A Korean War Wall of Remembrance Set Hundreds of Errors in Stone

The granite slabs were erected by the Korean War Veterans Memorial Foundation to recognize a largely forgotten conflict that left more than a million people dead and a country divided. The money for the project was largely provided by the government of South Korea. Like other monuments on the mall, the slabs are maintained by the National Park Service. The error-riddled list of names was supplied by the Defense Department. And no one seems to have checked it.

The foundation declined to comment. The park service deflected blame to the Defense Department. The Defense Department declined to make decision makers available for comment. In response to questions from The New York Times, it acknowledged that there were errors on the wall, saying in a statement that compiling an accurate list was “challenging.”

“We encourage all family members or concerned citizens to notify the Department of any names that were omitted, misspelled, or included in error,” the statement said, adding that the department would work with the park service to make any necessary corrections or additions, though they did not offer any details of how the granite could be fixed.

The brothers said they could think of no options but tearing out the slabs and starting over.

It is not the first time the department has botched casualty figures from the conflict in Korea, where three years of bitter fighting ended in stalemate and an armistice in 1953. For nearly 50 years afterward, the official number of American dead from the conflict was 54,246, a number published in history books, quoted in speeches and etched in stone when the Korean War memorial was unveiled. But in 2000, the Pentagon acknowledged that the figure included all troops who had died anywhere, for any reason, during the war years, and that the true number of war deaths was 36,516.

Before the carving started on the new wall of names, the Barker brothers repeatedly warned planning commissioners, military officials and eventually even the White House about problems with the list, records show. But the process lumbered forward.

“No one bothered to check it before they set it in stone,” said Edward Barker Jr., who goes by Ted.

War memorials that recognize thousands of people were once rare. Arches and obelisks built to honor generals and faceless victories predominated for hundreds of years. And while plaques bearing local names of the fallen have been a familiar small-town sight since the Civil War, national war memorials did not center on exhaustive lists of the dead.

In recent generations, however, engraved lists have come to be almost expected, as society grew more focused on individuals. Major memorials like those for the Vietnam War and the Sept. 11 terror attacks now prioritize listing masses of people name by name.