Government Corrects Errors in the List of the 6·25 War Fallen Soldiers Memorial

[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] The government will correct the "massive errors" pointed out in the list of fallen soldiers from the Korean War on the memorial at the Yongsan War Memorial in Seoul.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The Ministry of National Defense and the War Memorial Project Association announced on the 12th, "In cooperation with the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Defense, we will thoroughly verify the presence of errors in the list of fallen soldiers from the Korean War installed at the War Memorial and actively correct them."

The errors in the list of fallen soldiers were raised by American Korean War researchers, brothers Ted and Hal Barker. In an interview with Yonhap News on the 10th (local time), the Barker brothers claimed that among the names of U.S. soldiers at the Yongsan War Memorial, 19,324 were estimated to have errors in their last names, first names, or middle names. As of June 2021, errors were identified as follows: 849 in last names, 887 in first names, 18,056 in middle names, 20 in titles, and 296 in hyphens (-).

Earlier, The New York Times reported that the "Wall of Remembrance" built last year in Washington D.C. omitted 500 fallen soldiers, included 245 individuals unrelated to the Korean War, and had 1,015 spelling errors in the list.

The Barker brothers pointed out that the errors on the Yongsan Memorial are "much more serious" than those on the Washington Wall of Remembrance. The day before, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs explained, "The list of U.S. fallen soldiers engraved on the Wall of Remembrance was officially verified through the U.S. Department of Defense, and the KATUSA list was officially verified through the Korean Ministry of National Defense."

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