U.S. ceremony to honor S. Korean KATUSA soldiers killed in Korean War

WASHINGTON, June 24 (Yonhap) -- The names of all 7,052 South Korean "KATUSA" soldiers, killed while fighting alongside American troops during the 1950-53 Korean War, will be called out in a war anniversary ceremony in Washington this week in honor of their sacrifices, organizers said.

KATUSA refers to the Korean Augmentation to the United States Army program that was launched in 1950 to provide the U.S. forces with soldiers who knew the local terrain and language in the fight against invading North Korean forces.

The Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation is organizing the event in which dozens of people will take turns calling out the names of the fallen KATUSA soldiers at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington for 12 hours from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. on Saturday.

"For me, KATUSA is a proud name and it identifies Korean soldiers who served alongside American soldiers ever since July of 1950. They have been a part of the American Army in Korea since that day," retired Col. William Weber, chairman of the foundation, said at a reception Friday.

"For every KATUSA soldier who was killed in action, wounded in action, missing in action or taken as a POW, it is probably very likely that it would otherwise have been an American soldier. This coming Saturday, we're going to honor the KATUSAs who were killed in action serving alongside the American brothers in arm," he said.

Weber said many Americans still don't even know there was the Korean War, let alone the role of KATUSAs.

"One of the goals of our foundation is to try and educate our people that the United States was not alone in the war in Korea. And as a matter of simple act, 36,574 casualties pale in comparison the almost 300,000 young Koreans who were killed in action," Weber said.

"American soldiers died in Korea. They helped keep Korea free. Korean soldiers died in Korea so that American soldiers in their place would not have died. God bless the KATUSA," he said.

Currently, about 3,000 KATUSA soldiers are serving alongside 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. KATUSA soldiers are paid by the South Korean government, but live, work and eat with the U.S. troops.

The memorial foundation organized a similar event last year in which the names of all 36,574 U.S. soldiers killed during the war were called out for four days in honor of their sacrifices on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the war's end.

The United States led the 21-nation Allied Forces to help South Korea repel the Chinese-backed communist troops invading from the North. Nearly 38,000 U.N. troops, most of them from the U.S., were killed in action during the conflict.

The war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving the divided peninsula still technically at war.

jschang@yna.co.kr
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