On a hill in South Korea, a memorial to an Indian diplomat

Col. MK Unni Nayar’s memorial in Daegu, South Korea. (Express photo: Neha Banka)

It was raining heavily that morning as well in 2012 when Col. Nayar’s daughter Dr. Parvathi Mohan visited her father’s memorial with the ashes of her mother Dr. Vimala Nayar, who had passed a year before. “One of her last wishes was to have her ashes scattered around the memorial which I had thought was not really possible,” Dr. Mohan says. But she persevered, reaching out to the Daegu city government, telling them about her mother’s wish, the correspondence and negotiations with the mayor’s office taking some eight months. “They allowed me to inurn the ashes at the foot of the memorial. So my mother rests with my father,” says Dr. Mohan.

A journalist on assignment

Dr. Parvathi Mohan with her family, photographed at Col. MK Unni Nayar’s memorial in Daegu, South Korea in 2012 when she travelled to bury her mother’s ashes. (Photo credit: Dr. Parvathi Mohan)

Manakampat Kesavan Unni Nayar was born in 1911 in Kerala’s Palakkad district and graduated with honours in Literature from Madras Christian College. While he may not have realised it when he started working as a staff writer for The Merry Magazine, a weekly paper, based out of Madras, now called Chennai, his journalism would remain an integral part of his life, taking him around the world. With a subsequent stint at The Mail, a daily newspaper in Chennai, he relocated to Calcutta, now called Kolkata, taking up a job at The Statesman newspaper.

It was in Calcutta that he took a commission in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers. In a letter published in a memorial book in 1951, a year after Col. Nayar was killed, his relative T.C. Krishnan shared the story of his transition from a journalist to a diplomat: With the outbreak of the Second World War, Nayar was called up and commissioned into the Maratha Light Infantry, a light infantry regiment of the Indian Army. But news spread of his journalism experience, resulting in the Army shifting him into the Public Relations division to put his skills to more effective use.

That was the start of a long line of assignments that he would undertake as an observer attached to the Army, sending his dispatches from the frontlines; Delhi, Singapore, Burma, Africa, the Mediterranean and elsewhere.Post August 1947, the Army headquarters centralised the job of public relations into an information office where Nayar found himself acquiring the position of Armed Forces Information Officer, in part because of his previous attachments with the armed forces and his reputation in New Delhi’s domestic and foreign press community.

As India began expanding its diplomatic presence in the months after Independence, Nayar’s work, both in the field and within the confines of government buildings, resulted in him being assigned a diplomatic role in India’s newly-opened embassy in Washington DC.

“Col. Nayar was working at The Statesman in Kolkata and he had expressed an interest in covering the Burma front during the Second World War. We believe V.P. Menon & Nehru recommended his name for the Commission. That was the only way he could join the army and the commission was extended to include him in the Maratha Light Infantry. The public relations office was created for him because of his family relations with Menon and Nehru. From there he was sent to Washington D.C.,” explains M. Keshav, one of Col. Nayar’s relatives, based in India.

A diplomatic list published by the U.S. Department of State in October 1948 mentions Col. M K Unni Nayar as the First Secretary of the Embassy of India in Washington D.C., a posting where he was accompanied by his wife Dr. Vimala Nayar. It was the first diplomatic posting that Nayar would undertake. Over the subsequent months, he was assigned the role of public relations officer at the embassy. Weeks after arriving in the United States, the Nayars’ daughter Parvathi was born.

An undated photograph of Col. MK Unni Nayar, likely taken in New York, before his departure for the Korean Peninsula. He is photographed standing with Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit who served as the Ambassador of India to the U.S. in 1950, and the U.S.’s General Mark Clark, who would later go on to take over as commander of the United Nations Command in May 1952. (Photo credit: Dr. Parvathi Mohan)

Hostilities in the Peninsula

A little less than two years after Nayar’s posting, hostilities broke out in June 1950 on the other side of the world with North Korea invading South Korea. With the end of the Second World War, the Korean Peninsula had been liberated from Imperial Japan’s colonial rule but had been divided between the Soviet Civil Administration in the North and the United States Army Military Government in Korea in the South.

In November 1947, the UN General Assembly had passed a resolution that created the UN Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), a body that was expected to oversee elections in the Korean Peninsula. The endeavour was not fully successful, in part because of North Korea’s lack of recognition and acknowledgement of this body.

The Commission aimed to arrange for a withdrawal of foreign troops and a peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula. But in October 1949, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution amending the mandate of the United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK), adding that its delegates were to observe and report changes in the region that “might lead to or otherwise involve military conflict in Korea”. Providing dispatches from the battlefield in the Peninsula would become the body’s primary role in the months that followed.

The UNCOK consisted of seven representatives and five alternative representatives from Australia, the Republic of China, El Salvador, France, India, the Philippines, and Syria/Turkey and was assisted by 32 staff personnel from the UN Secretariat. While complete records for the personnel representing India in this body we were not found at the time of publishing this report, what is known is that Indian diplomat C. Kondapi as well as Col. Nayar were both assigned representatives and dispatched to the Korean Peninsula.

Col. MK Unni Nayar (far left) in the Korean Peninsula, in and around Daegu, while serving as an alternate delegate representing the UNCOK in 1950. (Photo credit: United Nations Command documentary/screengrab)

In July 1950, in what would later come to be known as the Battle of Osan, North Korea’s Korean People’s Army began steadily pushing U.S. forces in the Korean Peninsula to the south of Seoul, resulting in a victory for North Korea. Col. Nayar arrived in the Peninsula from Washington D.C. in the last week of July and found himself in the middle of a raging war.

August 5 marked the start of the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter, a large-scale battle between United Nations (UN) Command and North Korean forces. The battle would go on to become one of the first major engagements during the Korean War. A 98,000-strong North Korean force had managed to push close to 140,000 UN troops back to what was called the ‘Pusan Perimeter’, a 230 km defensive line around an area on the southeastern tip of South Korea that included the integral port of Busan. The cities of Daegu, Masan and Pohang and the Nakdong River saw an intense period of fighting between North Korean forces and those from South Korea, the U.S. and the UK under the UN Command.

Dispatches from the battlefield

In July 1950, British journalist Christopher Buckley had been dispatched to Tokyo for an onward journey to Korea by The Daily Telegraph’s foreign editor to report on the Korean War. Soon after his arrival, he established a working relationship with Australian journalist Ian Morrison in southeastern Korea, where fighting had been severe. It was also where they met Col. Nayar. In his book The Trio: Three War Correspondents of World War Two, British author Richard Knott pieced together the hours just before Col. Nayar was killed, along with Buckley and Morrison, on August 13.

“Buckley and Morrison, together with Colonel M.K. Unni Nayar and a South Korean lieutenant, set out from headquarters in the early afternoon, heading again for the front. The Indian colonel…was driving the jeep. North of Waegwan, they were within 9 miles of the front, when they were obliged to edge their way through six separate swathes of mines. It was the kind of situation that Buckley had faced many times….This time, however, Buckley’s luck had run out: the jeep did not make it past the sixth set of mines, exploding instead and scattering debris over a wide area. All but Christopher Buckley were killed outright,” writes Knott. Col. Nayar had arrived in Korea only three weeks earlier.

Col. MK Unni Nayar in the Korean Peninsula, in and around Daegu, while serving as an alternate delegate representing the UNCOK in 1950, speaking to a Prisoner of War. (Photo credit: United Nations Command documentary/screengrab)

Buckley survived the blast, but he was severely wounded and unconscious and was rushed to the American field hospital at Daegu, and died soon after. Knott writes that Buckley and the others were buried with military honours at a ceremony attended by 25 war correspondents. Buckley and Morrison were placed in neighbouring graves in a small tree-shaded cemetery attached to the Presbyterian mission in Daegu on August 14, 1950, now called the Daegu Jeil Church.

“My father didn’t go there as someone from the Armed Forces. He went there as an alternate delegate to the UN. He had volunteered to go to Korea and was given approval by the Indian government. So when he was killed, he could not be buried or cremated with the soldiers because he did not go in the capacity of an Army officer,” recalls Dr. Mohan.

In a letter written after Col. Nayar’s death, Kondapi, who had also been serving on the UNCOK representing India, remembers the day he first met the man who was among the few Indians in a diplomatic role serving in the Korean Peninsula. In July 1950, Daejon had fallen and the UNCOK had landed in Busan by flight from Tokyo. “When the plane arrived, I noticed a smart, medium-sized young man in military uniform walk swiftly towards me.,” Kondapi wrote.

Within days of his arrival, Col. Nayar and Kondapi had become good friends. “We took to each other so affectionately and liked our adventurous trips to the battlefront so heartily that Unni would tell me, time and again, that we should continue to represent the Commission at Taegu.”

Col. MK Unni Nayar in the Korean Peninsula, in and around Daegu, while serving as an alternate delegate representing the UNCOK in 1950. (United Nations Command documentary/screengrab)

There are perhaps few archival records that document, from India’s perspective, the days of the most severe fighting in the Korea Peninsula in August 1950 as vividly as Kondapi’s memoirs on Col. Nayar. “There were threats daily of the North Korean forces storming into Taegu. General MacArthur visited the front and gave firm ‘no retreat’ orders. He paid a courtesy call on us; Unni chuckled at this and clicked his camera profusely at the General.”

Ten days after his meeting with General MacArthur, on the morning of August 12, Kondapi recalled Col. Nayar waking up in the morning later than usual. “After lighting a cigarette, he showed me a picture of his daughter,” wrote Kondapi.

It was a twist of fate that followed. Col. Nayar suggested Kondapi not travel with him and the two journalists, Buckley and Morrison, to Waegwan but rather accompany a pair of American journalists who wished to visit the Koryang battlefront. “He ran downstairs in his characteristically vigorous fashion, and a minute later rushed up again to pick up his camera….smiling brightly. That was the last I saw Unni alive.”

An extraordinary gazette notification published by the Government of India following the death of Col. MK Unni Nayar during the Korean War in August 1950. (Photo credit: Dr. Parvathi Mohan)

Back in Washington D.C., Col. Nayar’s family was waiting for his return. They were scheduled to return to India for a family holiday in their hometown, but Dr. Vimala Nayar, alone with their baby, found herself receiving news of her husband’s death.

Letters of condolences followed, from the highest offices in India and South Korea. “Vimala dear, This is my first personal letter to you and I wish I did not have to write it….,” wrote Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit who was serving as the Ambassador of India to the U.S. at that time. In letter dated August 31, 1951, India’s Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, “It is not surprising that he was liked by all those who knew him and his sudden death came as a personal shock to them….”.

On a hill in Korea

The archives of South Korea’s government state that the war made it challenging for Col. Nayar’s remains to be sent to India. He was cremated in Juil valley, an informal name for the mountain east of what is now Hyehwa Girls’ High School in Daegu, in the presence of officials of the UN Command. At that time, the governor of Gyeongsang province, Jo Jae-cheon, helped raise funds to build a small memorial in the Beomeo-dong neighbourhood and it was completed on December 7 that year.

A letter from South Korea’s President Syngman Rhee, written to Col. Nayar’s family in 1951. (Photo credit: M. Keshav)

“So they brought him to Daegu and cremated him in a pine forest which was looked after by a family for many, many years but nobody knew about it,” says Dr. Mohan. The family only learned of the existence of the memorial after Im Byeong-jik, South Korea’s consul-general in New York sent a photograph of the site to Dr. Nayar but could offer information about little else. It would take her 17 years to visit her husband’s memorial.

Still, the paucity of accessible information and the gaps in communication during wartime did not mean that South Korea’s government had forgotten about Col. Nayar. In July 1951, South Korea’s President Syngman Rhee sent a letter to Dr. Nayar when the family was putting together a memorial book for Col. Nayar. “Colonel Unni Nayar was in our midst not only as an individual warmed by a special sense of his duty to mankind, and not merely as a worthy representative of the great people of India,” wrote President Rhee.

The aftermath of the Korean War had devastated South Korea, and Daegu was very different from the metropolitan city that it is today. The search for Col. Nayar’s memorial on a small hill in the city was a challenge for his family in the years that followed.

“My mother took it upon herself to go to South Korea, all on her own in 1967 with no help. The Indian Embassy didn’t know anything about the memorial; even the UN didn’t know much. But a few people helped her find it. Many years later, the UN stepped in and built a little wall around it,” says Dr. Mohan. For several years, the memorial remained largely neglected.

The inscription on Col. MK Unni Nayar’s memorial in Daegu, South Korea. (Express photo: Neha Banka)

In 1974, Dr. Mohan visited her father’s memorial in Daegu for the first time, along with her mother and her paternal aunt. “It was better known by then because someone from the Indian embassy came with us on the train. We lit a deepak there and placed a garland,” she says.

Then, in 1996, the local district council of Suseong-gu took over its maintenance and upkeep, a responsibility that it continues to fulfil.

Dr. Mohan was only two years old when her father passed, but it was many years later, well into her adulthood, that she was able to discuss him with her mother. As she tells her father’s story today, while sitting in a room in her home in the outskirts of Washington D.C., on a console behind her chair, stands a black and white photograph of her father in his uniform, along with another of her parents standing together.

She was too small to have any memories of her father when he passed, but the stories that she heard from her mother and family helped her learn more about his life and his work and come to terms with the loss that the family experienced.

Dr. Parvathi Mohan with her mother Dr. Vimala Nayar in Daegu, South Korea at Col. Nayar’s memorial in 1967 (above) and at the Indian Embassy in Washington DC, with Col. Nayar’s photograph in the background. (Photo credit: Dr. Parvathi Mohan)

In 2011, when Dr. Mohan’s mother passed at the age of 93, she began assessing the logistics of inurning her mother’s ashes by her father’s memorial in Daegu. “My mother was cremated in my hometown, Thrissur. I carried the ashes to the U.S. and then I took it to South Korea when I went with my family. (The Daegu city government) dug at the foot of the memorial and they put the urn at the foot of the memorial,” she says.

A signboard near Col. MK Unni Nayar’s memorial in Daegu,
South Korea. (Express photo by Neha Banka)

Kondapi’s writings provide insight into the last days of Col. Nayar’s life, his belief in the importance of India’s many complex roles during the war years in the Korean Peninsula, as well as his refusal to return to the comforts of his diplomatic posting in Washington D.C., preferring to stay on to observe and send dispatches from the battlefield. “In view of the deepening military crisis and possible alert for evacuation, we sent a message to the Commission that no fresh delegates should be sent to relieve us and we would be glad to stay on,” wrote Kondapi.

Col. Nayar stayed on in Korea. He never left.