0 Years of Camaraderie Between South Korea and the Philippines Honored in the

2020 Philippine Korean War Virtual Conference

“The moment you removed your socks, your skin would fall off,” Maj. Maximo P. Young recalls during the conference. At 98, he relates the harsh and cold tale of spending winter – a season alien to Filipinos – in a foreign land fighting another nation’s war. Maj. Young was a veteran of three wars, including the Korean War. He was a member of the 10th Battalion Combat Team (BCT) of the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea (PEFTOK), which went to the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s – the first in Asia to do so – to answer the call of the United Nations to aid the Republic of Korea in its fight for democracy against communist invaders. Five BCTs stayed until the war ended in 1955.