Navy returns 1871 battle flag to S. Korea

Navy returns 1871 battle flag to S. Korea
'This flag is like Old Glory or the Liberty Bell,' history professor says

By Bradley Olson

Sun reporter

1:04 PM EDT, October 10, 2007


The Naval Academy has agreed to return a captured 1871 battle flag to South Korea after a cultural delegation from the U.S. ally visited Annapolis earlier this year and asked school officials to give it back.

"It will mean a great deal to Koreans when they see this flag come back," Thomas Duvernay, a professor of English and Korean history at Handong Global University in Pohang, South Korea, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "This flag is like Old Glory or the Liberty Bell."

He said the giant standard is scheduled to reach Seoul on Oct. 19. Naval Academy officials confirmed today that the flag will be returned, but declined to elaborate or explain what led to the decision.

A grassroots movement advocating for the flag's return has materialized there in recent years as South Koreans have come to see the band of soldiers, peasants and "tiger hunters" who were routed by Marines as heroes much like those who fought and died at the Alamo.

Historians believe the skirmish broke out from a misunderstanding while U.S. officials sought to establish relations with what was then-Corea in an age of rising American influence abroad. Marines seized the flag and brought it back to the Naval Academy as a war prize, a tradition upheld by U.S. law that orders the "colors" of adversaries to be displayed there.

bradley.olson@baltsun.com

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