Post-267: U.S. General Walker’s Site of Death (1950) in Seoul

On Monday December 29th, 2014, with temperatures in the 40s Fahrenheit, I and an American friend, M.P., hiked up a section of Dobong Mountain (도봉산) in northeast Seoul. We ended near a dramatic high rock outcropping, atop which a few dozen birds were squawking at long length to each other about I cannot imagine what. I was puzzled why these birds hadn’t migrated south. That was afternoon. We’d arrived by train at Dobong Station that morning.

The area around Dobong Station, still within the Seoul city limits (barely), felt more like a backwater country town a hundred miles away than it felt like Seoul.

While we were still near the station, M.P. did a “Hey, let me show you something,” and waved in a particular direction. M.P. had lived in this area before. I followed. We came to a little building housing a bland cell phone shop and a piddling, unremarkable cafe with a typically-ostentatious name (“Cafe Lucile”). I wasn’t impressed. But just then I looked up.It was a museum in honor of a long-forgotten American general killed nearby many years ago. Now I was interested.

Looking at the near corner of this building, up near the roof, you see a memorial stone. This is it:

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Those are four stars you see, next to a portrait of General Walton Harris Walker, U.S. Army. It was a museum in honor of the general, apparently. I asked M.P. if he’d ever been inside. He hadn’t. I tried opening the door; locked. I tried walking around the back; nothing there. I tried looking in the window. I saw were stairs descending down into blackness. The museum, if that’s what it was, was closed on this Monday late morning.

I commented to M.P. that I was sure that General Walker, who in 1950 frantically led Eighth Army (under which were all U.S. Army units in Korea), did not say the words attributed to him on this plaque verbatim, i.e. “I’m going to keep the korea end of the die here.” This is such a poor translation as to be almost indecipherable if you didn’t know the context. It is a translation into English from Korean from English. (As written: 내가 여기서 죽더라도 끝까지 한국을 지키겠다). I can’t find the original words in English online. I would offer the following as a better translation: “Even if I have to die here, I’ll fight to the end to keep Korea free”.

Nearby, across from the train tracks and not far from Dobong Station, marks his spot of death all those years ago.

Walker led U.S. Army forces for six months in the war, during the long retreat in June, July, the defensive stand at Busan in August and September, the drive north in September and October after the Incheon Landing, the occupation of North Korea, and he was also on the scene when Chinese intervention escalated the war in late 1950. He was killed in a car accident just as the Chinese were getting ready for their successful attack on Seoul.

Walker was a Texan. Physically, he was short and fat (“stocky”). The author of a book about the Korean War I read compared him to a comedic stock character often seen in old war movies, the local misfit drafted into the army, assigned ill-fitting clothes, whose helmet won’t strap properly; this kind of thing. He may not have looked the soldier, but according to my reading, he was always at the front in the crucial months of summer 1950, often zipping from place to place in his personal propeller plane, always “inspecting” (yelling at) the Americans to stiffen their backbones, to shape up and start fighting for God’s sake; stop retreating. Of course, actions speak louder than words, and General Walker so often showing up at frontline positions must have inspired bravery by example.

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