Gunsan

The port was full of North Korean agents, so the brigade fed them a wrong answer.

The Marines were lined up in formation and given a lecture on the tides and channels at Kunsan, a port on the west coast, loud enough for anyone listening.

The Marines knew better.

Wherever they were going, it was not Kunsan.

The only real clue was in a corner of the docks where two engineer officers had been quietly set to building wooden scaling ladders, and almost no one in the ranks knew what they were for.

The brigade had five days at Pusan to replace what a month had worn out, and the Marine Corps supply system could not do it alone.

General Dean experienced one of the most dramatic adventures of the withdrawal.

Moving down the road to Gunsan, dean and a small party encountered an enemy roadblock forced back dean's party with some wounded set out on foot after dark while trying to fetch water for the injured dean fell down a steep slope was knocked unconscious and suffered a gashed head and a broken shoulder separated from his men dean wandered alone in the mountains for thirty-six days trying to reach the american lines and was betrayed by two south koreans to the north koreans he would spend the next three years as a prisoner of war.

Dean was awarded the first Medal of Honor for service in the Korean War for his leadership and personal bravery with the 24th Division at Daejeon.

The division suffered a 30% casualty rate there and lost all of its organic equipment.

Every autumn weekend, anglers poured over from the mainland, filled the island's boarding houses, and crowded back onto the ferry on Sunday to make it home for the work week.

The boat that carried them was the Sohe ferry, a 110-ton passenger ship, about 34 meters long, built in 1990 and run by a small operator out of Gunsan.

Her license allowed 2 and 21 people aboard, including a crew of 14.

On Sunday, October 10th, 1993, at around 9.40 in the morning, she left widow's Pajanggaeum port for Gyeokpo carrying 362 people, 355 passengers and just 7 crew.

The punishment fell administratively.

On October 18th, eight days after the sinking, President Kim Young-sam dismissed the transport minister and the head of the Maritime and Port Administration, telling an emergency cabinet meeting that he was sorry before the people and that he felt responsibility as president for the string of major accidents under his young government.

The regional maritime police commander in Gunsan also lost his post, and 38 officials in all were disciplined.

Then there was the money.

I am curious, what town were you in when you first went to Korea?

Gunsan.

Gunsan.

Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do.

So, you know, according to someone from a smallish town called Fallon, Missouri, to me, looking at a 100,000 person town, no, actually it was about 300,000 people.

I thought it was quite large, but by Korean standards, 300,000 people is quite small.

But yeah, again, as I said, looking back, I'm glad I started with a smaller town.

But yeah, it was Gunsan.

You know, but we actually traveled around South Korea and went to a few U.S. bases.

So we went to Gunsan Air Base and then we also went to Camp Humphreys and Camp Humphreys was huge in Pyeongtaek.

It's actually the largest U.S. air base in the world overseas, larger than Ramsey in Germany.

Yes.

And it is twice the size of D.C. And we protested in front of it, actually.

But at Gunsan, we learned that the U.S. is actually trying to expand the airbase.

They're claiming that they're asking the ROK to build a civilian airport nearby, a runway.

But everyone in the area knows that it's just an expansion of Gunsan Air Base.

The Trade and Industry Ministry and the Oceans Ministry unveiled the plan at a joint meeting on Monday.

The money, a mix of public and private funds, will go into three flagship projects aimed at automating design and assembly at shipyards in Mokpo, Yonggam, Geoje, Busan, and Gunsan.

Part of the plan is an AI lighthouse factory in the Mokpo and Yonggam area, with about five hundred and ninety-six billion won set aside for it.

The government says the effort should also spread the technology to smaller shipbuilders and equipment makers as China keeps gaining share of global ship orders.