- Introduction
Due to the relative modesty of their involvement [1], as well as the desire to keep secret certain military archives from this period, and more prosaically the inability to master the needed languages [2], the role of medium and regional powers [3] in the Korean War has rarely been investigated [4].
The dearth of historical works regarding France’s participation in the Korean War [5] also fit with the above mentioned reasons. Studies written since the end of the war have analyzed the wider international effects of the Korean conflict or the legal aspects of the war. A handful of testimonies, written by veterans, during [6] and just after the war [7], appeared in books of uneven quality. From the 1980s on, an occasional scholarly analysis could be found while a handful of doctoral dissertations were devoted to various aspects of the Korean War. Unfortunately, some of them contained many errors.
From 1953–2006, out of the 13 PhD dissertations defended in France [8], 10 were presented by Korean students and only one, in 2006, directly dealt with France’s role in the Korean War [9], as the Koreans seemingly preferred to do research about their own country [10]. It is also true that the relevant documents in the French military and diplomatic archives were inaccessible for many years due to the restrictive French National Archives regulations of 50 years, and were not fully available until the 1990s, though it still was possible to interview veterans.
During the Korean conflict, France tried to stop all initiatives which could lead to an escalation of tension, especially regarding China, bearing in mind the fears of a Chinese attack against French Indochina, where the Indochinese War had been raging since 1946. In the meantime, France was manifesting a deep solidarity with its old American ally, through full support in official conferences and a limited military involvement on the Korean battleground.
The aim of this paper is to explain how and why France participated in the Korean War, and especially how after the war, some Korean and French veteran associations, and local and national authorities decided to commemorate the French participation in the conflict and French sojourn in Korea through the building of a “Path of the Living Memory of the French Contribution to the Korean War”.
