Members & Friends of the 501^st ASA Korea:

For your information. Thanks to Mark Scott and Wayne Galvin for sending this article to me.

Fred

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Here is the Army Times story on the Korean Service Medal:

AFTER 48 YEARS, VETS TO GET KOREA MEDAL

By William Matthews

For veterans of the "forgotten war," remembrance has been a long time coming.

Forty-eight years after the South Korean government proposed decorating American troops who fought in the three-year Asian war, the Defense Department finally is saying it’s OK for Korean War veterans to receive and wear the medals offered by the South Korean government in 1951. In November of that year, South Korean Defense Minister Ki-Poong Lee wrote to Gen. Matthew Ridgway, the U.S. Army general who was commander of the United Nations forces fighting in Korea, that the president of South Korea wanted "to express the heartfelt appreciation of the Korean people" by awarding medals to the U.N. troops battling "the communist aggressor." More than 1 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were eligible for the medal.

But the U.S. Army, which had authority to speak for all of the U.S. services, turned down the offer.

An aide to Ridgway, Lt. Gen. Doyle Hickey, wrote back to Lee that U.S. regulations prohibited troops from accepting foreign medals and other "gratuities" without special permission from Congress. Both the U.S. Constitution and Army regulations forbid troops to accept foreign service medals. Awards to Americans by the Korean government or other governments involved in the Korean War routinely were turned over to the State Department.

The medal Lee proposed was to go to all personnel who served 30 consecutive days or 60 nonconsecutive days in Korea or in its territorial waters. Aircrews who flew over Korea in combat or support operations also were eligible.

Military officials expressed concern that a medal awarded to so many amounted to little more than a ceremonial decoration. Other countries that sent troops to the United Nations force were not bound by the same restrictions. French, Belgian, Greek, Thai, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, South African and other troops received and wore the decoration known as the Republic of Korea War Service Medal. But among the Americans, "none of us even heard about it," said Blaine Friedlander, a Virginia high school teacher who was drafted in 1950 and shipped to Korea in 1951 as a military adviser to Korean troops. "I got out in 1952, and no one ever said a word to me about a medal from Korea. I would like to have gotten it. I would have gotten a kick out of it," he said.

As they returned from combat, American veterans began clamoring for other awards they had earned but had to turn over to the State Department. There were about 1,400 of them, according to State Department records. Some were from the Korean government, some from other countries in the United Nations force.

In 1954, Congress passed legislation permitting Korean War veterans to receive and wear foreign medals awarded for service in Korea, and the State Department began distributing the decorations it was holding. But not the Republic of Korea War Service Medal.

Old soldiers like Ridgway died; old records were placed in storage; and the Korean War veterans went on with their lives.

For four decades, the medal was forgotten.

Korean War veterans were awarded U.S.-issue Korean Service Medals and United Nations Medals.

Still, they noted the absence of a Korean-issue medal when Vietnam veterans received the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal from Vietnam, and Desert Storm veterans collected the Kuwait Liberation Medal from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Then, in the middle of this decade, the Republic of Korea War Service Medal resurfaced.

Les LeCompte, an Army military policeman who spent the winter of 1951 and 1952 in central Korea, said he first learned of the medal from a brief mention of it in the 1993 book, "Honors, Medals and Awards of the Korean War." He and other Korean War veterans began digging for more information about the medal, but initially they had little success. Veterans who inquired at the Army awards branch were told that "a search of our historical files ... failed to show that this award was ever formally presented to the U.S. government by the Republic of Korea." Questionnaires sent to veterans showed that "no one had heard of it," LeCompte said.

That changed in 1995 when the Korean War Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

At the ceremony, aging soldiers wore their old uniforms and medals. And on the chests of the French and Belgians, Canadians and Greeks, American veterans spotted an unfamiliar decoration.

Usually it featured a gold ribbon with blue borders and red and white stripes. And in some cases, the ribbon was white with green borders and thin red and blue stripes. But the bronze medallion was the same—an image of the Korean peninsula on a circular grid above crossed artillery shells, framed by laurel branches.

Some of the decorations included the red and blue "yin and yang" symbol of Korea.

American veterans soon learned the Netherlands had been authorized to strike the medal and make it available for sale in Europe. Canadian veterans were buying medals from a manufacturer in Seoul.

The United States, the Americans were told, had been offered the award and turned it down.

LeCompte began searching through war records at the National Archives in College Park, Md.

In addition to searching Defense Department records, LeCompte searched State Department files.

There he found "letters from wives and veterans wanting to know if they could get their medals." He turned up veterans’ pleas to then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson of Texas and others in Congress for help retrieving impounded awards.

Medals weren’t the only war-related gratuities that concerned the State Department. The files included a letter from South Korean President Syngman Rhee offering a pair of Korean bears to the National Zoo. A series of diplomatic correspondence followed over who would pay for the shipping costs, LeCompte said.

Tucked among the letters and award citations, on folded, tissue-thin paper, LeCompte discovered the letter outlining Lee’s 1951 proposal for awarding Korean War medals.

Another copy was discovered in a search of the records of the now-defunct Far East Command.

"I don’t think anybody knows," LeCompte said.

Folded and flimsy, the letter from Lee may simply have been overlooked when the State Department distributed the other awards it was holding, LeCompte said.

Armed with documents from the archives and the 1954 legislation authorizing Korean War veterans to wear foreign decorations earned in the war, veterans asked Congress, the military and President Clinton to officially recognize the Republic of Korea War Service Medal. It took several years, but on Aug. 20 the Defense Department finally said yes.

Army officials said it will take a month or more to work out details concerning how the medals will be awarded.

Among matters still to be resolved are who will pay for the medals—the United States, South Korea or the individual recipients—and what documentation veterans will need to prove they are entitled to the award.
Copyright 1999 Army Times Publishing Company. All Rights Reserved.