'It's Just a Damn Mess': US' Korean War Memorial Misspells More Than 1,000 Names

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - A $22 million wall of remembrance being built to honor the names of US service members killed during the 1950-53 Korean War is so sloppy that it misses 500 dead victims including a Congressional Medal of Honor winner and it misspells the names of 1,015 people on it, historians told US media on Monday.

Historian Hal Barker told The New York Times that the memorial was "full of old bookkeeping errors and typos."

"It’s just a damn mess," he underscored.

Barker and his brother Edmund, who run the Korean War Project online data bank, have discovered that the wall which is being built as an addition to Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial Wall contains all the errors, the report said.

Frederick Bald Eagle Bear, a US Army corporal and member of the Lakota Native American nation, is carved into the polished granite as Eagle B. F. Bald, the report said.

John Koelsch, a helicopter pilot shot down and who later died in a North Korean prison camp, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor but his name is misspelled too, the report added.

The wall does include the name of one service member who died during the war not from enemy action or accident but from drinking antifreeze thinking it was alcohol, and that of a US Marine who lived for 60 years after the war and had eight grandchildren while missing. Another 500 names should be listed but are not, the report added.