The member nations of the UN forces, except America, were all limited in the number of troops and in combat power. However, these member countries demonstrated the fact that well-trained forces can contribute a lot to the overall UN military operations by showing highly cohesive, proud, and disciplined combat capabilities.
During the course of the Korean War, the UN forces came to realize the importance of understanding languages, histories, cultures, and customs of foreign countries. In order to solve the problem of communication, they employed interpreters. Still, they had a lot of difficulties in commanding those units composed of soldiers from different countries.
The UN forces were composed of multinational nationalities with different customs and cultures. Because of the differences in religion and in eating customs, the UN forces had some difficulties in supplying food for soldiers. For instance, Turkish soldiers were Muslim, so that they didn't eat any pork. Indians believed in Hindu, so that they didn't like beef. The forces of France, Belgium and the Netherlands liked breads and potatoes, while Thai soldiers wanted rice and spicy-hot soy paste mixed with red pepper.
Those sixteen countries who formed the UN forces had different cultural and historical experiences, different eating habits, and different religious taboos. Therefore, food supply based on American or European standard dissatisfied non-American, non-European forces. These problems were gradually settled when soldiers from different countries came to understand each other. Besides, measures were also taken to respect different customs and cultures.
The UN forces also had difficulty in commanding troops because not only the situations of home countries but also the cultural and historical backgrounds of component soldiers were different from each other. It was not an easy task for a UN commander to combine different forces from different nations into combat teams and to carry out combined operations in an effective way.
Among others, some UN forces had a hard time in adapting to cold winter and rugged mountains in Korea. Turkey and Greek forces adapted relatively readily to Korean environment, but Thai and Indian forces from hot countries had difficulty in adapting to the Korean weather and mountainous areas.
All of these soldiers came to Korea as members of the UN forces and safeguarded “peace and security” of Korea at the risk of their precious lives. Their distinguished services and noble sacrifices will forever be remembered in the minds and hearts of Korean people.