Geoje POW camp
prisoner of war camp during Korean War
Geoje-do POW camp (Korean: 거제도 포로수용소/巨濟島 捕虜收容所, Chinese: 巨济岛战俘营) was a prisoner of war camp located on Geoje island at the southernmost part of Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea. It is considered the largest of the UNC established camps.
Geoje Camp was a United Nations Command (UN) POW camp that held North Korean and Chinese prisoners captured by UN forces during the Korean War.
History
After the surprise Inchon landings on 15 September 1950 and the follow-up Eighth Army breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, the North Korean Korean People's Army (KPA) began to retreat north pursued by UN forces in the UN September 1950 counteroffensive. Large numbers of KPA were taken prisoner in the swift maneuver and sent to the rear. The number of prisoners rose from under 1,000 in August 1950 to over 130,000 in November. Unfortunately, little provision had been made for so many prisoners and facilities to confine, clothe and feed them were not available. In addition, there were not enough men on hand to guard the prisoners nor were the guards assigned adequately trained for their mission. The quantity and quality of the security forces continued to plague the UN prison-camp commanders in the months that lay ahead. While the prisoners were housed near Pusan, there was a tendency for former Republic of Korea Army (ROK) soldiers who had been impressed into the KPA and later recaptured by the UN to take over the leadership in the compounds.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Geoje POW camp” as prisoner of war camp during Korean War. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as prisoner of war camp during Korean War. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5535287. Authority coordinates are 34.876, 128.624. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Geoje POW camp”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Geoje POW camp primary sources, Geoje POW camp archive and Geoje research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Geoje POW camp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.