Filed under: History
We were invited tonight to a screening of the 11 minute film “Miracle at Gapyeong” by its producer, whose family we’ve known forever.
Brad and his wife gave a presentation beforehand to offer some background information on how the film came to be and the unexpected connections made between people who knew people who’d been there who had offered more information for it.
It’s the story of 240 soldiers from southern Utah who had been promised that if they stayed faithful to God they would come home from the Korean War. They were sent to back up the front with no prior combat experience and found themselves suddenly surrounded–and yet held off a major offensive of 4000 Chinese and North Korean soldiers who had just about surrounded them.
Per President Truman’s Presidential unit citation later, 830 soldiers surrendered to those 240 Americans! They were having to climb the mountain, where they were fully exposed, to try to escape our men’s fire.
Brad said the men asked each prisoner of war, as they were supposed to, why they were surrendering. Again and again the answer was, We shoot you and you don’t fall down.
Fifty years later the Americans were invited back to South Korea to see a park built in their honor. That sculpture of a book? The pages on one side are written in Korean, on the other, English, telling the story of that battle.
And for those old men to get to see Seoul a beautiful city now, living in a democracy and free from war.
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Thank you for sharing. I hadn’t read about this before.
Comment by DebbieR 01.12.25 @ 9:34 amLeave a comment
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