This book is a collection of records containing the stories of six Vietnam War veterans, their children, and their bereaved families.
It also contains the voices of eight citizens, including students, artists, and activists, who volunteered to meet with veterans.
Those who fought in the Vietnam War are now grandfathers in their seventies or eighties.
They tell the story of Korea's first overseas deployment and the return box, the Kim Shin-jo incident and the May 18th Democratization Movement, the Gyeongbu Expressway and the government-controlled demonstrations, the movement to uncover the truth about the civilian massacre and the damage caused by Agent Orange, and the veterans' honorary pension.
Their stories contain many clues that allow us to examine today's crisis of democracy, the military-style organizational culture, the harmful effects of patriarchal social structures, gender conflict, and generational conflict.
The stories of bereaved families who lost their families in the Vietnam War and the second-generation veterans are also noteworthy.
The existence and voices of these individuals, who have been hidden from our society for so long, clearly reveal what our nation and society have long ignored.
Another main character in this book is the presence and voice of those who volunteered to meet with veterans to hear their stories.
Rather than leaving veterans to remain in the position of perpetrators, they invite them to a place of conversation and attempt to reflect on war and peace, contradictions and divisions together with them.
I confess that I tried to meet and listen while feeling hesitant or distant.

“When I went to the military, I realized how delicious the food was.
When we eat outside, the bark is ninety and the grain is ten.
(Omitted) When I go to the military and eat, I slowly melt away.
It's half rice and half grains.
“How delicious!”
--- From "The Drill Instructor Who Returned from Vietnam"

There was a superstition back then that if you took women's panties with you when you went into battle, you wouldn't die.
So when celebrities wash their panties in the evening and hang them out to dry, the next day all their panties are gone.
Then you will have a lot of complaints.
Because it happened so often, I explained the situation to them in advance when they came.
I also asked them to hang up some panties.
I'm doing this because I want to live, so what can I do?
I asked you to understand.”
--- From "The Drill Instructor Who Returned from Vietnam"

I was going to the cemetery to eat lunch, but the wind was blowing from this direction, so I went over there to eat.
No, the wind blew towards our soldiers and they smelled it once.
Just smelling that rotten smell made my nose bleed.

--- From "I still feel like I can hear the sound and smell of 'war'"

I felt a lot while watching 『Taebaek Mountains』.
Reading that book also made me realize that the Vietnam War I went through was nothing.
You just interfered in someone else's war for unification and caused trouble.
So I read all of Professor Jo Jeong-rae's books.
--- From "Does it make sense to commemorate war?"

When going on a mission, soldiers start to work hard to calm their minds for several days beforehand.
'I won't die' I promise myself every day.
But when we go on a big operation, a military chaplain comes and prays.
I hate that so much.
The pastor came and said, 'Let us all pray.
He tells them, 'You must live for your parents.'
I hate it so much, it's like the grim reaper comes and prays.

--- From "The Sorrow of a Young Soldier and Spring in Seoul"

Since I was at the dental clinic in the military hospital, I went to the village and pulled teeth and stuff.
Most Vietnamese people have bad teeth.
I don't know if you brush your teeth properly, but your body itself smells a lot.
Because it's mostly summer there, it's a hot country.

--- From "I went to a Vietnamese village once a week"

The story of Song Geum-sul was not a story of something being 'absent' or lacking, but rather a 'different' way of experiencing and speaking.
The unexpected, the difficult to interpret, the confusing, the more they connect to the truth of war, yet aren't we living in a society that hides or obscures these stories?

--- From "I went to a Vietnamese village once a week"

I'm confident I'd go to Vietnam again if I had to.
No, that's right.
It would be good if you went there for the country.
Now that our country is doing well, people talk badly about going to Vietnam. If we weren't doing well now, people wouldn't be talking like this.

--- From "I guess I was destined to live wearing a military uniform"

I listened to Choi Hong-hui's memories while facing this tension: that an unfamiliar history I had not experienced could not fully come to me as my own experience, that I could not fully follow the oral account because I had a different perspective.
--- From "I guess I was destined to live wearing a military uniform"

I am a student of modern Korean history and the son of a veteran who died from the aftereffects of Agent Orange.
He has symptoms and signs of brain damage believed to be caused by Agent Orange.
My 'sick body' shook up the way I experience my body, what I can do, and the space in which I live.

--- From "I am a second-generation veteran, a second-generation invisible war"

My younger brother has passed away and the funeral has been completed, but I still keep getting letters.
--- From "Who is the National Cemetery for?"

The problem is that no matter how well we try to record or reproduce the horrors of war, such 'body memories' cannot be conveyed through records.
Could it be that missing out on those 'body memories' that cannot be conveyed through words or writing, no matter how hard we try, is one reason why people think of war in an extremely simplistic way or easily romanticize it?
--- From "Hearing War Through the Memories of the Body"

We seem to live in a culture that easily dislikes things we don't know.
Therefore, meeting a veteran is no different from encountering the structure of violence.
How can I, you and I, who are different from me and whom I do not know well, find liberation together within this structure?
--- From "I Met a Veteran: Why I Want to Meet You"

It seems that accountability and reconciliation for any violence cannot occur solely between the perpetrator and the victim.
It would be impossible to speak if there were no one to listen, that is, if there were no place for testimony.

--- From "I Met a Veteran: How the Testimony of the Perpetrator Can Meet the Listening of the Future"

I expected words that could be understood.
But I encountered words that were not easily agreed upon, and it was at that point that the meeting found meaning.
This meeting was an incomprehensible event, a trip to meet a veteran.

--- From "Meeting a Veteran: Listening Hesitantly"

One thing was clear.
The veterans as victims who lost their individuality in life due to being mobilized by state violence, the veterans as perpetrators who participated in or watched the massacre of Vietnamese civilians, and the veterans as heads of households who had to take responsibility for their families' livelihoods under a patriarchal system are all experiences that remain in the body of one person, not in different people.
--- From "Meeting a Veteran: What I Realized Beyond Distance"

I have the ambition to turn the memories of war experienced by Korean society into an opportunity for peace.

--- From "War Stories to Unearth Peace"