Hungnam
ward of Hamhung
Hŭngnam (Korean: 흥남) is a district of Hamhung, the second largest city in North Korea. It is a port city on the eastern coast on the Korean East Sea (Sea of Japan). It is only 13 kilometres (8 mi) from the slightly inland city of Hamhung. In 2005, the former city became a ward of Hamhung.
History
The port at Hŭngnam was the site of the Hŭngnam evacuation, a major evacuation of both United Nations military and North Korean civilians during the Korean War in late December 1950. Approximately 100,000 troops and material and 100,000 civilians were loaded onto a variety of merchant ships and military transports totaling 193 shiploads over the weeks leading up to Christmas 1950, and were transported to safety in Pusan and other destinations in South Korea. The evacuation included 14,000 refugees who were transported on one ship, the SS Meredith Victory - the largest evacuation from land by a single ship. This was made possible by a declaration of national emergency by President Truman issued on 16 December 1950 with Presidential Proclamation No. 2914, 3 C.F.R. 99 (1953). This operation was the culmination of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in which the embattled UN troops fought their way out of a Chinese trap.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hungnam” as ward of Hamhung. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as ward of Hamhung. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q224982. Authority coordinates are 39.833, 127.617. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 1950 and 1953.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hungnam” 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.