A Week of Terror in 1968

US soldiers patrol the DMZ, Nov. 1969 (PC: AP).

“We thought the president there was a stooge, an American collaborator. I hated him.”       – Kim Shin-jo, member of a North Korean commando team sent to assassinate the South Korean president in January 1968 On the afternoon of January 17, 1968, a 31-man, hand-picked team of North Korean commandos who had been…

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Happy Birthday to the Soldier Who Never Left

John Nowell in 1983

Stepping off the bus in January 1965, US Army Private First Class John Nowell, a 22-year-old California native who’d been drafted the year before, immediately knew Seoul wasn’t the place for him. The impoverished city of 3.2 million, with few cars, an abundance of ox-pulled carts, spicy food he didn’t like, and people he couldn’t…

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