South Korea’s Lessons for Ukraine’s Reconstruction
Just as was the case 70 years ago, Western aid will be vital but so too will be trading land for peace.
Postwar.
Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
Over the past week, I spent several days in Seoul, a pulsating city of more than 10 million, about 20% of South Korea’s overall population. The visit brought to mind the end of the Korean War — and the increasing signs that the end of the war in Ukraine may look similar.
The Korean War is iconic in my family. My father fought there in the early 1950s as a young US Marine officer. He often said to me that what happened in the years immediately after was nothing short of a miracle. My dad, eventually a senior colonel in the Marines, was not given to hyperbole or idealism. He meant the incredible reconstruction of South Korea that took it from a war-devastated land to the 10th-largest economy in the world.