2012, 6:21 PM


Dear Brian,

There is an interesting documentary, "Black Sergeant Kim returning
from Vietnam"(no.77, 2004) in "I can say now (Ijeneun Malhalsu Itda)"
series, produced by MBC in South Korea, for which I was an adviser.
According to interviews in the documentary, most of the Korean
soldiers in Vietnam were not volunteers, but were forcefully mobilized
in combat units. Of course, there were volunteers in Korean combat
divisions in Vietnam. I do not have any statistics, unfortunately.

Best,

Tae Gyun Park.

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