June 20, 1970: A Finance Office Picnic
	June 11-15, 1970: Seattle and Mt. Rainier
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The Flight to Korea

My MATS flight took off from McChord AFB about 9PM for the trip to Korea. I suppose the departure time is arranged so that arrival in Korea occurs in the morning, giving arriving soldiers and civilians a full day to begin their activities.

I remember the pilot telling us that the flight could be shorter but that military aircraft avoid Soviet airspace, and since our flight was military, we'd not be taking a straight-line route. I seem to recall that the flight was close to 14 hours, but I could be wrong about that.

The Land of the Morning Calm

This is the first picture I have of Korea, taken as the MATS flight is slowly descending into the Seoul area to land at Kimpo Airfield a bit northwest of the city. Korea is known as "The Land of the Morning Calm", although I don't suppose the mornings here are calmer than anywhere else.

What I did come to learn is that the name arises from the fact that most of the country is rural and agriultural, and that in these areas morning fogs nestle in the lowlying areas, as the natural cycle of animals and people begins. There are large cities, of course, but overall the country is quite pastoral. In this picture you can also see the right wing of the military transport plane that I took to get here.

We had stopped in Japan at 4 am to refuel and also to allow those personnel going there to get off the plane. The shot at left was taken about 6AM. The early morning fog gives the land an ethereal quality, and the rays of the morning sun heighten the effect. This will probably be one of my best pictures.

Coming in-country I and other servicemembers reported to a replacement center, and I spent quite some time filling out paperwork, getting a vaccination or two, and then waiting for my transportation out to the Second Division area. There was a delay in this, but just after lunch a military bus heading up to the Second Division area and Camp Howze took me the fifteen miles from Kimpo Airfield to Camp Howze.

Gimpo International Airport (formerly rendered in English as Kimpo International Airport), is located in the far western end of Seoul, some 9 mi west of the Central District of Seoul. Kimpo is the main international airport for Seoul and South Korea. The airport is located south of the Han River in western Seoul. The name "Gimpo" comes from the nearby city of Gimpo, of which the airport is a part.

Note from the present:
This particular album page and all the pages for 1970-71 were actually created in 2022- over half a century since I was in Korea. As I have done for all my other album pages, I want to be able to include maps and aerial views of the places I will be going during my tour here, but there is a problem.

Some locations in South Korea have not changed since I was here. Historic structures, major streets in Seoul, the DMZ, and other sites are pretty much unchanged in 2022 from when I was here in 1970, and on upcoming pages you will see me juxtapose pictures taken this year and next with pictures I took when I revisited Seoul in 2018, and there will be little, if any, change.

But this is not universally true, of course. Take Kimpo Air Base, for example. It was replaced with an entirely new airport twenty years ago (2001), and the airport I remember is now a secondary airfield for the city of Seoul. The same thing has happened to Camp Howze, where I spent my 13 months in-country. Camp Howze itself was closed in 2005, and the site returned to the Korean government. The entire site has since been redeveloped, as the population of Seoul, and of South Korea generally, has burgeoned, and what was a rural area when I was here in 1970-71 is now very much suburban.

I have encountered this problem before in creating this album. Since I have been working backward, there has been a greater and greater "time disparity" between the time pictures were taken and the time the page for them was created. Everyplace changes, although for most places, the change has been gradual enough so that I could at least find where a picture had been taken, even if what might be in the picture no longer exists.

South Korea is a special case, though. No place I have been has changed so much and so rapidly as has Korea. In just the 30 years since I was here in the Army, South Korea (and, particularly, Seoul) has completely transformed itself. Seoul, and the area for many miles around, is no longer a jumbled city, part modern but mostly very old. Seoul is now a "World City", as modern and glittering as any city in Europe, the United States, Japan, or China. Take this one fact: while I was here, the Chosun Hotel was erected in Seoul. At 12 stories, it was Seoul's tallest building. Today, Seoul is hope to the Lotte World Tower, a 123-story behemoth that is the world's 6th tallest building! Seoul is, today, crisscrossed by modern expressways, and it has a large metro (subway system). There are world-class shopping centers, luxury condos, and all the other accoutrements of a modern city. It is nothing like the city I once knew and explored.

As you will see in the next pages, relatively little of what appears in my photographs even exists anymore, and so finding these locations on Google's aerial views and maps is impossible. The best I will be able to do (save for those few locations that have remained unchanged) is show you where things were. I'll try to locate what I can, but I hope you'll understand if I'm unable to do much.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	June 20, 1970: A Finance Office Picnic
	June 11-15, 1970: Seattle and Mt. Rainier
	Return to Index for 1970