Images of Korea

I'm starting a weekly "Images of Korea: Past and Present" on here. Really, it's something that will force me to learn more Korean history, while having fun writing about it. Whatever my reasons may be, I will use them to show contrast and give little bits and pieces of modern history and perspective, rather than writing a lecture on here.



A Korean girl and her brother in front of a M-26 Tank. I can't say where in Korea this was taken, but I can say that people still hold their children in this manner.


Side Note: 고's grandmother lived through this and through most of the Japanese occupation. I'm hoping to talk to her and get her personal account, but we'll see how that goes.

Brief History of the tank in Korea:

When the US Army went to war with Korea, it found itself unprepared to fight and win the first and succeeding battles. It is argued that the unpreparedness was due to massive underfunding and poorly managed demobilization after World War II.

On the eve of the Korean War, the nation's defense establishment ignored (Surprised?) much of what had been learned about the conventional tactics that had been successfully demonstrated in World War II, and instead had begun to depend on nuclear weapons delivered by air power. Like EVERY war, things a different than the one before and the Korean War was no exception.

This particular tank, the M-26, was the principal tank used in the Korean War. It was developed after the popular M4 Sherman tank had started to be upstaged in battle by the German and Soviet tanks towards the end of WWII. The tanks proved superior to the lighter Soviet-provided North Korea's tanks.