Bizarre Things No One Told You About The Korean War

the korean war is often remembered for being forgotten sandwiched between world war ii and the vietnam war but the deadly cold war conflict was immensely important and plenty of strange things happened here are some of the weirdest things that happened during the korean war of all the major players in the forgotten war donald nichols might be the one america tried hardest to forget his knack for languages and complete lack of conscience helped him gain favor with south korean strongman singhman ree he attended torture sessions he attended mass killings i found a photograph of him standing next to a severed head cold and calculating he would make himself indispensable to u.s and south korean forces during the war thanks to a north korean defector with stolen military code books nichols had the means to decipher enemy communications and foil their operations rather than sharing that crucial info with intelligence agencies he formed his own group of code breakers forcing the u.s and south korea to rely on him because of how important he was nichols literally got away with murder when subordinates disagreed with him he shoved them out of airplanes and off of boats he even had a shootout with his own agents after the war the u.s military got sick of nickels and had him placed in a straitjacket and subjected to months of electroshock therapy if you need to patch up bullet holes in sub-zero temperatures tootsie rolls are a godsend thanks to a ridiculous but fortuitous mix-up marines discovered that wacky fact amid the bitterest battle of the korean war as history detailed in the early months of the war north korean forces were so overwhelmed that general douglas macarthur predicted the whole thing would be wrapped up by christmas then chinese troops unexpectedly entered the fray at north korea's chosen reservoir a region loathingly dubbed frozen chosen by the marines instead of crushing north korean communists the marines found themselves cornered by 100 000 chinese combatants in a mountainous region where temperatures reached as low as -25 degrees so they embarked on a 70-mile retreat bullet wounds froze in the perilous cold and ice-cold corpses were used as sandbags as ammunition dwindled the troops requested an airdrop of 60 millimeter mortar ammo which marines referred to by the code name tootsie rolls however the radio operator mistakenly called in an urgent order for the chocolate candy of the same name the marines found out they could melt tootsie rolls in their mouths and form a kind of putty that would seal bullet hole ridden equipment as it froze that macgyver-like ingenuity allowed them to accomplish their mission and take out several chinese divisions before we dig into this it's important to keep in mind that the term ufo literally just refers to any flying object that an eyewitness didn't recognize but what counted as a ufo for gis during the korean war as history recounted in 1951 troops stationed roughly 60 miles north of seoul described seeing a jack-o'-lantern come wafting down across the mountain eyewitnesses claimed the craft could hover and emitted in orange and later blue-green flashing light attempts to down it with armor-piercing bullets caused the craft to move unpredictably before racing away it unleashed waves of light that allegedly caused a burning tingling sensation three days later everyone in the unit was too sick to walk the men were diagnosed with everyone's favorite wartime illness dysentery however an ex-nasa scientist thought their symptoms were consistent with radiation poisoning were the men the victims of the soviet death ray as some suggested perhaps stress made the troops hallucinate if so at least 42 witnesses had an eerily similar delusion ceasefire negotiations started in 1951 and as the atlantic reported north korea desperately wanted to look strong during one session north korea's lead negotiator spent 2 hours and 11 minutes staring at a u.s vice admiral and silently chain smoking among other tactics the legs of the admiral's chair were also shortened to make the negotiator appear taller but all absurdity broke loose when the north koreans noticed that the u.n flag on the conference table was bigger than theirs evidently feeling emasculated north korea brought out a bigger flag then south korea whipped out an even bigger flag triggering history's most freudian conflict according to the independent north and south korea kept one upping each other until neither nation's flags fit inside the conference room eventually south korea erected a 323 foot pole and the north responded with a 525-foot pole which for a while was the tallest on earth following the 1953 ceasefire america and north korea maintained a mostly bloodless animosity toward each other however in 1976 they verged on all-out war after a disagreement over a tree located in the demilitarized zone the 40-foot poplar blocked a united nations command observation post from viewing a checkpoint according to the atlantic so u.s army captains attempted to trim the tree north korea balked at the idea and the infamously belligerent lieutenant pact chul warned the branches that are cut will be of no use just as you will be after you die the captains continued trimming so pak commanded 30 north koreans to kill them and assailants beat them to death the u.s was incensed and secretary of state henry kissinger suggested attacking a north korean barracks president ford opted for a ginormous show of force dubbed operation paul bunyan american aircraft carriers entered korean waters and north korea responded by assuming full combat readiness the ordeal ended with hundreds of heavily armed u.s and south korean troops amassing in the dmz to oversee the tree trimming while heavily armed north koreans watched during the 1960s the demilitarized zone wasn't living up to its name as the bbc described the not so demilitarized zone was strong with land mines and battles between north and south korean forces were commonplace u.s army sergeant charles jenkins was assigned to help keep the non-existent peace but his mind was occupied by war namely the vietnam war which he feared was his next destination by 1965 the dmz was at its most acrimonious and jenkins couldn't cope with his circumstances fearing that he would cause other soldiers to be killed in a panic he crossed into north korea which he hoped would send him to the soviet union to seek amnesty north korea kept jenkins all to itself held against his will he was habitually tortured and also viewed as a useful propaganda tool even forced to star in north korean movies eventually he married a japanese nurse who had been kidnapped by the north korean government in 2002 japan arraigned for her release and two years later jenkins was allowed to leave after turning himself in to u.s military police he was tried for desertion and sentenced to 30 days in prison do you think of yourself as a traitor no if i was to trade i wouldn't come back during the korean war north korean dictator kim il-sung orchestrated the abduction of an estimated 84 000 south koreans as kim il-sung longed to make up for the mass exodus that occurred when japan occupied the korean peninsula after world war ii japan was ousted north and south korea were formed and the newly formed rivals competed to see which could establish itself as the legitimate homeland of the korean people after the 1953 armistice north korea continued its forced repopulation project primarily abducting south korean fishermen this went on for decades and reuters reported that south korea scarcely acknowledged the kidnappings for fear of angering its ornery northern neighbor between 1977 and 1983 north korea also kidnapped somewhere between 20 and 100 japanese citizens often hauling them away from their homeland and sacks prisoners were forced to train north koreans to pass as foreigners for espionage operations or to conduct spy missions themselves u.s sergeant jenkins who we mentioned earlier claimed north korea had a spy breeding program that involved having prisoners produce interracial children with koreans admitting fault makes people feel weak and embarrassed for scientific american and apologizing to someone is often seen as yielding control however in 1968 america had to swallow its pride and apologize to north korea for npr north korean ships attacked the uss puebla a spy vessel pretending to conduct environmental research near north korea one crewman was killed and the remaining 82 americans were imprisoned and tortured for 11 months to save his crew from execution lieutenant commander pete buker confessed to espionage in addition to buuker's declaration north korea demanded an apology from the u.s government he was a diplomatic pickle for president johnson who had tried and failed to intimidate north korea into releasing the crewmen who found some interesting ways to rebel the americans told the north koreans naive about american culture that they would show the hawaiian good luck sign what they really did was raise the middle finger however the vietnam war was intensifying and it was better to have wounded pride more wounded soldiers so an american negotiator signed an apology letter while verbally denying its validity nonetheless north korea kept capture chip as a trophy north korea's track record of aggressive gestures is long and insane the scary part is that north korea possesses an estimated 20 to 60 nuclear weapons the us has tried to curb the country's nuclear ambitions through sanctions and condemnations but it might be tough to persuade them after the us destroyed north korea and threatened it with nukes for decades most of the korean war was fought under president truman who atomically bombed japan during world war ii in 1950 he considered doing the same to north korea and according to air and space magazine he almost did to show he meant business truman held a press conference to announce that he'd do anything to win including nuking the enemy he even ordered mock atomic bombing runs and authorized a general to use the nuclear option if he saw fit america instead used hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives according to newsweek and beginning in 1958 the u.s deployed nuclear weapons in south korea for 33 years to deter the north per the bulletin of atomic scientists fearing a u.s invasion north korean leader kim il-sung began trying to build nukes in the 1980s the korean war had an enormous death toll as many as 5 million people perished and the koreas lost about 10 percent of their civilian populations according to history until 2000 the official u.s death toll was listed as 54 246 a number literally etched in granite on the korean war veterans memorial that figure was entirely too high we don't mean that morally or philosophically the actual death toll was 36 in other words the official tally was almost 50 too high for half a century in a baffling clerical error that apparently went unnoticed the death toll included fatalities from around the world for the washington post excluding the deaths proved controversial however as some korean war veterans felt it devalued the already overlooked sacrifices of those who fought in the forgotten war korean legend has it that the peninsula's first kingdom was founded by a dude named dangun whose father was the king of heaven and whose mother was a bear that transformed into a beautiful woman after spending 100 days in a cave avoiding sunlight south korean professor jiung young explained because he establishes a sense of shared origins and cultural oneness that dengan is a basis for koreans to feel the necessity for pursuing harmony and unification that elusive reunion seemed a little more attainable in 2018 when north and south korea's leaders met and visited the mythical birthplace of dangun together check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more grunge videos about historical conflicts are 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Channel: Grunge

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Keywords: grunge, grunge channel, korea, korean, korean war, us war, united states war, us and korea, tootsie rolls, ufo, unidentified flying objects, movies, north korea, south korea, north and south korea, kidnapping, nukes, nuclear war, us nukes, death toll, death and war, excessive death, terrible war, north and south korea war, dmz, demilitarized zone, dmz korea, dmz north korea, dmz south korea, nuclear weapons, north korea nukes, us nuclear weapons, korean flag

Id: RlNBqNoiL9A

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021