Ethiopia sent an Imperial Guard infantry battalion—named Kagnew by Emperor Haile Selassie—to fight under United Nations command in the Korean War, a shared history still commemorated in South Korea, Ethiopia Observer reported, drawing on a Le Point feature.
Ethiopian soldiers of the Kagnew Battalion during the Korean War (U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Wikimedia Commons, public domain) [file photo]
About 6,037 Ethiopian soldiers served between 1950 and 1953. They took part in 253 battles in mountainous terrain under U.S. command and were never defeated in those engagements, according to Bekuma Merdassa, then minister-counsellor at Ethiopia’s embassy in Seoul. Ethiopian casualties included 121 dead and nearly 500 wounded. After the July 1953 ceasefire, Ethiopian troops stayed on for several years to help rebuild.
Ethiopia was one of 21 UN members that answered the Security Council’s call after North Korea invaded the South. Haile Selassie’s decision was framed as defence of collective security—the same principle he had invoked before the League of Nations when Fascist Italy occupied Ethiopia in the 1930s.
South Korea opened a memorial hall dedicated to Ethiopian veterans in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, in 2007, and the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul also marks the contribution. Since 1996, Korean public and private programmes have supported surviving Ethiopian veterans and awarded scholarships to their descendants. Roughly 1,000 Ethiopians lived in South Korea at the time of the report; more than 400 young Ethiopians were studying there on scholarships. Officials on both sides still call the relationship one of “blood brothers.”
Sources: Ethiopia Observer; Le Point (via Ethiopia Observer)