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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 2:29 pm Post subject: Mass executions during the Korean War |
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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 U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.
With U.S. 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 victims 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 a half-century. They were �the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War,� said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-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 told The Associated Press.
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�s fury 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 told the AP 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 been dealing with petitions from more than 7,000 South Koreans, involving some 1,200 alleged incidents - not just mass planned executions, but also 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. Working deliberately, matching documents to eyewitness and survivor testimony, it has officially confirmed two large-scale executions - at a warehouse in the central South Korean county of Cheongwon, and at Ulsan on the southeast coast.
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.�
The commission, with no power to compel testimony or prosecute, faces daunting tasks both in verifying events and identifying victims, and in tracing a chain of responsibility. Under Roh�s conservative successor, Lee Myung-bak, whose party is seen as democratic heir to the old autocratic right wing, the commission may find less budgetary and political support.
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big_blue_21
Joined: 02 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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| i was thinking about posting about that myself . . . shocked to say the least . . . especially about the US complicity . . . |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know if this is really groundbreaking. Everyone knew that there were massacres of this sort. Just not all the details were known.
I wonder if there are any memorial sites that are dedicated to this? |
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Smee
Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Location: Jeollanam-do
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Um, that article's a bit biased. Isn't that by the same "Truth and Reconcilliation Commission" that wants the US to pay reparations for villages it destroyed during the war? I thought the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers and nearly 60 years of economic, political, and military support would have been reparations enough, but this is a new day. |
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big_blue_21
Joined: 02 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 11:22 am Post subject: |
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yeah, but i think they got all these de-classified Pentagon and CIA files saying US soldiers were present at them . . . they even got photos of the executions taken by soldiers (US ones) . . .
but, yeah, i agree, a get a little tired of all those anti-american protests . . . One Korean even told me how George Bush was trying to control the world by condemning Burma ("he shouldn't be telling other countries what to do") and that the US should eliminate tariffs on Korean imports but Korea should keep them on US goods--"US is so unfair, want ruin Korean economy, that's why we protest" . . . Maybe someone can help me out here, but I didn't quite follow her logic on that one . . . |
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bassexpander
Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:16 pm Post subject: |
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Do we really need a third thread on this?
Did the arguments against your post in the other two threads prove unsatisfying?
We all know this was about Koreans killing Koreans. Why don't you put your energy toward feeding the communists North of the DMZ which you support? People like you can't even seem to do that. Worthless trash. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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| American complicity? Got any proof of that other than the statement of a Korean who says he was involved in it? |
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big_blue_21
Joined: 02 Nov 2005
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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| bassexpander wrote: |
Do we really need a third thread on this?
Did the arguments against your post in the other two threads prove unsatisfying?
We all know this was about Koreans killing Koreans. Why don't you put your energy toward feeding the communists North of the DMZ which you support? People like you can't even seem to do that. Worthless trash. |
Whoa, man, go easy--the OP didn't even contribute to the other two threads, probably didn't even know they existed. And of course, they can't--the North Korean army steals all the foreign aid!
But seriously, man, no need to rip someone just for putting an important piece of history up, that's all the OP did . . . we're talking 100,000 people or more--that's pretty chilling . . . I would have put the story up if it hadn't already been posted . . .
| CentralCali wrote: |
| American complicity? Got any proof of that other than the statement of a Korean who says he was involved in it? |
I haven't really followed the story but from what I understand they have some documents Clinton de-classified showing that US soldiers were present (actually took photos of the executions taking place) and that US army officials had knowledge of the executions . . .
It doesn't sound like any US GI's actually pulled the trigger, though as someone pointed out in one of the other threads, there was a (now well known) incidence of that.
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1134
That's a story by the Philadelphia Inquirer--a pretty straight-forward, though Democratic-leaning newspaper (since I used to live in Philly for what that's worth)--about the No Gun Ri Massacre (what a name, huh?!!!). And here's the above mentioned photos.
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/1950-Korea-Mass-Killings/ss/events/wl/051808koreakillings/s:/ap/20080518/ap_on_re_as/korea_mass_executions_covered_up;_ylt=AhEr98MY87caO.CqDh7JONX9xg8F#photoViewer=/080519/481/f73c04871cba4028a6bfdc9aefccec23 |
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