Then & Now: Camp St. Barbara, Korea

Tags: Camp St. Barbara, Korea, USFK

• PBAR
  7:23 pm on June 19th, 2009 1

  I notice in a lot of older pictures of Korea that the hills appeared to be deforested. I’ve heard that the Japanese heavily logged all of Korea and I’m curious as to whether that’s a myth or not. Was Korea really deforested before the 1980s or does it just appear that way from a few pictures I’ve seen of areas near military bases.

  Reply

  GI Korea
  June 20th, 2009 at 7:42 am

  Korea was deforested both by the Japanese and domestic consumption and then what was left was also heavily damaged during the Korean War. The replanting of trees in Korea has been a major event with the establishment of Arbor Day over the past few decades. The results of this can easily be seen today from old pictures like the one above. However, it is even more apparent when comparing South Korea with North Korea where much of the hillsides have been greatly deforested for domestic consumption and is the reason why NK has such flooding problems.

  Reply

• Bruce
  9:27 pm on June 20th, 2009 2

  Here is how the hills looked in late 50s – early 60s in most areas. There were huge tree planting projects under way in 60, on my 1st tour.

  http://www.qsl.net/wd4ngb/barehills.jpg

  This was taken near what was called Unchon-ni, now called Uncheon. This was the location of Camp Kaiser, which was just north of Watkins Range.

  Reply

• mike sherman
  10:00 pm on June 20th, 2009 3

  MY UNCLE WAS WOUNDED ON THE HILL IN 53. HE BELIEVED MANY OF THE PRISONERS FROM VIET NAM WAS TAKEN TO KOREA BECAUSE WE HAVE NO RELATIONS WITH THEM

  Reply

• silentgrayfellow
  6:57 pm on July 26th, 2009 4

  @ #3, that’s interesting, I assume you mean that POWs captured by the North Vietnamese were sent to North Korea. That would make sense, and could explain why there are so many soliders that were lost in Vietnam and never accounted for.

  Reply

• tom young
  8:51 pm on January 25th, 2010 5

  i was stationed at camp st. barbara from august 1960 to august 1961. The 1960 photo shows it s it was. I have alot of photos of the bridge and town and the bridge looks the same. The bridge was to be blown in the event of a major attack and we had to make it across within certain time peramoters or it would be blown in front of us. i also have a street photo of the town street looking downhil and unpaved that looks the same. We called the large hills Camel’s hump. The airport had small craft and helicoptors for survellience. There was a bar sitting high on a cliff but the trees may cover it.

  Reply

 

RSS feed for comments on this post | TrackBack URI

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

By submitting a comment here you grant this site a perpetual license to reproduce your words and name/web site in attribution.

Click to cancel reply