As Afghan Refugee Crisis Unfolds, Survivors Recall ‘Miracle’ Evacuation

The U.S. military evacuated 91,000 people out of a North Korean port in 1950. By some estimates, it was the single largest wartime refugee evacuation in American history until Afghanistan.

SEOUL — When he watched the scenes of desperate refugees trying to escape Afghanistan during the American withdrawal ㅡ mothers clutching babies, men begging to board airplanes in Kabul — Sohn Yang-young, 70, felt tears welling up in his eyes, his heart aching as if he were there. His family had lived through a similarly traumatic wartime experience. Mr. Sohn’s parents were among 91,000 refugees that the American military evacuated from Hungnam, a port on the eastern coast of North Korea, in a frantic retreat from Chinese Communist troops during the Korean War in 1950. They boarded the last ship leaving the port with refugees — the S.S. Meredith Victory, a United States merchant marine cargo freighter.