The village of Uijeongbu, which served as the home of the US 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the TV series M*A*S*H.
Commentary about this image by Bob Jagger
Uijeongbu, which was then just a village located north of Seoul. The dwellings were thatched with rice straw and the peoplemade tunnels under the houses, lit a fire at one end, where any small breeze would move the heat along and keep the floors warm but leaving them vulnerable to fires.
In the American television series about the Korean War, M*A*S*H, this place served as the home of the ‘Mobile Army Surgical Hospital’. (To be honest, the show M*A*S*H did not really ring true to our experiences in Korea.) Uijeongbu is now a city with United States and Korean military bases.
People in villages like Uijeongbu had to make use of anything that gave them shelter. The people had to put up with pretty rough conditions. They lived in cases or whatever they could find, such as packing cases or items they borrowed from the army. They had been knocked around a fair bit during the war and the land was pretty battered, although there was still some rice in the paddy fields.
My understanding was that the Korean people had been pushed out of their home villages surrounding Seoul and Pusan and when they returned, they found nothing there. The villagers were mostly old men (popasan) older women (mamasan) and children, the men who could have fixed things up for them having been called into the South Korean ROK Army (Republic of Korea Army).
You can possibly see their makeshift shelters and the destroyed homes as well as thatched roofs.
The foreground was clear space in the village. Throughout most of Korea at that time there really were no roads, just tracks.
A gunner mate, Sid Goodhue, and I once stayed in one of the villages.
Image: Bob Jagger collection, not to be reused without permission
Text: Bob Jagger interview by Sue Corkill, Fern Publishing
