From June 1950 to July 1953, some 380,000 international troops, 300,000 of which came from the United States, were engaged in defending the Republic of South Korea from northern communist invasion. Being a UN action, President Truman refused to even acknowledge the status as a war, calling it instead the "Korean Conflict." In fact, my uncle, who earned three Bronze Stars in Korea, only received his benefits as a war veteran last year. In the US, it became known as "The Forgotten War."
What most Americans today know of the Korean War they learned from watching reruns of the popular sitcom M*A*S*H. What most Korean War veterans remember - besides the extremely harsh conflict with Korean and Chinese forces - is the weather. The climate in South Korea transitions from a very long and bitterly cold winter into a very short and extremely humid summer punctuated by a month of monsoon rains. What veterans remember most is freezing their butts off all winter and then dealing with a full month of torrential rains and endless mud. Several typhoons strike the peninsula each year.
It seems fitting that the Korean War Memorial in Providence depicts a US serviceman hunkered down in the mud wearing 1950's style foul weather gear. The look on the soldier's face tells the story of hardships endured in defense of a foreign country only to return home to an ungrateful nation that would not even acknowledge their participation in war. It seems equally fitting to take this shot on a bleak, rainy day with unseasonably cold temperatures for Providence. It's my hope that the photo properly conveys the feelings felt by the men and women who fought in Korea and who endured amazing hardships in defense of a distant people.
For post processing, I made the unusual decision (for me) to go the selective color route. By keeping the statue bronze and turning the background into a black-grey-ivory gradient, I hoped to keep the emphasis on the soldier while highlighting the bleakness of his environment. I ran this through a detail light filter in Topaz Adjust, and then isolated the statue. I adjusted the levels on the statue and reduced the saturation a bit. Switching to the background, I applied a black-grey-ivory gradient map in color blend mode, then adjusted the levels of just the background. A sepia filter was used on the entire photo.
A nice tribute photo. A very touching memorial sculpture. My best friend's father is a Korean veteran. But I never realized our nation's President refused to acknowledge it as a war. Interesting historical fact for me.
