The Beginning of the Korean War
Witness History
BBC
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2018
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
North Korean communist troops invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. Initially they were very successful until UN forces (mainly American) helped drive them back. The war lasted until a ceasefire was declared in July 1953, millions of Koreans were killed in the fighting. Dr Yoon Goo Lee was living in a town in South Korea when the invasion started. In 2010 he told his story to Louise Hidalgo.
Photo: Korean refugees fleeing to the south. Credit: Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
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| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less searching |
| 0:25.7 | and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.8 | You're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:35.0 | And this week we're delving back into our archive to bring you stories from the Korean |
| 0:39.4 | Peninsula. |
| 0:40.4 | Today, Louise Hidalgo takes us back to the 25th of June 1950 and the beginning of the Korean |
| 0:47.0 | War. The conflict fought between the North and the South, but also between United Nations forces, most of them American, and communist Chinese troops. |
| 0:57.0 | This program was first podcast in 2010. |
| 1:01.0 | The year is 1950, a Sunday. |
| 1:04.0 | We wore at the church and then had this news and |
| 1:08.0 | within just a few days, |
| 1:10.0 | North Korean army came to our town |
| 1:12.0 | and you can imagine the fear in agony. |
| 1:17.0 | The North Korean army had crossed into South Korea on the 25th of June. |
| 1:22.0 | Within a week they'd taken the South Korean capital Seoul. A few days later, |
| 1:26.6 | they were in Wohn-JU, a town in the center of the Korean Peninsula, where a young Jun-Gui lived with his family. |
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