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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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Trevor
Joined: 16 Nov 2005
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Lekker
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 3:34 pm Post subject: |
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| This applies to Koreans during the Korean War, which was over 50 years ago. Since then, the country and the people have changed. A LOT. And it was a war, many people die in wars then we learn from them. |
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spliff
Joined: 19 Jan 2004
Location: Khon Kaen, Thailand
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Lekker wrote: |
| This applies to Koreans during the Korean War, which was over 50 years ago. Since then, the country and the people have changed. A LOT. And it was a war, many people die in wars then we learn from them. |
Amen~
Really, can't see the reason why people start threads over some obscure news story.  |
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ryouga013
Joined: 14 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| In war everyone wants their numbers down and are able to lie about it to keep moral and public opinion up. The US has done nothing different in the Iraq war. |
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spliff
Joined: 19 Jan 2004
Location: Khon Kaen, Thailand
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| ryouga013 wrote: |
| In war everyone wants their numbers down and are able to lie about it to keep moral and public opinion up. The US has done nothing different in the Iraq war. |
Well, that just goes to prove that in a civilized country, you can never tell.  |
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Trevor
Joined: 16 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 3:54 pm Post subject: |
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Spliff, don't you have some stress simulations to run on your double quad computer with 12 gigabytes of ram?
| spliff wrote: |
| Lekker wrote: |
| This applies to Koreans during the Korean War, which was over 50 years ago. Since then, the country and the people have changed. A LOT. And it was a war, many people die in wars then we learn from them. |
Amen~
Really, can't see the reason why people start threads over some obscure news story. |
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Lekker
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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| ryouga013 wrote: |
| In war everyone wants their numbers down and are able to lie about it to keep moral and public opinion up. The US has done nothing different in the Iraq war. |
I'm sure Canada has done the same in Afghanistan. |
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Whistleblower
Joined: 03 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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Wow, it has reached the British Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/1984746/Death-squads-and-mass-graves-the-full-horror-of-the-Korean-War%2C-finally-unearthed.html
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Death squads and mass graves: the full horror of the Korean War, finally unearthed
Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's US-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.
A South Korean government commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed during the Korean War
With US military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea.
Women and children were among those killed, many of whom never faced charges or trial.
The mass executions � intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners � were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for half a century.
Article continues
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They were "the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War," said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a two-year-old government commission investigating the killings.
Hundreds of sets of remains have been uncovered so far, but researchers say they are only a tiny fraction of the deaths. The commission estimates at least 100,000 people were executed, in a South Korean population of 20 million.
That estimate is based on projections from local surveys and is "very conservative," said Kim. The true toll may be twice that or more, he said.
In addition, thousands of South Koreans who allegedly collaborated with the communist occupation were slain by southern forces later in 1950, and the invaders staged their own executions of rightists.
Through the postwar decades of South Korean right-wing dictatorships, victims' fearful families kept silent about that blood-soaked summer. American military reports of the South Korean slaughter were stamped "secret" and filed away in Washington. Communist accounts were dismissed as lies.
Only since the 1990s, and South Korea's democratization, has the truth begun to seep out.
In 2002, a typhoon uncovered one mass grave. Another was found by a television news team that broke into a sealed mine.
Further corroboration comes from a trickle of declassified U.S. military documents, including U.S. Army photographs of a mass killing outside this central South Korean city.
Now Kim's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has added government authority to the work of scattered researchers, family members and journalists trying to peel away the long-running cover-up.
The commissioners have the help of a handful of remorseful old men.
"Even now, I feel guilty that I pulled the trigger," said Lee Joon-young, 83, one of the executioners in a secluded valley near Daejeon in early July 1950.
The retired prison guard said he knew that many of those shot and buried en masse were ordinary convicts or illiterate peasants wrongly ensnared in roundups of supposed communist sympathizers. They didn't deserve to die, he said. They "knew nothing about communism."
The 17 investigators of the commission's subcommittee on "mass civilian sacrifice," led by Kim, have also been dealing with 215 cases in which the U.S. military is accused of the indiscriminate killing of South Korean civilians in 1950-51, usually in air attacks.
The commission last year excavated sites at four of an estimated 150 mass graves around the country, recovering remains of more than 400 people. It has officially confirmed two large-scale executions.
In January, then-President Roh Moo-hyun, under whose liberal leadership the commission was established, formally apologized for the more than 870 deaths confirmed at Ulsan, calling them "illegal acts the then-state authority committed."
Photos taken by an American Army major and kept classified for half a century show the macabre sequence of events.
White-clad detainees � bent, submissive, with hands bound � were thrown down prone, jammed side by side, on the edge of a long trench. South Korean military and national policemen then stepped up behind, pointed their rifles at the backs of their heads and fired. The bodies were tipped into the trench.
Scattered reports of the killings did emerge in 1950 � and some did not.
British journalist James Cameron wrote about mass prisoner shootings in the South Korean port city of Busan � then spelled Pusan � for London's Picture Post magazine in the fall of 1950, but publisher Edward Hulton ordered the story removed at the last minute.
In 1953, after the war ended in stalemate, after the deaths of at least 2 million people, half or more of them civilians, a US Army war crimes report attributed all summary executions here in Daejeon to the "murderous barbarism" of North Koreans.
Such myths survived a half-century, in part because those who knew the truth were cowed into silence.
The immediate concern of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is resources. "The current government isn't friendly toward us, and so we're concerned that the budget may be cut next year," commission president Ahn Byung-ook said.
South Korean conservatives complain the "truth" campaign will only reopen old wounds from a time when, even at the village level, leftists and rightists carried out bloody reprisals against each other.
The life of the commission � with a staff of 240 and annual budget of $19 million (�12.3 million) � is guaranteed by law until at least 2010, when it will issue a final, comprehensive report.
Later this spring and summer its teams will resume digging at mass grave sites.
By exposing the truth of such episodes, "we hope to heal the trauma and pain of the bereaved families," the commission says.
It also wants to educate people, "not just in Korea, but throughout the international community," to the reality of that long-ago conflict, to "prevent such a tragic war from reoccurring in the future."
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mateomiguel
Joined: 16 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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| ryouga013 wrote: |
| In war everyone wants their numbers down and are able to lie about it to keep moral and public opinion up. The US has done nothing different in the Iraq war. |
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you saying that the US has dug mile-long trenches in the sand and trucked Iraqi civilians there to be executed and has about a 100,000 civilian head count so far?
BULLSHIT. |
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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 9:30 pm Post subject: |
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Typical Koreans trying to pass the blame on another country in attempt to save their own skins.
Same thing with US Beef. Some individuals agree to accept beef from older cattle (likely at a lower price) to pass it off and make a lot of money as a "middle man." They get caught in their attempt.... so blame America.
Typical. |
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vlcupper
Joined: 12 Aug 2004
Location: Gangnam
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| Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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| bassexpander wrote: |
Typical Koreans trying to pass the blame on another country in attempt to save their own skins.
Same thing with US Beef. Some individuals agree to accept beef from older cattle (likely at a lower price) to pass it off and make a lot of money as a "middle man." They get caught in their attempt.... so blame America.
Typical. |
I can see the media blaming the mass graves on people with Cruzfeldt-Jakob disease.
"Well, a bunch of American soldiers ate American beef, went insane, and killed a bunch of innocent Koreans." |
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Cedar
Joined: 11 Mar 2003
Location: In front of my computer, again.
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Passions
Joined: 31 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 12:28 am Post subject: |
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Koreans didn't commit the atrocities. They have "Jung" which does not allow one Korean to harm another. The white man does not have this supernatural concept of "Jung," and forced the peaceful Koreans into murdering each other for their selfish cause against Communism.
Once the blood thirsty Americans were done with Korea, they ruthlessly split 5,000 year old, 4 season, Korea into two. And now in order to sustain the fat and lazy Americans enjoying their SUVs and McDonalds economy, they will sell cows with soggy brains to peaceful Koreans which lack the gene to defend themselves.
YANKEE GO HOME! |
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PBRstreetgang21
Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Location: Orlando, FL--- serving as man's paean to medocrity since 1971!
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 12:52 am Post subject: |
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What I dont understand is why this is news. People have know for DECADES about the US quashing of the Yeosu rebellion and the massacre at Jeju. The US supporting and at times even encouraging such blood letting in S Korea shouldnt be a shock or news-- its old hat and its history. Anyone who thinks that the relationship between S Korea and the US has been the US give give give and Korea take take take obviously hasnt been reading theirs. The US commited A LOT of atrocities in S Korea just before and during the war. The fact of the matter is that while history may have judged the US right on forcing capitalisism and later "allowing" democracy, despite the fact that we were more than happy to prop up assholes like Chun Doo Hwan, and take sides againtst the heroes at Gwangju, is deluding themselves.
While I would say on the whole the relationship with the US has been very beneficial to S Korea, but it has not been a rose garden of wonder and sweetness, and that is Cows and Schoolgirls aside. The fact is, the US has shit to answer for in Korea, and none of is a secret, its just not discussed.
And to say that Koreans in no way took responsibility for their own hand in the atrocities wreaked on this country is to ignore the fact that they did just that when they went toe to toe with former Presidents Hwan and Roh (Tae-woo). The difference is America doesnt like to cop to its faults and misdeeds. |
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mateomiguel
Joined: 16 May 2005
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 1:04 am Post subject: |
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| PBRstreetgang21 wrote: |
What I dont understand is why this is news. People have know for DECADES about the US quashing of the Yeosu rebellion and the massacre at Jeju. The US supporting and at times even encouraging such blood letting in S Korea shouldnt be a shock or news-- its old hat and its history. Anyone who thinks that the relationship between S Korea and the US has been the US give give give and Korea take take take obviously hasnt been reading theirs. The US commited A LOT of atrocities in S Korea just before and during the war. The fact of the matter is that while history may have judged the US right on forcing capitalisism and later "allowing" democracy, despite the fact that we were more than happy to prop up assholes like Chun Doo Hwan, and take sides againtst the heroes at Gwangju, is deluding themselves.
While I would say on the whole the relationship with the US has been very beneficial to S Korea, but it has not been a rose garden of wonder and sweetness, and that is Cows and Schoolgirls aside. The fact is, the US has shit to answer for in Korea, and none of is a secret, its just not discussed.
And to say that Koreans in no way took responsibility for their own hand in the atrocities wreaked on this country is to ignore the fact that they did just that when they went toe to toe with former Presidents Hwan and Roh (Tae-woo). The difference is America doesnt like to cop to its faults and misdeeds. |
I checked, and both everything you stated and implied in this post is wrong. At least you're consistent though. |
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