The fate of the most unlucky Korean soldier in World War II

A North Korean soldier is said to have had the most tragic fate in World War II, when he was forced to serve three superpowers in the six-year war.

Yang Kyoungjong (left) is considered the unluckiest soldier in World War II, having fought in the colors of three armies on both sides. Photo: History.

In the Second World War that saw more than 60 million people killed, North Korean man Yang Kyoungjong was perhaps the unluckiest soldier to survive,according to History.

In June 1944, American paratroopers fighting in Normandy captured a strange prisoner. He was clearly from East Asia, but he was wearing a German uniform. His name was Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean who had wandered through different lands and been forced to serve in three opposing armies.

After annexing the Korean peninsula in 1910,Japancontinued to invade northern China, establishing the puppet state of Manchuria, where Yang lived. In 1938, Yang was forced to join the army at the age of 18,served in the Kwantung Army of the Japanese fascist army.

After basic training, Yang was mobilized to participate in the Battle of Khalkha Gol along the Manchurian border between the Kwantung Army and the allied Soviet-Mongolian armies.

During this battle, Yang was captured by the Soviet Red Army and sent to a labor camp.1939By 1942, Nazi GermanylaunchOperation Barbarossainvasion of the Soviet Union. The fierce fighting caused the Soviet Red Army to suffer heavy losses in manpower, forcing them to mobilize thousands of prisoners from re-education camps into combat battalions. Yang was once again drafted, this time serving in the Soviet army, fighting in Eastern Europe.

Yang served in the Soviet army for about a year. During this time, he participated in several battles on the Eastern Front, where he again became a prisoner of war.

In early 1943, Yang was taken prisoner by the Germans during the Battle of Kharkov in Ukraine. The Germans apparently did not know he was a Korean fighting for the Soviet Union and locked him up with hundreds of other prisoners.

Once again, fate ironically pushed Yang to join a third country's army when the German army also needed to supplement human resources and applied a policy of not executing prisoners of war if they "volunteered" to serve the German army after being captured.

Thanks to that, Yang was assigned to the eastern battalion of the German 709th Infantry Division, which had many prisoner battalions from many European countries, attached to larger battalions of German soldiers.

Yang was then sent to France to defend the Atlantic Wall from Allied attack. Yang was stationed near Utah Beach, one of the landing points in the Battle of Normandy.

During the Normandy landings, the Allies successfully practiced landing on beaches and destroying German defenses. Yang was among the German soldiers captured by the US 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

Unable to communicate with Yang because he could not speak English or German fluently, the Americans sent him to another POW camp in England until the end of the war. After becoming a veteran of three armies that fought in World War II, Yang decided not to join any other army, according to Litverse.

After World War II ended, Yang decided not to return to his homeland and immigrated to the United States, settling in Illinois until his death in 1992 without revealing anything about his past.

Historian Antony Beevor calls Yang "the most striking illustration of the helplessness of ordinary people in the face of overwhelming forces in history".

"In a battle where so many people died, Yang was lucky to survive, but it is difficult to use the word lucky to describe a man who wore the uniforms of the Japanese Empire, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany for 6 years of fighting," Beevor emphasized.

According to VNE