The United Nations Memorial Cemetery, situated in Nam District, Busan, Korea commemorates the dead soldiers of 16 countries who fell in the Korean War over the period from 1951 to 1953. It is the only U.N. memorial park in the world.
The cemetery established by the United Nations Command in 1951 spreads across a grassy plain area of 35 acres (14.39 hectares). Some of the sites and memorials include: Memorial Service Hall, Memorabilia Hall, 2 Turkish Monuments, Greek Monument, Australian Monument, British Common Wealth Monument and 2 ponds.
The Memorial Service Hall and the Memorabilia Hall were constructed in 1964 and 1968 respectively. In addition, there are many annual events held here, some of the key events contain: April’s Tributary Ceremony of the Veterans of the Korean War, May’s American Memorial Day, June’s Korean Memorial Day, and October’s UN Ceremony Day.
In January 1951, a wide range of battlefield cemeteries that had grown up behind the lines were converged on Tanggok, a suburb of Busan. The Korean government granted the land to the United Nations without charge as a tribute to those who had laid down their lives in combating aggression and in upholding peace and freedom from 1950 to 1953. The cemetery contains the bodies of 2,300 men from Australia (281), Canada (378), France (44), the Netherlands (117), New Zealand (34), Norway (1), South Korea (36), South Africa (11), Turkey (462), the United Kingdom (885), and the United States of America (36), as well as unknown allied soldiers (4) and non-belligerents (11). Additionally, there is a stone memorial with bronze panels erected to commemorate Commonwealth soldiers who died and whose burial places are unknown.
