\u201cWar doesn\u2019t just destroy the buildings and army, it impacts everyone,\u201d said Joy Gebhard, who was just a 16 years old aspiring doctor when the U.S. bombed the North Korean city where she was studying before her graduation in 1950.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After surviving machine gunfire, she walked back to her family\u2019s home in Pyongyang \u2014 sleeping in farmhouses along the way \u2014 she greeted her parents for the first time since the Korean War broke out a month earlier. Three weeks later, her father died of cancer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With her mother\u2019s permission, Gebhard went south of the 38th parallel \u2014 into what is now South Korea \u2014 to escape frequent bombing raids. After arriving in December 1950, the friend that accompanied her died within months. Eventually, Gebhard immigrated to the U.S. Recounting her story at a conference held as part of last week\u2019s national peace mobilization at George Washington University, she called the war \u201ca bomb that destroyed all I had worked for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That impact persists for Gebhard, who hasn\u2019t seen her family for seven years, since the U.S. banned American citizens from traveling to North Korea. She\u2019s one of tens of thousands unable to see loved ones due to the ongoing Korean War. Seventy years after the Korean Armistice Agreement, the U.S. and North Korea have not signed a peace treaty. But last week, peace activists, doctors, nuclear scientists, historians and retired military officials gathered in Washington, D.C. to push for one.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n