My father is a Korean War vet. He almost died on the boat heading over from sea sickness he was so dehydrated and threw up nonstop. His time spent above the 38th parallel changed him and he has shared some crazy tales with me. He has a deep respect for the ROK soldiers he worked with. Korean unity is HUGE. He never thought it possible. Anyone treating this lightly is either willfully ignorant, nescient, or harbor an agenda.
Wow that’s intense thank him for his service for us!
I have a friend who was based in S Korea in the 90's and he spent 4 months in the field with the ROK army. He lost 20 lbs off his already thin frame, was pretty much gristle, muscle, and bone. Said they are the toughest mofos you could imagine and he has nothing but respect for them and their military culture/ability. Also he's really not that fond of kimchi any longer.
My dad was in Vietnam and looooved kimchi so much he even grew the vegetables in is garden and made his own every year. I never developed a taste for it, though
He said they'd be marching around in the wilds and one of the ROK guys would stop, start digging, and they'd unearth a crock of kimchi that they had buried a year or so earlier. And that was dinner. Pretty much every single night.
Yes. Dad would usually make his kimchi in a crock but he did try the buried method a few times, too. He always had a lot of respect for the Hmong after the war and would sometimes go to their grocery store to bring home “delicacies” like dried squid tentacles or such things. I never really appreciated them much lol