ABSTRACT
In the eight years from 1964 to 1973, South Korea intervened in the Vietnam War. The initial contingent dispatched on September 11, 1964 was a small one. By around the summer of 1966, however, South Korea had sent in a large force of 47,700 personnel spread over five deployments, a figure second only to the 300,000-odd US personnel in Vietnam at the time. The figure dwarfed the total of 6,781 personnel from the other six countries that had intervened in the Vietnam War. South Korea earned nearly US$1 billion from the demand generated by sending troops to Vietnam. In the early 1960s, one in every three South Koreans was unemployed. Sending troops to Vietnam produced a type of mass labor migration, because the extra combat allowance meant expectations of going to Vietnam. Being able to escape from a life of poverty outweighed the fear of going to a dangerous war.
