Don’t hurl insults at servicemen

SHIN BOK-RYONG
The author is a former emeritus professor of history at Konkuk University.

The U.S. Naval Academy is located in Annapolis, Maryland. Turner Joy Road is to the southeast of the campus. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Turner Joy graduated from the naval academy, served in the Asian Fleet and became the UN Delegate to the Korean Armistice talks.

The road was built to commemorate the admiral who served as superintendent of the Naval Academy. The Turner Joy Museum in the state of Washington was built on a remodeled structure of the destroyer the admiral had commanded.

While serving in the Asian Fleet, Admiral Joy served as captain of a patrol boat on the Yangtze River in China. Thanks to this experience, he became the senior delegate to the Korean Armistice negotiations.

It was fateful that the admiral was representing the United Nations when Deng Hua, a general in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, represented China. After the Chinese army offered more land, Admiral Joy demanded five islands in the West Sea, which continue to have strategic values to this day.

Admiral Joy was stressed from the nerve-wracking negotiations with the Communists, and when he got sick, he came to head the Naval Academy. Soon after, he passed away from cancer.

The admiral was fluent in Latin. His motto was Cicero’s saying, “Esse quam videri,” meaning “To be, rather than to seem.” That is also the state motto of North Carolina. The motto means that very few actually have the virtue of wanting to be recognized by others.

At the frontline of the five islands in the West Sea, our marines are guarding the country with the spirit of “not losing the sea even when they lose the land,” according to Admiral Joy’s teaching. In 1992 at the top of Baengnyeong Island, I once said, “This is the Golan Heights of Korea.” Then a Marine Corps brigade commander responded, “That’s why I prepared a little plot of land for my grave.”

That commander is shaking today over who should take responsibility for the tragic death of a Marine on a rescue mission last year. It is very regrettable that something that could happen only on the last day of the Korean military is happening now.

The insults on the generals of our Marine Corps — so graphically hurled by an wicked opposition lawmaker with no military experience at a recent hearing at the National Assembly — must stop.