[UNFORGOTTEN HEROES] For daughter of Swedish veteran, Korea feels like home

Diplomacy

Published: 26 Jul. 2023, 14:57 Updated: 26 Jul. 2023, 20:04

[UNFORGOTTEN HEROES] For daughter of Swedish veteran, Korea feels like home

Swedish veteran of the Korean War, Wivie A. Blomberg, center, with Koreans who worked at the field hospital of Sweden in Busan. [WIVIE A. BLOMBERG]

The Korean War, which raged from 1950 to 1953, was a crucial Cold War milestone as a fratricidal war between the two Koreas evolved into an intense proxy battle between the superpowers. Some 2 million personnel from over 20 countries came to Korea's aid, risking their lives fighting on the frontlines and tending to the fallen. As Korea marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, the Korea JoongAng Daily asked veterans, their relatives and government ministers about efforts to commemorate the conflict, the war's geopolitical consequences and its relevance in today's politically and militarily polarized world. — Ed.

For Pia Blomberg, daughter of a Swedish veteran of the 1950-53 Korean War, the country halfway across the world from her home couldn’t feel closer.

“I breathe and live Korea every single day,” said Blomberg, speaking with the Korea JoongAng Daily on Sunday.

It was Blomberg’s third time visiting Korea, a country where her mother, Wivie A. Blomberg, served as a nurse for six months from November 1953, at the Swedish Red Cross field hospital in Busan.

Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs has been regularly inviting veterans and their families to Korea since 1975. As of the end of last year, around 33,600 veterans had revisited Korea to partake in the ministry’s program.

Wivie A. Blomberg was among over a thousand Swedes who served at the hospital during and after the war since it was established on Sept. 23, 1950. The hospital began with 200 beds, but later in the war, it expanded to 600 beds.

The hospital tended to an estimated 19,100 soldiers from the UN Command and 2,400 South Korean soldiers.

Pia Blomberg, daughter of Swedish veteran of the Korean War Wivie A. Blomberg, speaks with the Korea JoongAng Daily in Seoul on Sunday. She has brought with her many records - photos, letters, magazines - dating back to the 1950s when her mother served in the war as a nurse at the Swedish field hospital in Busan. [ESTHER CHUNG]

Like many other veterans of the war, Blomberg had also put her life on the line to come to the aid of South Korea after it was invaded by its northern neighbor on June 25, 1950.

“They were flown in during the night when they could fly under the radar,” said Pia Blomberg, recalling her mother’s tales about Korea. “Each passenger had a parachute on their back, just in the case they were shot down.”

Throughout the war, they treated not only UN forces and South Korean soldiers but also civilians and even North Korean prisoners of war.

And some lifelong friendships were forged there.

“We had three Korean girls working at the hospital,” wrote Paul Evert Karlsson, a veteran of the Korean War, to Pia Blomberg a few years ago. “One was called Mrs. Shu and the two younger ones both had the last names Kim, so we called one Big Kim and another Little Kim.”

One of the Korean nurses, Sang-moon, went to Sweden after the war was over to study and practice nursing. She worked under Wivie's supervision. To this day, Sang-moon and Pia remain friends.

Karlsson’s letter also reveals a lot of what Wivie was like.

“Their supervisor was a Swedish nurse called Wivie Askevik, a fantastic, sweet and kind nurse,” he said. “Mrs. Shu said Wivie speaks with her heart instead of with her head. She meant that Wivie could see the human before everything else.”

Pia Blomberg, center, with Sang-moon, right, who had worked with her mother at the Swedish field hospital in Busan during the war, and Anita, left, who was treated at the hospital. The photo was taken during one of their reunions in Sweden. [PIA BLOMBERG]

Karlsson at the time of his writing actually didn’t know that Wivie was Pia’s mother.

To come to Korea, Wivie at the time had postponed her marriage to a military officer who would become Pia’s father. So, she carried her maiden name, Askevik, while she was here.

The couple had fallen in love at a clinic in Sweden where Wivie worked as a nurse. Blomberg, a military officer, was admitted for tuberculosis. By the time he was discharged, he was in love with Wivie.

“He proposed to her, and she said, ‘Yes, but first I need to go to Korea,’” said Blomberg.

The war concluded with an armistice on July 27, 1953, but much work was left to tend to the injured military personnel and civilians. The Swedish field hospital was converted into the Swedish Hospital in Busan and operated until 1957.

A photo of the Swedish field hospital taken by Swedish veteran of the Korean War Wivie A. Blomberg. [WIVIE A. BLOMBERG]

Following a request from the Korean government, the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, along with the UN Korean Reconstruction Agency, decided to open and operate the National Medical Center for 10 years from November 1958.

But Sweden’s commitment to peace and security on the Korean Peninsula continues to this day in another format.

When the Korean War armistice was signed to regulate the relations between the two Koreas, the UN Command, North Korea and China agreed to create a neutral commission to implement the armistice.

The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission upon its inauguration was represented by officers from four countries, two of which were appointed by the UN Command and the other two by North Korea.

North Korea and China had selected Poland and then-Czechoslovakia as their representative nations in the commission, but expelled them from the commission by 1995, after the two nations democratized and one of them, Czechoslovakia, peacefully dissolved into two new states.

Sweden and Switzerland, appointed by the UN Command, continue to operate in the commission today.

And the ties to Korea continue inter-generationally for many of the Swedish veterans. It was Pia's son, a military officer with colleagues who had served at the neutral commission in Korea, who had encouraged her to come to Korea for the first time in 2018.

It had been five years since her mother’s death.

“It was just like what my mother had told me about Korea,” Blomberg recalled. “She didn’t talk much about the ravages of the war, because it was too tragic to recall. But she told me about the Korean people, their ways of life, the way they respect each other. I see all of that whenever I come back. And I know I am home.”