SEOUL, South Korea — On the northern frontier of South Korea, soldiers and VIPs joined a son and a granddaughter Thursday to honor two Americans who fought in the bloody 1950-53 Korean War — and whose heroism still echoes 72 years later.
Few nations commemorate foreign soldiers as generously as South Korea. The national government, city governments and civic groups, supported by business groups such as chip manufacturer SK hynix, continue working to that end.
The two guests were invited by groups that work to memorialize the war and to fortify the Korea-U.S. alliance.
Group representatives say their activities face opposition – even vandalism – from progressives who oppose the alliance uniting Seoul and Washington, but note that pro-Americanism has replaced the anti-Americanism of a decade prior.
Heroes under fire
On May 21, camouflaged G.I.s, South Korean Special Forces, and officer cadets from Greece, Korea and Poland joined VIPs at Imjingak. North of Seoul, at the far end of the Chayuro (“Freedom Expressway”), and abutting the DMZ Imjingak is a complex of DMZ lookouts, war memorials and a war-related art park.
The Thursday gathering commemorated U.S. Army Gen. John “Jack” Singlaub, a special forces legend who spoke back to the White House, and U.S. Army Col. William Weber, who recovered from serious wounds to spearhead Washington’s Korean War Veterans’ Memorial, which was dedicated on the National Mall in 1995.
The two warriors are memorialized in a copse at Imjingak with separate stone tablets, in the shadow of flags billowing above a monument to U.S. Forces Korea.
Gen. Singlaub left university, joined the U.S. Army and parachuted behind enemy lines into Normandy before World War II’s D-Day with the Office of Strategic Studies, predecessor to the CIA.
He subsequently bounced between the latter agency and the Army, ascending ranks while overseeing covert actions during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.
John Singlaub and Dayne Weber join …
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In 1977, as chief-of-staff of U.S. Forces Korea, he vocally opposed President Jimmy Carter’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops. That cost him his career — but earned him Korean adoration.
“He safeguarded our freedom with his opposition to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Korea,” said Minister of Patriots and Veterans Affairs Kwon Oh-eul, in a speech Thursday.
In later life, Gen. Singlaub headed a coalition of anti-communist groups. He died in 2022 at age 100.
“My father had a real affinity for Korea and I didn’t realize how much that generation of Koreans respected him,” Gen. Singlaub’s son, also named John, 75, a Lake Tahoe-based retiree, said. “When they asked me to come back, I could not say no.”
Col. Weber, a paratrooper, fought in the Philippines in World War II, before deploying to Korea.
In February 1951, he was embroiled in desperate winter fighting against massed Chinese at the Battle of Wonju.
He lost an arm to a grenade, a leg to a mortar and was wounded yet again when the ambulance evacuating him from the killzone took fire.
After a year recovering, he became the first double amputee to resume a U.S. military career. After retiring, he was a key voice urging Congress to establish the Korean War Veterans’ Memorial.
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Post-completion, he led new moves to add the names of the conflict’s 33,629 fallen.
“The Korean War is often relegated to a paragraph in a textbook, but he wanted it to be ‘The Remembered War,’ not ‘The Forgotten War,’” said granddaughter Dayne Weber, 36, a manager with the National Geographic Society in the District. “He saw the power of the Vietnam Memorial, with all the names, and thought people visiting the Korean War Memorial were just breezing past and not taking time.”
Col. Weber’s push for a wall of names bore fruit. He died the day that installation was completed: April 9, 2022.
“He left a wall of memory to ensure the names of heroes would be forever engaged in history,” said Minister Kwon.
Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’
The 1950-53 Korean War is often overlooked in the U.S. It was fought between the biggest war in history, World War II (1939-1945), and America’s doomed effort in Vietnam (1965-1975). It failed to stir the powerful emotions of the former. Nor did it win the popular-culture visibility of the latter, immortalized in films including “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket.”
While Col. Weber’s efforts compel Americans to remember the war, here on the Korean peninsula, it is hard to ignore: Its 1953 frontlines remain entrenched as the inter-Korean frontier, the DMZ.
The conflict takes center stage at Seoul’s Korean War Memorial, a vast museum adjacent to a sprawling former U.S. Army base, across a road from the Ministry of National Defense.
A new monument was added there this year, memorializing the 103 U.S. troop deaths in Korea since the 1953 armistice, including soldiers killed in frontier firefights, in raids by North Korean commandos, in the infamous Panmunjom ax murders and most recently, in a helicopter crash in the DMZ in 1994.
The organization that led efforts to raise that memorial, the Korea-U.S. Alliance Foundation, or KUSAF, also emplaced the memorials to Weber and Singlaub at Imjingak. This month, a brand-new memorial was completed by Seoul City in the capital’s central Gwanghwamun Plaza to the 22 “sending states” that assisted South Korea: 16 with combat units, six with medical aid.
At ground level, the “Garden of Gratitude” features standing monuments that emit an after-dark light show. Underground, “Freedom Hall” features digital installations showing the names of the fallen, interviews with veterans and wartime footage. The central-Seoul installation places the Korean War before a vast potential audience: The plaza’s footfall is 27 million visitors yearly, Seoul City writes on its website.
The rise and fall of anti-Americanism
Recent years indicate that the anti-American sentiment that roiled South Korea in the first decade of this century has largely evaporated. In 2002, amid promising Seoul-Pyongyang relations, the death of two schoolgirls, killed in an accident on a rural road by U.S. troops driving an armored vehicle, ignited a furious spark.
Many South Koreans were angry at U.S. support for past dictatorships, and at their junior role in the bilateral alliance. One aspect of that was Seoul’s inability to try American soldiers accused of crimes committed in Korea. Hundreds of thousands protested, Old Glory was burned, a U.S. serviceman was stabbed to death and a statue of U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was threatened. (Veterans rallied to its defence.)
In 2008, fury resurged when a TV documentary mistakenly claimed that Washington was pressuring Seoul to buy U.S. beef infected with mad cow disease. Public anger fizzled after the falsehood of the documentary was revealed, and as the U.S. began publicly considering troop withdrawals.
Sentiment has boomeranged since. A 2025 poll of 1,000 South Koreans by think tank The Asan Institute, “Korea and Her Neighbors” found support for U.S. troops in-country stood at 71.2%.
Still, discontent lingers.
A British war memorial, featuring a photo of former conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol meeting Queen Elizabeth II, was vandalized early this year. In Seoul, a prominent photo exhibition suffers abuse.
“Sometimes people vandalize my photo display — they throw coffee on the Japanese and Israeli flags and break my banners,” said Ahn Jae-chul, founder of Peace and Freedom International.
PFI displays Korean War photos in downtown Seoul, complete with the flags of nations — including Japan and Israel, two countries that assisted South Korea during the war, not just with combat and medical aid, but also material aid.
Ahn’s entire exhibition was destroyed in 2008, but now, he says, “Serious things are not possible anymore: There is lots of CCTV.”
KUSAF Sec. Gen. Shin Kyoung-soo, a retired general, says his organization has seen a change in tactics by anti-American activists.
“Most Korean people think we need to learn from the Korean War and honor its legacy,” he said. Activists, “can’t really protest in an aggressive way, but can work behind the scenes.”
None of these controversies were apparent to visitors to Imjingak.
“It’s really important to remember veterans who fought for countries that were in danger,” said Polish Officer Cadet Szyman Rynarzewski.
“This is really good behavior and as a soldier, it is good to give my salute to fallen soldiers.”
Being invited to commemorate her grandfather, Ms. Weber said, was “one of the greatest privileges of my life.”
