Correspondent photo / Thomas Welsh Michael Ekoniak Jr., is the commander of Chapter 137 of the Korean War and Korea Defense Veterans Association, an organization of soldiers who served at least one tour of duty on the Korean Peninsula. Ekoniak enlisted in the U.S. Army in early 1966, serving as a petroleum laboratory specialist in South Korea, where he developed an admiration for Korean culture. Ekoniak is shown with memorabilia from his time in the service.

BEAVER — Michael Ekoniak Jr. enlisted in the U.S. Army in early 1966 when U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was rapidly escalating. Yet his assignment as a petroleum laboratory specialist took him to South Korea, where his service overlapped with the 1968 “Pueblo incident,” in which a North Korean vessel attacked and captured a U.S. ship in international waters.

During his time overseas, Ekoniak developed and admiration and fascination for the Korean people, their culture and their food. Today, Ekoniak, 77, is commander of Chapter 137 of the Korean War and Korea Defense Veterans Association, an organization of soldiers who served at least one tour of duty on the Korean Peninsula.

“Initially, it was a Korean War veterans association,” Ekoniak explained. “As their numbers declined, though, they started to include those of us who served in Korea after the 1953 armistice.”

The organization’s local chapter includes Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.

JOINING THE ARMY

Ekoniak’s arrival in South Korea, which occurred 14 years after the close of the Korean War, was unexpected. In the winter of 1965, he was a chemistry major at Youngstown State University and his status as a full-time student made him ineligible for the military draft. Then, when schedule problems forced him to drop one class, he received a draft notice.

As a former chemistry major, a position as a petroleum laboratory specialist seemed ideal.

Unlike many who enlisted for military service, Ekoniak wasn’t concerned about being separated from relatives. His deeply religious parents — Michael and Agnes Louise Ekoniak — had enrolled him at Cleveland’s Benedictine High School, where he spent three years in pre-seminary training.

“When I was studying in Cleveland, I was only home for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he noted. “So, I was used to the idea of being away from my family.”

Ekoniak noted that during his two-year stint in the military, he visited Youngstown just once, shortly after completing his basic training.

His three months of basic training took place at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he emerged as an expert marksman. Ekoniak stated that one of the most “interesting” training exercises involved crawling in the direction of live machine gun fire.

“You had to move from point A to point B with machine-gun fire streaming overhead,” he recalled. “You often ended up on your back, with your gun on your chest, and you could see the tracer rounds just flying.”

After basic training, Ekoniak moved to Fort Lee, Virginia, where he spent the remainder of 1966 training for lab work and working with a petroleum unit.

“Until then, when I thought of fuel at all, I didn’t consider anything beyond high-test and regular gasoline,” he said. “I discovered there was diesel fuel, jet fuel and aviation gasoline. I had to learn to test these fuels and differentiate among them.”

In 1967, Ekoniak and his peers boarded a government-chartered commercial flight at Fort Lewis, Washington, and arrived at Kimpo Air Base in Seoul, South Korea. The young soldier’s destination was Incheon, a port city about 30 miles south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ).

His stint at the lab at Incheon was short-lived, however. Within three months, Ekoniak reconnected with a former instructor at Fort Lee, a one-time staff sergeant who had received a direct commission and promotion to the rank of second lieutenant.

“Lieutenant Gross had stopped in for a visit,” he said. “When he recognized me, he told me he’d been assigned to a small base near the village of Pohang and needed somebody to run the lab.”

Ekoniak quickly accepted the position.

A LOVE FOR KOREAN FOOD

The base at Pohang hosted about 15 people, including a medic, two military police, a couple of officers, a few technicians, and Ekoniak, who handled all the lab work.

The young soldier also oversaw the tasks of loading and offloading fuel from ships.

During this time, Ekoniak became acquainted with the Korean people who lived and worked in the vicinity of Pohang. From the boys who cleaned the barracks to the petroleum experts who worked in the lab, he found Koreans “warm and friendly.”

“They went out of their way to be helpful,” he said. “If they couldn’t help you, they’d find someone who could.”

In 1968, Ekoniak was transferred from Pohang to Ulsan, which was about 60 miles south and hosted a large refinery that was jointly operated by the Korea Oil Corporation and Gulf Oil Corporation.

The refinery was ringed with stacks of 55-gallon drums that were used to store and transport fuel. Ekoniak soon became acquainted with the Korean businessman who owned the company that cleaned the drums.

“Mr. Kim was always taking us on the town,” he recalled. “That was when I was really exposed to Korean food, including pulgogi, marinated beef that is cooked on a barbecue.”

That experience marked the beginning of his lifelong love affair with Korean cuisine, and Ekoniak acknowledged that he still prepares pulgogi on special occasions.

Shortly after his arrival in Ulsan, the young soldier bonded with the “six or seven” American engineers from Gulf Oil Corporation who lived near the refinery.

Most of the engineers were from Pittsburgh, where the headquarters of Gulf Oil was located. “They kind of adopted us young kids,” explained Ekoniak, who was then about 19-years-old. “We went to the beach with them, and during the weekends, somebody was always hosting a dinner party.”

Despite these pleasant distractions, evidence of the ongoing war was ever-present.

THE PUEBLO INCIDENT

A jarring reminder of the region’s instability came in January 1968, when a North Korean vessel attacked and captured the USS Pueblo, an American spy ship operating in international waters. North Korea’s claim that the ship had entered its territorial waters was strongly denied by the U.S. government. Nevertheless, the ship was seized, along with its 83 crew members, one of whom was killed in the attack.

The incident occurred just three days after 31 members of a North Korean military unit penetrated the DMZ, killing 26 South Koreans and four Americans in a failed attempt to raid the nation’s executive mansion in Seoul.

“We were on high alert at that time,” Ekoniak observed. “The newspapers were calling it the ‘second Korean War,’ and the situation was intense.”

BACK TO THE STATES

Eight months later, in October 1968, Ekoniak found himself back in the United States. Even then, he realized that his life had been enriched by his exposure to a new culture and new friends. He noted that he is still in touch with Illinois native Rick Seltzer, a fellow GI he met in Ulsan.

Shortly after returning to Youngstown, Ekoniak took a job as a machine operator at United Engineering. Then, in 1971, he accepted a position at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, where he worked for more than three decades in the body repair division as a “ding man.” He retired from GM in 2004.

In time, Ekoniak was introduced to Loretta Hanuschak, the younger sister of a good friend, and he was pleasantly surprised to learn that she shared his interests in motorcycles and fast cars.

After their marriage, Loretta Ekoniak also learned to appreciate Korean cuisine. During the 1980s, the couple and their two boys — Michael III and Nathaniel — were regular customers at Ok-Soon’s Oriental Food & Restaurant, a Struthers-based eatery operated by Korean-born Ok-Soon Schroeder and her husband, Ronald.

One thing that hasn’t changed is Ekoniak’s admiration for the Korean people. At the height of the pandemic, the South Korean government sent thousands of much-needed masks to the Korean War and Korea Defense Veterans Association. The gesture impressed Ekoniak, who had suffered a debilitating case of COVID-19 during the first weeks of the pandemic.

Ekoniak indicated that a return visit to South Korea is on his “bucket list.”

“Back in the 1960s, traveling from Incheon to Pohang was a trip-and-a-half,” he recalled. “You spent hours on trains and buses, along with passengers who were often carrying crates filled with chickens. It was a whole different world. I’d love to go back and see for myself the progress the Korean people have made.”