Yang Kyoungjong (left) is said to be the unluckiest soldier of World War II when he fought in the colors of three armies on both sides.
During the second world war that saw more than 60 million people die, North Korean man Yang Kyoungjong was perhaps the unluckiest soldier to survive, according to History.
In June 1944, American paratroopers participating in the war in Normandy captured a strange prisoner of war.
After annexing the Korean peninsula in 1910, imperial Japan continued to invade northern China, establishing the puppet state of Manchuria, where Yang lived.
After basic training, Yang was mobilized to participate in the battle of Khalkha Gol along the Manchurian border between the Kwantung army and the Soviet-Mongolian army alliance.
During this battle, Yang was captured by the Soviet Red Army and sent to a labor camp in 1939. In 1942, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa to invade the Soviet Union.
Yang served in the Soviet army for about a year.
In early 1943, Yang was taken prisoner by the Germans during the Battle of Kharkov in Ukraine.
Once again, ironic fate pushed Yang to join the army of a third country when at this time the German army also needed additional manpower and applied a policy of not executing prisoners of war if they `volunteered` to serve the German army later.
Thanks to that, Yang was assigned to the eastern battalion of the German 709th Infantry Division, which had many battalions of prisoners of war from many European countries, attached to larger battalions of German soldiers.
Yang was then sent to France to defend the Atlantic Wall from Allied attack.
During the Normandy landings, the Allies successfully practiced landing on beaches, defeating German defense points.
Unable to communicate with Yang because he could neither speak English nor German fluently, the Americans sent him to another POW camp in England until the war ended.
After World War II ended, Yang decided not to return to his hometown and immigrated to America, settling in Illinois until his death in 1992 without revealing anything about his past.
Historian Antony Beevor called Yang `the most striking illustration of the helplessness of ordinary people when faced with overwhelming forces in history`.
`In a battle where so many people died, Yang was lucky to survive, but it is difficult to use the word lucky to describe a person who once wore the uniform of imperial Japan, the Soviet Union and fascism.
Olivia