Eighth US Army and the ROK-US Alliance Friendship Society held yesterday a groundbreaking ceremony for the raising of a statue of late Korean War hero Gen. Walton H. Walker at Yongsan Garrison.
This is all very nice, of course, but just a question — will USFK be taking the statue with them when they relocate to Pyeongtaek?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Walker performed commendably in Korea (as he had previously in Europe), particularly in rallying the troops in the Pusan perimeter during the darkest days. But that hardly merits the the encomium “hero”. He died, like Patton, in an auto accident. General officers are very rarely heroes in their capacity as such, because they don’t have the opportunity to be. Although that doesn’t stop them from treating one another as such, there’s no reason for the rest of us to join the circle jerk. Let’s give the guy credit for what he did; no more.
They’re not moving the entire Yongsan Garrison.
The statue will remain on Yongsan because the current 8th Army headquarters is slated to become a US military museum once Yongsan is handed over back to the Koreans, if and when that ever happens.
The statue should have been built in Daegu which was the key city of the Pusan Perimeter defense but as usual anti-US groups prevented the construction of the statue there.
#3…Yes, Camp Walker would have been the logical location for a General Walker statue.
#1,
Maybe to the Korean people, Sperwer, he was a hero. Seems to me that he saved the bacon of the Perimeter; without the troops under his generalship, it’s generally thought that the Reds would have captured the reset of the Peninsula, right?
Right man for the right job at the right time, like Patton, who, it has been written of, could have shortened the war in Europe.
Folks who have performed ‘commendably’ should get statues, and I’m not even on The Statue Committee for a Greater Korea.
Well, the Walker statue is overdue and all well and fine, but I won’t be satisfied until the Korean government gets around to renaming some of the streets around Seoul after some of the American leaders who came to the country’s rescue at a time when most of the world couldn’t find Korea on a map. If the French can name major boulevards in Paris after Wilson and Roosevelt, why can’t the Koreans have a Truman-ro or a MacArthur-no running through downtown Seoul? Just asking.
Typos on blogs can be forgiven, but they should be corrected by people who have the authority to edit their posts (i.e. Dram Man). The problem is that Dram Man can’t write a single post that is free of the kinds of errors that should shame a native speaker, and he is usually cavalier about this when people point it out. With all due respect, the bottom line is Dram Man can’t write to save his life. His “style” reduces him to nothing more than the butt of jokes, and that’s a pity because the trade barriers and related angles he often discusses are worth exploring. If I were the Marmot, I’d suspend him, pending remedial work on his writing, or make publication conditional on clearance by an editor.
Oops, I don’t know how I put that comment on this thread instead of the silent Killer post.
“The statue will remain on Yongsan because the current 8th Army headquarters is slated to become a US military museum once Yongsan is handed over back to the Koreans, if and when that ever happens.”
Everything north of the main-south base road will be given back to South Korea. All of the red brick buildings built by the Japanese military are slated for destruction.
“If I were the Marmot, I’d suspend him, pending remedial work on his writing, or make publication conditional on clearance by an editor.”
“If I were Marmot”…Haha!
No H&T, GI Korea is correct, the 8th Army HQ building will be an annex of the War Museum, dedicated to 8th Army/USFK history. Which is a great use for this historic building.
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