My staff members Trung and Son agreed to come along for the excursion to Bac Giang and help me locate the North Korean veterans' cemetery. I had asked my friend Professor Nguyen Ngoc Hung for some guidance on locating the cemetery. He said his understanding was that such a cemetery was located near the Kip airfield, north of Bac Giang, but that it contained mostly Chinese graves.
In Bac Giang we received confusing and conflicting information, with several people having some vague knowledge of a Chinese cemetery but no information about whether Koreans were buried there. After several turns, backtracking, and more confusing information, we finally found the Chinese cemetery, about 12 kilometers from a little village called Bo Ha along a rutted, muddied, and washed-out farm road.
The Chinese cemetery was at a crossroads of a tiny village. There were stone markers bordering the gate, with worn and illegible inscriptions of quotes from Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong. Inside the cemetery was the predictable tall obelisk that certified this was the resting place of soldiers who had sacrificed for the nation.
The curious local villagers who gathered around us said that a caretaker who lived nearby had the key to the locked gate, but he was unavailable at that time, so we were unable to enter. The local people did not know how many graves were inside, but they indicated that the cemetery contained graves of Vietnamese as well as "many" Chinese soldiers. They insisted there were no Koreans buried there.
Finally, an old man walked up, apparently a village elder, and we asked him about Koreans who might be buried in the area. He immediately told us about a Korean cemetery located in Voi near Bac Giang, about 15 kilometer from our location. We thanked him and got back in the car just as the rain re turned in a downpour.
After about an hour of more traveling on muddy roads through partially flooded farm lands, we were back on a paved rural road and soon in the village of Voi. Again, after repeated questioning and conflicting directions, we finally were told there was a Korean cemetery on a little-used dirt road about 100 meters west of the railroad track, the north-south line running from Hanoi to Lang Son.
After waiting for the afternoon train to lumber past, we crossed the tracks and drove about 50 meters, as far as the car could go before the ruts and washouts became too deep. The driver stayed with the car and Trung, Son, and I walked the remaining distance. As we rounded a bend we saw the familiar cemetery obelisk towering above some flowering dai or frangipani trees. Some laborers digging with picks and shovels were opening a trench across the roadway to release water from a flooded field near the walls of the cemetery. The wooden gate of the cemetery was padlocked, and the wall seemed too high to surmount. The western wall, however, was low enough for me to scramble across.
The cemetery was surprisingly well maintained. The immediate area of the 14 graves, all above ground in two rows of seven each, was surrounded by a low cement border and paved with cement. The land beyond the burial area was cultivated in neat rows of peanuts, with lychee and peach trees scattered throughout.
The obelisk in front of the graves is inscribed with a common tribute at veteran cemeteries: "The nation will always remember your sacrifice."
Mr. Searcy works in Vietnam as a country representative for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and Asian Landmine Solutions.