Today is the 60th anniversary of the armistice which ended the Korean War. Technically, we are still in an armistice, since a peace settlement was never made, so the parties involved are still in a state of war with each other.
Though millions of Koreans still suffer under the tyranny of Korea’s Communist dictatorship, the people of South Korea now enjoy freedom and prosperity thanks to the sacrifice of so many. Soldiers from the Republic of Korea, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Philippines, Colombia, Ethiopia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey fought, bleed, and died to insure that freedom. Medical, and other support, was also provided by Denmark, India, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Republic of China (Taiwan), Japan, El Salvador, and Cuba.
To those who sacrificed, our eternal thanks.
The willingness to fight for other people’s freedom is reminiscent of another, more ancient Republic:
“There was one people in the world which would fight for others’ liberties at its own cost, to its own peril, and with its own toil, not limiting its guaranties of freedom to its neighbors, to the men of the immediate vicinity, or to countries that lay close at hand, but ready to cross the sea that there might be no unjust empire anywhere and that everywhere justice, right, and law might prevail”
— Livy, History of Rome XXXIII § 33
Freedom is not free.
