Excerpt from The Young Will Remember by Eve J. Chung, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1

Touchdown

August 12, 2019

Seoul is unrecognizable.

I press my forehead against the plane's window, my breath fogging the view of this flamboyant metropolis. It is silver, with bridges that leap over rivers and roads that whip into mountains, claiming a horizon that was once viridescent. A few years ago, NASA shared an image of the Korean peninsula from space, its southern half flaring with light while the north lay engulfed in darkness. Though I have seen that iconic photo, I am still unprepared to be here.

My son's fingers graze my hand. "Are you okay, Mom?"

A deluge of emotions converge within me, and I cannot tell what I feel, only that it is overwhelming.

"Do you want some water?" he asks, raising his voice and enunciating each word. "Wah-ter?"

This is our first plane ride together, and he believes that he is my chaperone. Though he has his own years mapped in the wrinkles across his face, I don't want to speak until I am steady. Children get upset when they see their parents cry, no matter how old they are.

I wait for the ache in my throat to go away, but the immensity of everything that I've never told him hardens that knot. While I've known my son for his whole life, he has known me for only part of mine. He tells people that I am terrified of flying, but seventy years ago I was traipsing around airfields with my typewriter tucked under my arm, begging pilots to take me to the front lines. Back then, I was a correspondent for the Global Tribune.

I have seen Seoul from the sky at least a hundred times.

I don't talk much about the war, but since then, I have tried my best to live well. The fear of disappointing her has held me hostage.

A tone dings as the fasten seat belt sign comes on.

"Mom?" My son shakes my arm with urgency.

We are about to touch down.

2

Home by Christmas

"Recently catastrophic events in the Far East suggest strongly that ... we are on the brink of, if not already involved in, World War III ..."

-Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer,
San Francisco, November 16, 1950

December 5, 1950

General MacArthur promised our troops that they would be home for Christmas. If any of them were going back to America, though, it was going to be on a stretcher or in a coffin. The six a.m. sun, already weary from winter, cast lukewarm rays over Tachikawa Airfield, where technicians towed a C-47 onto the runway. Mount Fuji arched in the background, a snow-cloaked spirit serene beneath its crown of clouds. On the tarmac, half a dozen flight nurses gathered, their arms crossed in their thick air force-issued coats. Though they had the day off, they had arrived early, and were stewing as they waited for the next pilot.

Nothing excited me more than angry women who had gotten organized.

In my own corner, I squatted with my back against the wall, balancing my typewriter on my knees. With a biscuit between my teeth and red bean mochi in my pocket, I began typing:

In North Korea's Chosin Reservoir, our haggard survivors are stripping their dead comrades of their clothing and stacking up corpses to block the gales. Though the Soviets aren't formally fighting in Korea, the blizzard blowing down from Siberia is its own horrifying army. At minus 40 degrees, soldiers' blackened toes are breaking off in their boots and carbines are jamming.

Chairman Mao had warned us not to cross into North Korea, but General MacArthur was arrogant.

My fingers slowed to a halt. Was that last sentence too abrasive?

Letting my biscuit fall from my lips, I uncapped my pen and slashed a line through "arrogant," perusing a mental list of synonyms. "Confident," maybe? I started writing in "confident," but I'd barely crossed the "t" before Barbara, one of the flight nurses, yanked the paper from my feed roller.

"We have boys in Korea who still have no winter uniforms!" she exclaimed, flipping her bangs up from her forehead. "It's December. If that's not arrogant, I don't know what is!"

Excerpted from The Young Will Remember by Eve J. Chung. Copyright © 2026 by Eve J. Chung. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.