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Last plane out of Seoul, 1950
Memories of a daring escape at the start of a war
Diana Lady Dougan: escaped from Seoul at age 7.
You think you know people, and then you discover you don’t. Not by half.
Diana and I are chatting over a glass of wine, reminiscing about childhood. “When I was seven,” I say, “I was chased by a goat. My pet nanny goat. She bowled me over, then snuggled up to me.”
“When I was seven,” Diana says, “I was chased by North Korean fighter planes. We were escaping from Seoul. It was the first day of the Korean War.”
That’s a conversation stopper. But now I’ve got to hear the rest. Diana Lady Dougan (“Lady” is an Irish name, not a title) is lucky to have survived that day. “When I was a little girl,” she says, “I knew more about Korea than I knew about my own country.” It turns out she grew up in a family with international connections, became an IT whiz, rose to ambassadorial rank in the State Department, and still flies to places like Africa, doing good works. But...chased by fighter planes? “Please,” I beg, “finish your story.”
“Well the Korean War started on Sunday, June 25, 1950,” she says. “And I think it was that afternoon, because we lived near the Seoul train station. Streets had a lot of traffic. But suddenly things were extra quiet. That’s the first thing I noticed. Mother said, ‘Sweetheart, we’re going to have to leave tonight, because a war is starting. If we don’t go with your father now, we might not get out.’ We didn’t really know how far from Seoul the North Koreans were already. So that night, we drove out through the rice paddies until, in a very dark area, we saw five soldiers, and they all had guns and they were all kind of pointed at us...and all of a sudden we heard them yell, ‘My God they’re Americans! With two young kids!’ They were GIs. They let us through.
“Seoul’s airport had been shot up. There was only one plane that could fly. Daddy had to see General MacArthur, so he commandeered the one plane that had made it in right before sunrise. The sun was just coming up as we took off, heading for Japan. I don’t know what it was, three minutes or five minutes later, when the [North Korean] Yak fighter planes appeared. They started chasing us down through the valleys. Our pilot would go into those valleys to hide from them. Our plane was very small. It was the pilot and co-pilot, my parents, and me and my brother. That was it. We were a long time getting down the Korean Peninsula. I think it was about an hour or two before the pilot finally turned round and said, ‘I think we’ve lost them.’ It was like a chase game.
“But I was glad I had got out this beautiful midnight blue velvet party dress to wear, a little one with white lace collar. My grandmother had sent it to me for Christmas, but it had arrived late, in April. I was dying for a time to wear it, and I had decided that if I was going to die this night, I wanted to look nice.”
Diana Lady Dougan takes a sip of her wine. “But now tell me about that goat chasing you at age seven.”
Uh, maybe another time.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Last plane out of Seoul, 1950
Memories of a daring escape at the start of a war
Last plane out of Seoul, 1950
Memories of a daring escape at the start of a war
Diana Lady Dougan: escaped from Seoul at age 7.
You think you know people, and then you discover you don’t. Not by half.
Diana and I are chatting over a glass of wine, reminiscing about childhood. “When I was seven,” I say, “I was chased by a goat. My pet nanny goat. She bowled me over, then snuggled up to me.”
“When I was seven,” Diana says, “I was chased by North Korean fighter planes. We were escaping from Seoul. It was the first day of the Korean War.”
That’s a conversation stopper. But now I’ve got to hear the rest. Diana Lady Dougan (“Lady” is an Irish name, not a title) is lucky to have survived that day. “When I was a little girl,” she says, “I knew more about Korea than I knew about my own country.” It turns out she grew up in a family with international connections, became an IT whiz, rose to ambassadorial rank in the State Department, and still flies to places like Africa, doing good works. But...chased by fighter planes? “Please,” I beg, “finish your story.”
“Well the Korean War started on Sunday, June 25, 1950,” she says. “And I think it was that afternoon, because we lived near the Seoul train station. Streets had a lot of traffic. But suddenly things were extra quiet. That’s the first thing I noticed. Mother said, ‘Sweetheart, we’re going to have to leave tonight, because a war is starting. If we don’t go with your father now, we might not get out.’ We didn’t really know how far from Seoul the North Koreans were already. So that night, we drove out through the rice paddies until, in a very dark area, we saw five soldiers, and they all had guns and they were all kind of pointed at us...and all of a sudden we heard them yell, ‘My God they’re Americans! With two young kids!’ They were GIs. They let us through.
“Seoul’s airport had been shot up. There was only one plane that could fly. Daddy had to see General MacArthur, so he commandeered the one plane that had made it in right before sunrise. The sun was just coming up as we took off, heading for Japan. I don’t know what it was, three minutes or five minutes later, when the [North Korean] Yak fighter planes appeared. They started chasing us down through the valleys. Our pilot would go into those valleys to hide from them. Our plane was very small. It was the pilot and co-pilot, my parents, and me and my brother. That was it. We were a long time getting down the Korean Peninsula. I think it was about an hour or two before the pilot finally turned round and said, ‘I think we’ve lost them.’ It was like a chase game.
“But I was glad I had got out this beautiful midnight blue velvet party dress to wear, a little one with white lace collar. My grandmother had sent it to me for Christmas, but it had arrived late, in April. I was dying for a time to wear it, and I had decided that if I was going to die this night, I wanted to look nice.”
Diana Lady Dougan takes a sip of her wine. “But now tell me about that goat chasing you at age seven.”
Uh, maybe another time.
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