On a cold Sunday morning in January, I awoke at about 6:03 AM, and from underneath my layer of warm blankets, I reached for my iPhone and searched with my fingers for the email box. I noticed that I had received two emails from a former army comrade, Alexander Gabbrielli, in which there was a video document of a young North Korean soldier who was killed in the Kursk region of Russia. The other email contained a photo shot of a page out of the North Korean’s diary. The name of the North Korean soldier is Jong Kyong Hong, and I will probably not forget his name for the rest of my life. Now, the reader may ask why I would make such a statement about an unknown, obscure soldier who I never met, who has already left this world, and what importance does his war diary have for an elderly military historian? The answer is that Jong Kyong Hong’s death compelled me to ask myself in the early hours of a winter morning in Kansas what meaning my life has.

As a military theorist, first and foremost, it is my objective to analyze a particular military event or campaign using the evidence of statistics, to gather and study research from various perspectives about the friction of war between the dueling parties and their allies as well as to attempt to give a historically objective account of the given state of the battles that took place with an eagle’s glance as if homing in on a quarry from impregnable heights. It is not usually my interest or concern to speak or write about the common soldier that gave his or her life in combat with an adversary, it is my only concern is to give a thorough-going interpretation of what took place in a battle or campaign which gives evidence of a strategic and tactical learning perspective. I remember well what Clausewitz wrote about understanding the nature of campaign: “… that we can examine the causes of the momentous decision reached during it; yet the urgency of the demand is matched only by the inadequacy of the history written about it”. Even in that wise comment by the great military thinker, I found something missing as a modern military theorist. Why, I asked myself on a very early Sunday morning, does this one individual soldier’s death bring me to a cross-road of attempting to understand why I even write about the art of war? After all, life and death is about more than such a martial interpretation of existence. In my own clumsy way, I begin to think again about the obscure soldier once known as Jong Kyong Hong.

In an almost desperate way to know more about the dead soldier that my former army comrade had brought to my attention, I sought out more information on the internet. I came across several accounts of Jong Kyong Hong’s death and his diary. In particular, the capitalist economic news outlet, The Wall Street Journal wrote the following about the young soldier’s death and diary:

The grisly tactics were divulged in a diary taken off a slain North Korean soldier on Dec. 21, with passages containing mundane details of life at the front, descriptions of combat tactics and expressions of love for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to excerpts recently made public by Ukraine’s special-operations forces. Independent experts say the diary entries appear genuine, with penmanship, word choice and expressions of ideological fervor all common in North Korea.

There are certain phrases within the context of the editorial which reveal a sterility and obscene observation of the death of the young North Korean’s attempt to record for personal reasons or even for posterity, and the phrases are “grisly tactics”, “mundane details”, “appear genuine” and “ideological fervor”— all these phrases within a Wall Street Journal article from two journalists describing Jong Kyong Hong’s death as if they were dissecting an insect. There is one phrase that is especially telling from a political perspective and that is the phrase “expressions of love” for the leader of 조선민주주의인민공화국 (Korean), known in English as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Now, we must understand that the author who penned the term ‘expressions of love’ did not mean it with a cultural nuanced understanding, but in a banal expression of derogation. What the journalists could not express, one of them from South Korea and the other from the Ukraine, was a human observation of the deceased soldier who died in a battlefield of snow in the Kursk region of Russia. There was an attempt by the journalists to at least conceptualize how a North Korean might view death from a perspective that is far different from our interpretation of death in the Western world.

When I took a walk this morning to Sunset Park in the small city where I live in Kansas, I tried to imagine how Jong Kyong Hong must have felt holding his weapon in a snowy trench not knowing when a force of Ukrainian troops might attack him and his comrades or how he would react if a small drone suddenly came out of the winter skies to end his life. I understood in that park, now filled with snow and sunlight, that as a military theorist though I write about the complexity of the art of war, I would never fully comprehend the essence of war beyond the theory of strategy and tactics, and that is my Achilles heel not only as a military historian but as a man as well. War is about more than the various components of combat, it is ultimately about facing one’s death alone. The common soldier goes out to meet his death not always with courage or even a soldier’s simple determination to kill and survive. One must acknowledge that one’s life can end in seconds. Seconds…the ticking of history’s clock. Seconds…as you are thinking of your home, your family, your wife, husband or lover…or simply how you miss your pet dog or cat. Seconds …when you were thinking about what you would eat later from your rations or who to make them last as long as possible or where you might sleep for the coming night or when you might have a few seconds simply to rest your mind from the grief of life. Seconds…before you no longer exist, before you write your last words on a piece of paper. The phrases of a journalist about a soldier’s death mean nothing ultimately. The high prose of a military theorist describing soldiers’ deaths ultimately does not resonate throughout history. Soldiers who do not leave war diaries behind take their thoughts with them to their singular graves.

Returning to the article in the American news outlet, the journalist would add this commentary about Jong Kyong Hong’s words in his journal, specifically quoting a passage to further demonstrate his supposed naivety or lack of a politically worldly understanding of the human condition regarding the issues of war and peace:

The young soldier who penned the passage about the drone died in a firefight alongside two other compatriots, according to Ukraine’s special forces. “Even at the cost of my life, I will carry out the Supreme Commander’s orders without hesitation,” reads one entry from the diary. “I will show the world the bravery and sacrifice of Kim Jong Un’s special forces.”

In quoting the young North Korean’s zeal to sacrifice himself for his homeland, even in a foreign country, the journalist resorts to the propaganda ruse to demonstrate that Jong Kyong Hong has no true understanding of his soldierly sacrifice and that he is simply committing, like other North Koreans before him during the Korean War, an act of combat suicide:

Many North Koreans are refusing to be captured, opting to kill themselves first or being finished off by their own side when injured, according to Ukrainian officials. “Due to their ideological mindset and indoctrination, they simply lack the concept of surrendering,” said Col. Oleksandr Kindratenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces.

The diary entries are likely motivated by North Korean military lore that celebrates the tale of a young hero from the 1950-53 Korean War. The soldier penned a letter expressing a willingness to give up his life for the motherland just moments before thrusting himself in front of an enemy machine gun.

Again, the journalist’s commentary shows a shallow lack of understanding of a singular soldier’s death in the moment of battle. They ensnare the reader into thinking that it is only “ideological mindset and indoctrination” that he believes in during his pursuit of the enemy, and that he is a simple romantic peasant soldier who expresses himself nostalgically as his past solder predecessors did in their war diaries in 1950-53. There is no noting of factual historical reference, that North Korean soldiers knew the Korean War as the Fatherland Liberation War –(Choguk haebang chŏnjaeng) in Korean, or sometimes simply as the "Chosŏn War" (조선전쟁; Chosŏn chŏnjaeng), which translates to "Korean War" in English. These young men of the current of the PRK Armed Forces had family members, fathers or grandfathers, that fought in that war, along with the Chinese, against American troops and UN Command. How could these young North Koreans not be aware of their Fatherland’s past history of a war with the West? According to the Korean War Legacy Foundation, the authors’ wrote this about the North Korean’s peoples perspective of the Korean War:

The North Koreans had their own view. They argued that the war began not with their invasion of the south, but with earlier border attacks by South Korean leader Syngman Rhee’s forces, ordered by the United States. The DPRK maintains that the American government planned the war in order to shore up the collapsing Rhee government, to help the American economy and to spread its power throughout Asia and around the world.

What does the Ukrainian Colonel know about the story of the North Korean fighters in the past Fatherland Liberation War or the deeper attitudes of why North Korean troops give their lives so willing alongside Russian troops at Kursk? Although this military historian recognizes he does not access to more factual information as to why the Asiatic soldiers willingly go to fight in the Ukraine, I would state it is because of their socialistic values and their submission to the leadership of the DPRK. The Asiatic person views death as a natural part of the biological cycle of the ending of life, and Asian culture generally has a stronger emphasis on the

interrelationship between family, community and ancestors. The somber fact is that neither the journalist, nor the colonel nor Westerners, Americans, in particular, have a profound understanding of the expansive meaning of death. We live in fear and denial, not wanting to know about the essence of death as we pursue our daily needs for consumerism and constant entertainment as we attempt to avoid knowledge of our own extinction. We, like the deceased young soldier, Jong Kyong Hong, are going to die, to perish for all time.

There are many brilliant literary, philosophical and historical works across all continents that reveal truths about the subject of men who perish in war. However, there is no written work, no art or any other form of creative expression that can ultimately express the inexpressible. Such is the nature of all wars, whether they be imperialist wars, nationalist wars or wars of liberation. In Sophocles’ last known published play in which he describes the horror and bravery of the warrior, Philoctetes, who mourns his father, Poeas, the king of Meliboea in Thessaly, and then is about to give in to fighting for the Greeks against the Trojans in a war he has his doubts about in the first place:

PHILOCTETES:

I go to find my father.

CHORUS:

Where?

PHILOCTETES:

In Hades.

He no longer sees the light.

O my city, ancestral land,

If only I could lay eyes on you.

Why did I leave that holy river?

To fight for the Greeks, my enemies?

How I am nothing! Nothing!

Philoctetes was obstinate because he felt he was wronged by the Greek army, left to rot on the desert island Lemnos because of a wound from a snake bite.

PHILOCTETES:

The storm of all my sorrows,

… I am leaving you, leaving you for good,

Just when I had given up on hope.

Farewell, isle of Lemnos,

Steer me on a fair and fortunate course

To wherever mighty Fate should send me,

A friends’ good thoughts and the invincible,

Demigod brought fulfillment.

Jong Kyong Hong is not a modern Philoctetes. He is closer in age to the young Greek warrior, Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, who seeks to persuade Philoctetes to come forth into the Greek ranks and do battle with the Trojan army. Jong Kyong Hong’s death will not be remembered for something like an Ancient Greek tragedy; his death is not a myth. His death is real. It is about his personal sacrifice for the “ancestral land” that he will never go back to for all time. The North Korean soldier, Jong Kyong Hong’s death and diary, serve as a remembrance and a memorial. They are compelling reminders of our limited time on this earth, and what we make of the time we have here. In his personal innocence and naiveness as a soldier, he did understand what Thuycdides reminds us of both about bravery and one’s personal vision of greatness: “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.” Jong Kyong Hong had a soldier’s vision, and he went out to meet it.

Editor's Note:

The views and informations expressed in the article are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect the views of The International. We believe in providing a platform for a range of viewpoints from the left.