The following information is an update to an article I submitted in September 2013. Some of the references provided are no longer available online:
This text is an edited transcript of an interview between Mr. Francis P. Wall, a private first class (PFC) in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and John Timmerman, an associate of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Chicago, Illinois. The interview took place in January, 1987. Noted UFO researcher Richard F. Haines checked military records and found Mr. Wall listed as a Korean combatant in the infantry unit he names below. Haines also requested and received from Mr. Wall a drawing of the aerial object he claims to have seen. The drawing depicts a very typical "flying saucer." CNI News thanks John Timmerman for permission to reprint this text. Mr. Wall recounts his experience as follows:
Bizarre Craft Hit Soldiers With Debilitating Light Beam
Courtesy - John Timmerman, J. Allen Hynek Center For UFO Studies
Courtesy - CNI News
"This event that I am about to relate to you is the truth, so help me God. It happened in the early Spring of 1951 in Korea. We were in the Army infantry, 25th Division, 27th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 'Easy' Company. We were in what is known on the military maps as the Iron Triangle, near Chorwon.
"It is night. We are located on the slopes of a mountain, below [which] there is a Korean village. Previously we have sent our men into this village to warn the populace that we are going to bombard it with artillery. On this night, we were doing just that. We had aerial artillery bursts coming in.
"We suddenly noticed on our right-hand side what appeared to be a jack-o-lantern come wafting down across the mountain. And at first no one thought anything about it. So we noticed that this thing continued on down to the village to where, indeed, the artillery air bursts were exploding. It had an orange glow in the beginning. We further noticed that this object was [so] quick that it could get into the center of an airburst of artillery and yet remain unharmed.
"[The] time element on this, I would say, [was] anywhere from, oh, forty-five minutes to an hour all told.
"But then this object approached us. And it turned a blue-green brilliant light. It's hard to distinguish the size of it; there's no way to compare it. The light was pulsating. This object approached us.
"I asked for and received permission from Lt. Evans, our company commander at that time, to fire upon this object, which I did with an M-1 rifle with armor-piercing bullets. And I did hit it. It must have been metallic because you could hear when the projectile slammed into it.
"Now why would that bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn't? I don't know, unless they had dropped their protective field around them, or whatever. But the object went wild, and the light was going on and off. It went off completely once, briefly. And it was moving erratically from side to side as though it might crash to the ground. Then, a sound -- we had heard no sound previous to this -- the sound of, like, diesel locomotives revving up. That's the way this thing sounded.
"And then, we were attacked. We were swept by some form of a ray that was emitted in pulses, in waves that you could visually see only when it was aiming directly at you. That is to say, like a searchlight sweeps around and... you would see it coming at you. Now you would feel a burning, tingling sensation all over your body, as though something were penetrating you.
"So the company commander, Lt. Evans, hauled us into our bunkers. We didn't know what was going to happen. We were scared. These are underground dugouts where you have peep holes to look out to fire at the enemy. So, I'm in my bunker with another man. We're peeping out at this thing. It hovered over us for a while, lit up the whole area with its light, and then I saw it shoot off at a 45 degree angle, that quick, just there and gone. That quick. And it was as though that was the end of it.
"But, three days later the entire company of men had to be evacuated by ambulance. They had to cut roads in there and haul them out. They were too weak to walk. They had dysentery. Then subsequently, when the doctors did see them, they had an extremely high white blood cell count which the doctors could not account for.
"Now in the military, especially the Army, each day you file a company report. We had a confab about that. Do we file it in the report or not? And the consensus was 'No.' Because they'd lock every one of us up and think we were crazy. At that time, no such thing as a UFO had ever been heard of, and we didn't know what it was.
"I still don't know what it was. But I do know that since that time I have periods of disorientation, memory loss, and I dropped from 180 pounds to 138 pounds after I got back to this country. And I've had great difficulty keeping my weight up. Indeed, I'm retired and disabled today."
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GI Fires Upon an Unidentified Aerial Object
Following is a transcript of an interview between Mr. Francis P. Wall, a private first class in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and Mr. John Timmerman who is Project Manager for the photo exhibit of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in the Fall of 1987. It has not been edited in any way. This interesting event began at dusk and ended at about 9 pm local time. Go to NICAP - GI Fires Upon an Unidentified Aerial Object
American Pilots Report UFOs over Korea
This chapter presents 30 UFO sighting reports that were made by U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine pilots during the war. They are interesting because they show that the UFO was capable of out performing the combat aircraft the U.S. had at that time. Go to NICAP - American Pilots Report UFOs over Korea
Ground Observers Report UFOs
This chapter presents a number of UFO sighting reports obtained from project Blue Book files which involved observers on the ground. That such sightings continued long after the Korean War is shown by an interesting case which took place in 1974 which was reported by Stringfield (1977). Go to Ground Observers Report UFOs
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Korean UFOs
Whether you believe in aliens or not, mysterious objects have been seen buzzing the skies of Korea. A simple Internet search will reveal hundreds of Korean UFO home pages. So far, no crashes. No abductions. But that doesn't mean you can shelve your camera.
Seo Jong-han has dedicated 20 years to studying, tearing apart, and occasionally verifying the twenty or so UFO photographs that crop up every year. Apart from his day job as computer game developer, Seo is a member of the Korea UFO Research Association (KUFORA), a small group of analysts that subjects each reported sighting in Korea to close, computer-aided scrutiny.
"When I was in the fifth grade, I read a magazine called 'Boys Central.' They had articles about UFOs every month, and I just got curious about it," Seo said.
Each photo is examined through a computer for traces of forgery. Seo compares the reflection of sunrays in the photograph to the alleged position of the photographer at the time it was taken. He checks astronomical charts to see if planets, shooting stars or solar flares were visible. He considers the testimony of the photographer and looks for inconsistencies in the reports of other witnesses. He then sends the survivors to another researcher in Japan for a second opinion.
"Ninety-nine percent of the photos I get are fakes," Seo said.
Korea has a long history of UFO sightings. During the Korean War, both American and Korean pilots reported encounters with flying saucers. In March 1979, two Korean Air Force pilots participating in the Team Spirit joint military exercise reported seeing a "very bright, lighted plane." Nothing appeared on their radar screens.
The pilots alleged that the ship had flashing lights on the sides and what looked like a "burning furnace" in the middle. It then reportedly shot sideways, stopped, and then moved rapidly upwards and out of sight.
In 1982, people reported three separate sightings, making it the "year of the UFO" in Korea.
Having studied each case in minute detail, Seo shared the lessons learned from his successful UFO observation with The Korea Herald. It's not enough to just set up a camera, he explained. To ensure that your photo survives scrutiny, it's important to use the proper techniques.
The best method Seo recommends is using the eponymous technique developed by an American named John Bro. The "Bro Method" is designed to detect UFOs hiding in the sun's rays.
Take a video camera or timed camera and put it on a tripod. Place the tripod just under the eaves of a house or building, with the lens at an 80-degree angle.
The shadow of the eaves will fall over the camera, reducing glare and highlighting flying objects that would otherwise be obscured by the sun.
"UFOs often hide by placing themselves directly in front of the sun," Seo said. "With the Bro technique, you can still catch them on film."
As in real estate, location is key. Once a UFO is sighted, there's a good chance it can be seen again in the same area.
While UFOs have been seen all over South and North Korea, the best place to pitch a tripod is Kapyeong, in Gyeonggi Province. With two UFO sightings and a slew of military bases in the area, Kapyeong is fertile ground for film.
Yangdong, in North Chungcheong Province, is another popular place for UFO hunters to stake out.
Seo went to Kapyeong after a reporter from the Munwha Ilbo photographed a UFO there, hovering in the sky. Seo shot his film at the exact spot the reporter stood. He claims the video, still under examination, caught a "moving cloud," which he believes is an alien spacecraft.
Finally, patience is something no researcher can work without. It might take years to get the shot, the reward for hundreds of rolls of film, moments of elation and disappointment, and endless public negativity.
"If you get a shot of a UFO, don't bother sending it to us," Seo said. "Sooner or later, they all wind up on my desk."
Seo says a UFO can be distinguished from an airplane or weather balloon by its rapid movement, its ability to turn on a dime and accelerate almost instantly. This violation of the law of physics, he says, is what leads most scientists to view UFOs as a phenomenon rather than an object of study.
Those who manage to get a rapidly moving object on film should not be disappointed if it doesn't look like a flying saucer. There are over ten identified classes of UFOs, some believed to be from different planets.
Among the most common UFO types reportedly seen across the country is the cigar, "load," type, also referred to as the "mother ship." There's also a "ball" type, triangular type, "clover with a dome" type, "round with a dome" type and "half a sphere" model. A Korean Web site, www.ufokorea.net, lists even more.
In competition with the multiple types of UFOs are multiple types of non-UFOs. Pictures of planets, dragonflies, and the scourge of lens glare may have interesting imagery, but proof of unidentified flying objects they are not.
Using a string to lift a model around in front of a video camera may also get a few yuks, but won't fool a serious investigator. Clever use of the "copy" and "paste" functions on a computer may shock co-workers, but it's a shocking waste of time for KUFORA.
Of course, UFO research in Korea isn't limited to setting up a camera and biding one's time. A person can also set up a radar station and bide one's time.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) institute (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), based in the United States, connects computers from all over the world, allowing a person to monitor radio transmissions from space over the Internet.
The Mutual UFO Network (www.mufon.com) is another alien investigation organization operating internationally. MUFON members are trained to properly investigate sightings and reports of UFOs, feeding the information into a massive database. MUFON currently has no chapter in Korea, but with the growing list of sightings and believers, that could change soon.
With the Korean economy picking up, UFO sightings will get more common. With more leisure time, people take more trips. They go to beaches, mountains, resorts - and take lots of pictures. More people in more places taking more photos means more UFO sightings.
Seo says there have been no reported cases of alien abduction in Korea. People interested in mysterious airborne objects shouldn't worry about their safety when staking out famous sighting areas. The most important things in UFO hunting are technique, knowledge, and persistence. And luck.
World UFO Day, the anniversary of the Roswell Incident, is July 2. On July 2, 1947, a farmer in Roswell, New Mexico reportedly discovered the wreckage of a flying saucer, prompting widespread conspiracy theories. - Korea Herald - June 1, 2001
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