Korean War

Fifty years after North Korean troops stormed across the 38th Parallel into South Korea, the Korean War may finally be ending. It all depends on the real intentions of the world's most peculiar leader, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, who last week hosted the first-ever summit between the leaders of North and South Korea. But things are looking unexpectedly promising. True, it's hard to penetrate the thinking of a man who maintains the last diehard communist state. North Korea has been kept sealed off from the rest of the world, its failed economy unreformed and kept afloat by military sales and international aid. The population starves while the numbers under arms, and the share of the budget that pays for those arms, outstrip any other country.

The design for a $6 million memorial to the Korean War - "a dreamlike" collection of 38 stone soldiers marching into battle - was unveiled yesterday at a White House ceremony that also honored four Penn State architects who designed it. The winning design was one of 543 submissions received by the Korean War Veterans Memorial Design Jury and will be located on the south side of the Reflecting Pool, across from the Vietnam War Memorial, on the...

A struggle for control of the memory of the Korean War has embroiled a retired four-star Army general, the producer of a six-hour television show on the war and the series' chief historian. The retired general, Richard G. Stilwell, who was the CIA's ranking officer in the Far East during the Korean War, sought and won a dozen "important changes" in the series, its executive producer said. The producer, Austin Hoyt of WGBH-TV, a Public Broadcasting System station in Boston, said he made the changes solely for accuracy and clarity.

Skeletal remains that were believed to be those of Army Cpl. Arthur Leo Seaton of Chester, who disappeared nearly 40 years ago in the Korean War, belong to another man, a family member said yesterday. "We were hoping it was him," said James L. Seaton, 34, the missing man's nephew, who knows his uncle only by reputation. "Now there's nothing we can do about it. " The North Koreans turned over five bodies of U.S. servicemen on May 28. Based on a dog-tag identification, one of the bodies was believed to have been Seaton's.

After suffering a series of setbacks in the early days of the Korean War, U.S. officials were anxious for a victory. They got it on July 21, 1950, when the Buffalo Soldiers of the Army's 24th Infantry Regiment, which had just arrived in Korea, retook Yechon in a counterattack. Though the victory was short-lived, U.S. Rep. Thomas Lane of Massachusetts stood before the House and praised the black troops "who believed not only in the United States as it is, but in the nation that it will become when intolerance is also defeated.

Nearly 50 years after the onset of the Korean war, allegations have surfaced that U.S. soldiers massacred hundreds of South Korean refugees from one village who were hiding under a railroad bridge at the start of the fighting. Survivors had tried to bring their story to the attention of U.S. authorities since 1994, with no success until reporters recently found a dozen former G.I.s who backed up parts of the account. It is already being compared to My Lai, the infamous episode in 1968 where U.S. troops killed hundreds in a Vietnamese village.

The architects who designed a new Korean War veterans memorial say that federal bureaucrats "brutally changed" their design and intend to build a "radically different" memorial that "glorifies war. " The fight over the design of the memorial, which is to be built on Washington's mall directly across the reflecting pool from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is becoming a battle over the way in which the Korean War will be remembered. The architects' design won a national competition when a 10-member jury of Korean War veterans selected the work over that of 540 competitors last year.

Most of the mourners never knew Cpl. Edwin C. Steigerwalt, whose funeral in Allentown yesterday came 55 years after his death in the Korean War. But like veteran Peter Chacho, they shed tears for the 22-year-old farmhand from Lehighton whose identity took a team of experts 12 years to discover. "He was a brother," said Chacho, 71, of Whitehall, who fought in Korea two years after Steigerwalt went missing in 1950. "I came out of respect for the man. " About 100 veterans of various wars gathered under a warm sun at Cedar Hill Memorial Park, joining Steigerwalt's three sisters, nieces and nephews for a 25-minute service with full military honors.

The architects of a winning design for a Korean War memorial filed suit yesterday to block radical changes imposed on their original model. "Their design has been virtually obliterated" by federal bureaucrats and a retired general, said the architects' attorney, Robert Sokolove. The architects contended that the changes were being carried out "behind closed doors" by "a small group of powerful people" trying to "glamorize and romanticize the act of war. " "As any Korean War veteran can tell you, that war, no matter how noble its intent, was never glamorous and romantic," said architect Don Leon, a member of the firm of Burns Lucas, Leon, Lucas.

Thomas J. Griffith Jr., 67, a Silver Star recipient in the Korean War, died Saturday at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-University Medical Center/Stratford. A Magnolia resident for the last 22 years, he was born and raised in Philadelphia. Mr. Griffith was a truck driver for Lipschutz Bros. in Philadelphia retiring in 1976. He then worked as a driver for AGS Inc. in Pennsauken. He was a member of Teamsters Union Local 470 in Philadelphia. Mr. Griffith served with the Army's Third Infantry Division as a corporal and mortar man during the Korean War. He was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his heroic efforts on Jan. 18, 1951, while on reconnaissance.

IF THAT BROKEN thing had wheels or moving parts or plugged into an electrical socket, Charlie Tagg could fix it. It didn't matter if it was a car, a TV set, a radio or toy train, his daughter Chris Jakielaszek said. "Dad found enjoyment tinkering and fixing a wide variety of items," she said. "He liked the challenge of making something work again and helping someone. He never charged anyone for the work he did. " Charles W. Tagg, a retired aerospace and aviation engineer, died April 29 of a heart ailment.

Paul Oh sounds pretty calm for a guy who's about to be engulfed in a sea of thermonuclear fire. Or at least one who's being threatened with that - along with millions of other people in South Korea. The Drexel University professor, in Korea on a two-week teaching assignment, said from his hotel that his daily life is happily routine - working with students, answering e-mail, meeting with colleagues - despite the war beat emanating from the North. "It's completely normal here," Oh said.

John C. Esposito, 86, a physician in Springfield, Delaware County, for more than 50 years, died Monday, Feb. 18, of cancer at his winter home in Cape Coral, Fla. A son of Italian immigrants, Dr. Esposito grew up in South Philadelphia. His parents, Charles and Anna, impressed on him the importance of a sound education. After graduating from South Philadelphia High School for Boys and Temple University, he received his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine.

After suffering a series of setbacks in the early days of the Korean War, U.S. officials were anxious for a victory. They got it on July 21, 1950, when the Buffalo Soldiers of the Army's 24th Infantry Regiment, which had just arrived in Korea, retook Yechon in a counterattack. Though the victory was short-lived, U.S. Rep. Thomas Lane of Massachusetts stood before the House and praised the black troops "who believed not only in the United States as it is, but in the nation that it will become when intolerance is also defeated.

By Evan Thomas As President Obama contemplates his second term, he has been talking to historians about another two-term president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. We think of Ike as a great military man, but as president he used his understanding of the military to rein it in. Obama is said to be looking for a low-key way of managing America's global role while minding Ike's credo that true national security begins at home with a sound economy, shored up by a careful balance of resources and commitment.

EVERY FAMILY HAS its difficult members - black sheep, if you will. But it didn't matter to Uncle El. He loved them anyway. "If you were the black sheep or if you were in the doghouse, Uncle El embraced you anyway," said the family of Elwood Rucker, a son of old Virginia who never got the South out of his bones. "He was a loving, kind, generous spirit. He was not judgmental. He accepted you the way you were. " Elwood Rucker, a 12-year employee of the Philadelphia International Airport motels and a city Streets Department worker for 33 years, died Friday.

Forrest "Dew Drop" Morgan, 90, a national bobsled champion and former manager of the U.S. Olympic team, has died Saturday in Lake Placid, N.Y. Born in Saranac Lake, N.Y., in 1922, Mr. Morgan attended the bobsled races at the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, getting a ride on the shoulders of American gold medalist Billy Fiske, and was hooked. After serving as a bombardier in World War II and the Korean War, Mr. Morgan started sliding actively in the 1950s and won the national championship as a brakeman in 1959 with neighbor Tuffy Latour.

JOSEPH DIMEO was a familiar presence at the Penrose Diner.   Cooks would save bread scraps for him, and he would take bags of it to Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park and feed the ducks. He was an elderly man with terrible memories. "I know what it's like to be hungry," he would explain. Maybe feeding the ducks in the quiet of the park was a way to assuage the horrors he had experienced as a prisoner of the North Koreans and Chinese for more than three years during the Korean War. He had watched buddies die of hypothermia or malnutrition and saw some beaten and shot to death by brutal guards.

NASHVILLE - After months of grueling road marches through the Georgia mountains, a group of elite paratroopers had to put their training to the test in a trial by fire. They leapt from an airplane, bullets whizzing past parachutes and shrapnel pelting the plane's side panels. Ed Shames was among them. Now 90, Shames was 19 when he signed up for new parachute units created by military leaders who wanted a quicker, more aggressive unit that could sneak behind enemy lines in Europe. This week, thousands of active-duty soldiers and veterans are gathering at Fort Campbell, Ky., to honor the 101st Airborne Division that was created 70 years ago, even as its current soldiers prepare to leave for Afghanistan.

JOSEPH FLEMING, a decorated Korean War veteran who raised six children in Southwest Philadelphia, stayed in his neighborhood even after it took a turn for the worse — only to be gunned down at age 80 by a young thug who broke into his well-kept corner rowhouse to steal his laptop.   Wounded in the pelvis and the stomach in the May 17 home invasion and shooting, Fleming clung to life in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania's Intensive Care Unit for 36 days before he succumbed to his injuries on Friday.