Career

Rich spent nearly 30 years as a war correspondent for NBC News. A graduate of Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...

, he became a U.S. Marine in 1942 and made four D-Day landings in the Pacific Theater. After the war, while working in Tokyo for William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...

's International News Service

International News Service

International News Service was a U.S.-based news agency founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.Established two years after the Scripps family founded the United Press Association, INS scrapped among the newswires...

, he interviewed General Douglas MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...

 and traveled with Emperor Hirohito. Additionally, he covered Shanghai's fall to the communists.

Rich began working for NBC in late 1950 and arrived in Korea less than a week after the war began. He worked there for over three years- longer than any other American correspondent. Having been used mostly for radio, he appeared on The Today Show to cover the ceasefire talks and eventually became a television correspondent. After having covered the Korean War, he took a wide variety of assignments, heading the NBC bureau in Berlin for four years and reporting on the Vietnam War for ten years. He reported on nearly every major armed conflict that occurred during his time at NBC. By the end of his career, he became NBC's senior Asian correspondent and was appointed vice-president of RCA Corporation.

After having been retired for many years, Rich was featured in NBC Nightly News

NBC Nightly News

NBC Nightly News is the flagship daily evening television news program for NBC News and broadcasts. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is located in the center...

' Making a Difference segment on July 24, 2008.

Korean War coverage and photos

Rich, a Peabody Award

Peabody Award

The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...

 winner, had finally released the photographs that he had taken while covering the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

 in 1950. The photos, taken with a Nikon

Nikon

, also known as just Nikon, is a multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging. Its products include cameras, binoculars, microscopes, measurement instruments, and the steppers used in the photolithography steps of semiconductor fabrication, of which...

 Camera and covering a wide variety of subjects from children to generals, are all in color, presenting a rare picture of the "Forgotten War", which is known mostly through black and white images. He had taken hundreds of photos of the Korean War, but never of any other war. Forty of the photos were displayed at the KORUS HOUSE in the Korean Embassy in Washington DC from July 24, 2008 and remained so until August, 11. The photos were then also featured in an article in the November 2008 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine

Smithsonian (magazine)

Smithsonian is the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The first issue was published in 1970.-History:...

.

In 2010, Rich sold the rights to distribute 173 photos to Seoul Selection for the first time. The same 173 photos were also turned into a book on May 12 with the same title.

Rich currently lives on the coast of Maine in the house in which he was born.

Books

• Korean War in Color: A Correspondent's Retrospective on a Forgotten War, Seoul Selection, 2010

(You can check the sample eBook at http://issuu.com/seoulselection/docs/koreanwarincolor_1)

External links

• http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/005307.shtml
• http://www.dynamic-korea.com/notice/view.php?uid=200800004203&main=NOT
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#25850335
• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/korean-war.html