SAN FRANCISCO—Former and current government officials, local residents and military veterans were in attendance for the groundbreaking of the Korean War Memorial on Saturday afternoon at the Presidio National Cemetery.
Speakers at the event included former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Mayor Edward Lee and Han Dong-Man, who currently serves as the Republic of Korea’s consul general in San Francisco.
Dong-Man presented a $1 million check to help with the construction costs of the memorial during the ceremony.
The Korean War Memorial Foundation, founded in 2010 with the intention of building a memorial in the city, hosted the event.
According to the foundation’s website, San Francisco was chosen for the memorial site because it was “the embarkation point for so many who went off to fight in that long-ago, far-away war, and the end of the journey for so many who returned, the living and the dead.”
The memorial is planned to be built near the entrance of the cemetery, where more than 2,000 veterans of the Korean War are buried. The foundation has no timetable of when the memorial will be completed.
“I think it’s an outstanding site and perfect for this memorial,” Lee told the crowd. “We in San Francisco will always remember the Americans who fought in the so-called forgotten war with their brothers and sisters from South Korea.”
Once the memorial is built, the foundation plans to develop an ongoing educational outreach program that will “include visits and presentation by Korean War veterans at Bay Area schools” as well as field trips to the memorial.
More than 326,000 Americans served in The Korean War and over 36,000 were killed.
