Steel Helmet: War Diary and Memoirs of a Korean Boy Soldier

The author was a North Korean refugee during the Korean War, who joined the South Korean army at the age of sixteen years. His elementary school education was under Japanese rule and his middle school years were under the oppressive North Korean communist regime. This regime caused immense damage to his entire family, prompting him to join the South Korean Army when the opportunity arose. While serving in the South Korean army he kept a diary (The War Diary) for twenty months that includes events before and after a gunshot wound at age seventeen. As a refugee teenager in South Korea following the war without parents, he managed to enter and graduate from the prestigious Seoul National University as the Presidential Gold medalist. The author came to the United States in 1962 and received advanced medical training in Pediatrics and Pediatric Cardiology. He eventually became a world-renowned physician and chief of pediatric cardiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He published a series of important original research papers and wrote three popular books in his field, including ＂How to Read Pediatric ECGs,＂ ＂Park’s Pediatric Cardiology for Practitioners＂ and ＂Park’s the Pediatric Cardiology Handbook.＂ Some editions of his books have been translated into six foreign languages. He also wrote a book for parents of overweight children titled ＂Helping Your Overweight Child: A Do-It-Yourself Guide.＂