War and friendship

Not too long ago Filipino soldiers fought the Chinese in a battlefield. One episode in that war was documented, with the 44-member Philippine team killing 16 Chinese soldiers in a battle for control of a hill with strategic importance.

Two of the kills were attributed to a 24-year-old Army second lieutenant named Fidel Ramos, leader of the reconnaissance platoon under the 20th Battalion Combat Team of the Philippine Expeditionary Force to Korea (PEFTOK).

Seven F-86 sabre jet fighters of the US Air Force dropped napalm bombs over enemy lines as Ramos’ platoon overran the spot called Eerie Hill, where Chinese communist troops, fighting alongside their Korean communist allies, had built bunkers. Starting with artillery, the Filipinos moved in, lobbing grenades, firing .30 caliber machine guns as well as M1 Garand rifles and Browning Automatic Rifles, and then using their bayonets in close quarters combat.

It was May 1952. PEFTOK was formed at the behest of the United Nations - the first time that the UN dispatched forces to war - as Koreans fought and headed for partition of their country. The Philippines was the third among 16 nations, after the United States and Australia, to send troops to Korea. Of 7,420 Filipino combat troops, 112 were killed in action, 229 wounded, 16 missing and 41 taken as prisoners of war.

People in what would later become South Korea remember those days. Park Sung Choon, the country’s minister of patriots and veterans affairs, noted that Filipinos “fought for a country they never knew and they never met.”

Park was in Manila for the inauguration of the PEFTOK-Korean War Memorial Hall last March 29 at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in Taguig City.

Speaking through an interpreter, Park recalled that his country was one of the poorest in the world during the war. Now South Korea is Asia’s fourth largest economy, and the country, Park said, “owes a great debt of honor” to those who helped make this possible.

“Freedom is not free,” Park said in ceremonies attended by President Aquino, whose father Ninoy covered the Korean War as a teenage correspondent for the Manila Times.

I counted only about 15 veterans of the war, Ramos included, who were at the ceremonies and heard Park thanking “those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we may live in freedom.”

Paterno Viloria, president of the PEFTOK Veterans Association Inc., told the Koreans at the ceremonies, “We were with you during the war and we are with you in this time of peace.”

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The entrance to the museum of the two-story structure greets visitors with a similar message: “Freedom is not free. It is paid for with the blood of fighting men and stained with the tears of loved ones left behind.”

Viloria called the memorial hall “a monument to peace and friendship.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Ernesto Carolina, administrator of the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO), told me that about 20 percent of PEFTOK veterans are still alive.

Ramos, who toured the facility with P-Noy, told me there were no women soldiers in PEFTOK, but most of the Red Cross volunteers from Manila who entertained the troops were women like Rustica Carpio and Rosa Rosal. He also mentioned “Joan Page” - only our entertainment editor Ricky Lo knew anything about her, telling me she was an American actress. Ricky said Page made a movie for Sampaguita Pictures in the early ’50s, called “Ang Asawa Kong Amerikana (My American Wife).” The leading man was Oscar Moreno, father of actress Boots Anson Roa.

South Korea’s Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs financed the construction of the memorial; the land was provided by the Philippine government. Nearby is the site for a four-story Human Resources Development Center, to be built with a $7.5-million grant from the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), with the 5,000-square-meter land provided by the PVAO.

To be completed in 2014, the training center will be the third to be built by KOICA in this country. A vocational training center in Davao City and an IT center in the Quezon City Polytechnic University, which opened in 2005, have produced about 3,000 graduates so far.

Korean Ambassador Hye Min Lee, who presided over the groundbreaking for the training center in Taguig, told me, “This is a small return for the big assistance given by the Philippines in Korea.”

At the memorial hall, Lee also noted that the two countries “share common values of democracy and freedom.”

The center in Taguig will be used mainly for technical and vocational courses administered by the Technical and Educational Skills and Development Authority (TESDA). Among the courses to be offered are animation, digital game programming, mechatronics servicing, instrumentation and control servicing.

The spacious structure will be useful for TESDA, which can train only about 2,000 Filipinos nationwide every year because of lack of facilities and resources.

Such skills are needed if we want to catch up with the Korean economy. South Korea is now the third largest source of foreign direct investment in the Philippines, our fifth largest trading partner, one of the biggest sources of aid, and the largest source of tourists.

Consider where the South Koreans were when 2Lt. Fidel Ramos was fighting in their war, and where the Philippines was at the time, and consider the progress both countries have since achieved.

These days we can’t even hold on to poachers in Philippine waters and keep away intruders from our territory.