One Man's Korean War

Reporter John Rich's color photographs, seen for the first time after more than half a century, offer a vivid glimpse of the "forgotten" conflict

  • By Abigail Tucker
  • Smithsonian magazine, November 2008, Subscribe
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Children in Seoul in the winter of 1950-1951
"I never thought anything would come of them," John Rich says of the some 1,000 personal photographs that he made as a reporter during the war. (John Rich)

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On the June morning in 1950 when war broke out in Korea, John Rich was ensconced in what he calls a "correspondents villa" in coastal Japan, anticipating a long soak in a wooden tub with steam curling off the surface and a fire underneath. Rich's editor at the International News Service had other plans. "Get your fanny back to Tokyo!" he bellowed over the phone. Days later, the 32-year-old reporter was on a landing ship loaded with artillery and bound for Pusan, Korea.

Along with notebooks and summer clothes, Rich carried some Kodachrome film and his new camera, a keepsake from a recent field trip to a Japanese lens factory led by the Life magazine photographer David Douglas Duncan. Rich, who was fluent in Japanese after a World War II stint as an interpreter with the Marines, had tagged along to translate. "It was a little company called Nikon," he recalls.

Over the next three years, between filing stories for the wire service and, later, radio and television dispatches for NBC News, Rich snapped close to 1,000 color photographs of wartime Korea. The pictures were meant to be souvenirs, nothing more. "I'd walk around and bang, bang, bang," says Rich, now 91, with hair like dandelion fluff. "If something looked good, I'd shoot away." He photographed from helicopters, on foot and from the rickety jeep he says he bartered for "four bottles of rotgut whiskey." He photographed prisoners of war on Geoje Island and British gunners preparing to fire on occupied Seoul. And he searched out scenes from ordinary life, capturing Korean children at play and women pounding laundry in a river. With color only a click away, Rich was drawn to radiant subjects: in his photographs, little girls wear yellow and fuchsia; purple eggplants gleam in the marketplace; guns spew orange flame.

He had no idea then that the pictures would constitute perhaps the most extensive collection of color photographs of the Korean War. Though Kodachrome had been around since the mid-1930s, World War II had slowed its spread, and photographers continued to favor black-and-white for its greater technical flexibility, not to mention marketability—the major periodicals had yet to publish in color. Duncan, Carl Mydans and other famous photojournalists working in Korea still used black-and-white film almost exclusively.

Rich bought film whenever he was on leave in Japan, and he sent pictures out for processing, but he barely glanced at the developed transparencies, which he tucked away for safekeeping. Rich's Nikon was stolen after the war, and he largely gave up taking photographs.

Then, about a decade ago, Rich, long retired to his birthplace of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, mentioned to a neighbor that he had color slides from the combat years in his attic in a Japanese tea chest. The neighbor, a photographer and Korean War buff, almost toppled over. Rich understood why when he started reviewing the pictures. The "Forgotten War" came back to him in a rush of emerald rice paddies and cyclones of gray smoke. "Those white hills, that blue, blue sea," he says. "I lay awake at night, reliving the war."

A few of the pictures surfaced in Rich's local newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, and in a South Korean paper after Rich visited the country in the late 1990s. And they were featured this past summer in "The Korean War in Living Color: Photographs and Recollections of a Reporter," an exhibition at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. These pages mark their debut in a national publication.

The photographs have claimed a unique place in war photography, from the blurry daguerreotypes of the Mexican-American War to Vietnam, when color images became more commonplace, to the digital works now coming out of the Middle East. Once a history confined to black-and-white suddenly materializes in color, it's always a bit startling, says Fred Ritchin, a New York University photography professor who studies conflict images: "When you see it in color you do a double take. Color makes it contemporary."


On the June morning in 1950 when war broke out in Korea, John Rich was ensconced in what he calls a "correspondents villa" in coastal Japan, anticipating a long soak in a wooden tub with steam curling off the surface and a fire underneath. Rich's editor at the International News Service had other plans. "Get your fanny back to Tokyo!" he bellowed over the phone. Days later, the 32-year-old reporter was on a landing ship loaded with artillery and bound for Pusan, Korea.

Along with notebooks and summer clothes, Rich carried some Kodachrome film and his new camera, a keepsake from a recent field trip to a Japanese lens factory led by the Life magazine photographer David Douglas Duncan. Rich, who was fluent in Japanese after a World War II stint as an interpreter with the Marines, had tagged along to translate. "It was a little company called Nikon," he recalls.

Over the next three years, between filing stories for the wire service and, later, radio and television dispatches for NBC News, Rich snapped close to 1,000 color photographs of wartime Korea. The pictures were meant to be souvenirs, nothing more. "I'd walk around and bang, bang, bang," says Rich, now 91, with hair like dandelion fluff. "If something looked good, I'd shoot away." He photographed from helicopters, on foot and from the rickety jeep he says he bartered for "four bottles of rotgut whiskey." He photographed prisoners of war on Geoje Island and British gunners preparing to fire on occupied Seoul. And he searched out scenes from ordinary life, capturing Korean children at play and women pounding laundry in a river. With color only a click away, Rich was drawn to radiant subjects: in his photographs, little girls wear yellow and fuchsia; purple eggplants gleam in the marketplace; guns spew orange flame.

He had no idea then that the pictures would constitute perhaps the most extensive collection of color photographs of the Korean War. Though Kodachrome had been around since the mid-1930s, World War II had slowed its spread, and photographers continued to favor black-and-white for its greater technical flexibility, not to mention marketability—the major periodicals had yet to publish in color. Duncan, Carl Mydans and other famous photojournalists working in Korea still used black-and-white film almost exclusively.

Rich bought film whenever he was on leave in Japan, and he sent pictures out for processing, but he barely glanced at the developed transparencies, which he tucked away for safekeeping. Rich's Nikon was stolen after the war, and he largely gave up taking photographs.

Then, about a decade ago, Rich, long retired to his birthplace of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, mentioned to a neighbor that he had color slides from the combat years in his attic in a Japanese tea chest. The neighbor, a photographer and Korean War buff, almost toppled over. Rich understood why when he started reviewing the pictures. The "Forgotten War" came back to him in a rush of emerald rice paddies and cyclones of gray smoke. "Those white hills, that blue, blue sea," he says. "I lay awake at night, reliving the war."

A few of the pictures surfaced in Rich's local newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, and in a South Korean paper after Rich visited the country in the late 1990s. And they were featured this past summer in "The Korean War in Living Color: Photographs and Recollections of a Reporter," an exhibition at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. These pages mark their debut in a national publication.

The photographs have claimed a unique place in war photography, from the blurry daguerreotypes of the Mexican-American War to Vietnam, when color images became more commonplace, to the digital works now coming out of the Middle East. Once a history confined to black-and-white suddenly materializes in color, it's always a bit startling, says Fred Ritchin, a New York University photography professor who studies conflict images: "When you see it in color you do a double take. Color makes it contemporary."

Rich, who covered the Korean War in its entirety, remembers two colors the most: the Windex blue of the ocean and sky, and the brown of sandbags, dusty roads and fields of ginseng. In his photographs, though, red seems the most vivid. It's the shade of Betty Hutton's pumps as she danced for the troops, and the diamonds on the argyle socks of the Scottish regiment that marched to bagpipes squealing "Highland Laddie" (a memory Rich invariably relates with liberal rolling of r's). Photographers, in fact, long revered Kodachrome for its vibrant crimsons and garnets. And yet, during Vietnam, these reds also led some critics to argue that war should not be photographed in color. "We hadn't seen the injured in red before," says Anne Tucker, curator of photography at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, which is planning an exhibition of war images. To be sure, Rich's collection does not dwell on death, though it includes a picture taken south of Seoul in the spring of 1951 of two fallen Chinese soldiers and a scarlet splash on the ground.

Wearing pressed charcoal pants and house slippers, Rich shuffles industriously around his seaside cottage, where even the windowsills are stacked with figurines and carvings collected during a reporter's well-traveled life. Working mostly for NBC News, he covered Vietnam and many of the major conflicts of the 20th century—including, remarkably, the first Gulf War, when he was in his 70s and armed with shaky credentials from a weekly newspaper in Maine. (He says he briefly contemplated shipping out to the latest Iraq conflict.) The son of a postman and a homemaker, he played tennis with future Japanese Emperor Akihito, traveled to China with Richard Nixon and lived beside barbed wire in a partitioned Berlin. Three of his four children live in Asia (the other is a U.S. magistrate in Portland), and his wife, Doris Lee (whom he met in Korea and calls his "Seoul mate"), is never far from his side.

He has returned to his photographs because his eyesight is going. Glaucoma makes even reading the newspaper difficult and, especially when he wears the dark sunglasses he's prescribed, dims the goldenrod bouncing outside his door.

Riffling through piles of prints, Rich pulls out one of a South Korean soldier with pink flowers lashed to his helmet. "This is when spring came to Korea," he explains. The bright blossoms don't look like camouflage: the young man must have wanted to be seen. And now, finally, he is.

Abigail Tucker, the magazine's staff writer, last reported on the salmon crisis.


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I was with the USAF 5Th Air Force Hdqrs in Seoul during February, 1952 to February, 1953. This Hdqrs compound was said to be the medical school of Seoul University before the war. 8Th Army Hdqrs was across the street on the main campus. Across a street on the opposite side of the compound was a temple or palace of considerable size. There was a stone wall at the street edge. A trolley ran down the street. I may return to Seoul for a short visit next April. I know things will be vastly different, but I would like to be able to go by my former place of residence just to see the difference. If anyone has info about the current situation at this location, I would be pleased to receive that info by email, bobe@uark.edu. Thank you. Bob

Posted by Bob Ellis on June 4,2012 | 04:27 AM

I was orphaned during the Korean War (I was one of the approximately 900 children of the "Kiddy-car Airlift" that airlifted us to Jeju Island. Have you any photographs of the largest orphanage on Jeju during the War? I am trying to locate a soldier who took a particular interest in me while I was in the orphanage. I was under six years old; time period approximateley 1954 to 1955.

Sincerely,
Susan Allen

Posted by Susan Allen on July 5,2011 | 07:07 PM

Is there anyway to get John Rich's email address?

Posted by Sae Kim on March 7,2011 | 02:24 AM

Those pictures certalnly brought back vivid memories of serving in the Army Nurse Corps @ the 25th Evacuation Hospital Taegu, Korea from 1952-1953.Some of my slides are very similar to those shown.A forgotten war, but not by those who served. Former 1st Lt Eileen L.McDonald ANC

Posted by Eileen McDonald Hands on January 15,2011 | 03:06 PM

I just came upon this article while trying to figure out what to do with all my father's negatives from Korea(there are hundreds).He served there as a photographer in the Army Signal Corp. from 1953-1954. My Dad recently passed away and I know he would have loved to have seen this book. I am even more motivated now to start scanninng his negatives onto discs and get a photo book made.

Posted by Linda Quattrocchi on November 10,2010 | 08:41 PM

My dad served in Korea and was captured by the north Koreans about a week before he was discharged and spent 27 1/2 months in the prisoner of war camp. He has long passed on, but reading this article helped bring back the fond memories of the stories he told about when he was in Korea His name was CPL Joseph n. Bushey. i'm looking forward to finding this book at my local book store.

Posted by john bushey on October 12,2010 | 11:04 AM

As I was able to buy a copy of the One Man's Korean War through Amazon.com and saw the elderly Korean with a walking cane and a bamboo stick, I would like to settle the question of the "possible opium pipe," once and for all.
This kind of a long hollow bamboo stick with a smal brass mouth piece on top and another small brass head on the other end is a very typical and common tobacco pipe ,as much as the typical two- tier horse hair hat for the typical dress for a country gentleman. But, it is absolutely, absolutely not an opoium pipe. Opium is extremely rare in Korea, then and now, not available to common folks like this one. Believe me, I know what I am talking about.

Posted by Kie-Young Shim on August 25,2010 | 11:16 AM

What a suprise. Through this Comment Page, I rediscovered my old boss, Lt.Col. Wells B. Lange, under whom I served as a South Korean soldier (KATUSA) in his S-2 Combat Intelliegence Section of the First Ballation, US 65th Infantry Regimental Comatat Team in l950-52. After the war, I came to the U.S. to study at U.of Dubuque in his hometown, Dubuque. I am now 79 and Iam still a practicing attorney at Northbrook, Illinois. I am eternally grateful to him. I now have nine grandchildren, all full blooded real American. I just happen to have my article on Korean War published in The New York Times OP-ED page, of 6/25/2010 Iam interested in obtaining a copy of Mr. Rich's Kopren War in Color. Korea was saved with 50,000 American lives, and is now shining as a beacon of Freedom, Liberty and Democra cy, to the whole world to see. Thank you America. God Bless America.

Posted by Kie-Young Shim on August 18,2010 | 09:22 PM

For fans of John Rich's photography, I just wanted to point out 170 of his photographs have been published in a just released book, Korean War in Color: A Correspondent's Retrospective on a Forgotten War, currently available on Amazon. The book also includes essays by Rich, a recent interview, and of course, some unforgettable images of Korea during the war.

Posted by Liz on June 1,2010 | 08:52 PM

In response to Kent, yes that is the same Wells B. Lange. He is my grandfather.

Posted by Jesse on May 13,2010 | 09:07 PM

i was stationed in uijungbu 1964-1965 with the 526th engr co I CRIED WHEN I LEFT not only korea but my girl that i cared for very much,i lost all my pictures , I recently saw some pictures of Uijungbu, and could not believe my eyes what they have done,my friend robert martin took lots of pictures only wish i could find him, oragon,wash,it would be nice to see the change that took place, from time of war through now,I would like to wish you the best in your book and want to thank you for sharing with all our Vets and families , thank you agin eddie rodriguez

Posted by edward rodriguez on March 16,2010 | 02:33 PM

At last, at last! Now maybe the Smithsonion will give us more space than 15' between two huge displays of WWII & Vietnam. Many of our grandchildren are required to take a bus trip to see the Smithsonion and the pathetic display about MASH about the war that was NOT FOGOTTEN but VICTORIOUS. On the 60th anniverary of the war we know have our own Federal Charter, it is time for "The Smithsonion"
to give us our rightful space in history. Personally I'm sending one grand child and one great grand child to Korea on the revisit program this June.
Ed Buckman

Posted by Ed Buckman USN 50-51 on March 15,2010 | 11:31 AM

I was stationed in Pusan with the 296th Transportation Truck Battalion from about April 1954 to May or June 1955, then transferred to Yokohama. Having a lot ot free time I took hundreds of photos, and am gradually getting them on disk. Included are some take from the tops of the mountains surrouding Pusan. Interesting when you look at photos of Pusan taken recently.

Posted by Tom Norton on February 28,2010 | 03:45 PM

The old timer's pipe is certainly not opium associated. It's a very common sight to see traditional elders dressed as this old gent. He's addicted to tobacco. These pipes are common in the Chinese countryside also. The diminutive bowl reflects the price of tobacco.

Posted by Donal on September 13,2009 | 04:11 AM



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