Life during the Korean War

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The Korean War was a terrible war that began in June 1950 and lasted three years. Three aspects of Korean life during the Korean War are shown in Hwang Sun-won’s short story “Cranes. The first aspect of a Korean citizen’s life during this war was fear. The constant fears of being shot or slaughtered were present in almost every village of both North and South Korea. Another aspect of living for the Koreans during the Korean War was with hatred towards their brother or friend on the other side. Families were torn apart because of the different beliefs of Communists and Democrats. The third aspect of life during the Korean War was homelessness. People were roaming around the land without a home because it was either taken away, destroyed by one of the sides, or the people had to flee from their home land. Hence was the life of a Korean citizen during the Korean War was hard, bloody, and terrifying.
The first aspect of a Korean citizen’s life during this war was fear. Fear of being killed was an everyday feeling for the Korean citizens. New York Times interviewed a man who was a witness to the horror during the war: ‘“They told my 17-year-old sister to take her clothes off,” said Choi Jae-sang, now 70, describing what he witnessed when he was 12. “When she balked, an officer shot her in the head with a rifle, in front of me and my parents.”’ Slaughter, massacre, and death were lingering in the air at all time. Korean citizens walked on their own bloody land “Their faces marked with fear”, wrote Sunwon in his book Cranes (pg.585). Many people were flushed, or dragged, out of their own homes to be murdered because of the side they chose or didn’t choose. Fear was a common feeling during the Korean War.
Another aspect of living for ...

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...osing one’s family was constantly there, and it was unavoidable. The next aspect of a Korean citizen’s life during the Korean war was hatred between friends or family. Friends and relatives were forced two choose between two sides (Communist or Democrats), and most of the time the choice led to the betrayal of friends and relatives. The third aspect of life during the Korean War was homelessness. Abandoning their homes, Korean citizens wandered around unfamiliar lands, streets, and villages. All in all, the Korean War was a brutal war (totaling of about five million deaths) and Sunwon allows us to see a glimpse of its cruelty in “Cranes”.

Works Cited

• “A Korean Village Torn Apart From Within Mends Itself” The New York Times.
New York Times Company, 2008.
• De Haan, Phil. “The Impact of the Korean War on the People of the Peninsula” 50 Years and Counting. 2002.

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