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[travelingfool]

AP IMPACT: Seoul probes civilian `massacres' by US

By CHARLES J. HANLEY and JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writers 1 hour, 6 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea - South Korean investigators, matching once-secret documents to eyewitness accounts, are concluding that the U.S. military indiscriminately killed large groups of refugees and other civilians early in the Korean War.

A half-century later, the Seoul government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has more than 200 such alleged wartime cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens' petitions recounting bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings and unsuspecting villages in 1950-51.

Concluding its first investigations, the 2 1/2-year-old commission is urging the government to seek U.S. compensation for victims.

"Of course the U.S. government should pay compensation. It's the U.S. military's fault," said survivor Cho Kook-won, 78, who says he lost four family members among hundreds of refugees suffocated, burned and shot to death in a U.S. Air Force napalm attack on their cave shelter south of Seoul in 1951.

Interesting website http://www.jinsil.go.kr/English/index.asp


I am no military historian although I do know that people were clamoring for the US soldiers who took part in the No Gun Ri incident to be put on trial for war crimes. It's a terrible situation, no doubt about it. This sort of thing is why I wish the US would adopt a totally non interventionist foreign policy, like our founding fathers intended, but that is another argument altogether.

If this story becomes big (maybe it already has and I am just rehashing old news) I am afraid it will serve as more one excuse for hostility towards westerners. Most of you probably weren't even born until 30 years after the war, but you will be guilty by association.

[Stevie_B]

Fair enough, perhaps they might also like to investigate the indiscriminate killings of unarmed civilians by Koreans too. Or maybe not, because maybe then they'll discover a rather uncomfortable truth: Never mind the Japanese and the Chinese and the Americans, and never mind your bullshit talk of 'jang' and 'han' and 'uri nara' - if there's one group of people who've proved enthusiastic about inflicting unspeakable evils upon Korean people, it's Korean people themselves.

[Kikomom]

Why am I having deja vu of Fallujah?

[travelingfool]

[nomad-ish]

[jkelly80]

So, did the US massacre civilians or not? This sounds suspiciously like when somebody brings up a rude Korean moment and people come out of the woodwork screaming "it happens in the West."

[RJjr]

If the US military wasn't invited by South Korea, then the civilians Americans killed are America's fault. If South Korea invited us, knowing how we had bombed Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other civilian areas five years earlier, then the deaths are South Korea's fault.

[traxxe]

The civillians were hiding in a cave. It was probably Americans who napalmed the cave. This was of course at a time when North Korea controlled all but a small area of Busan, etc. The country was going to lose the war because the American military had withdrawn. They were begging for our intervention at the time.

This is just stupid.

If Korea had to pay for murdering its own people the country would be bankrupt. If the US makes a mistake while saving Korea though, that's okay.

This countries hypocracy just makes me sick. It's hard not to hate a lot of these people sometimes. Mad Cow. This. The anti-American sentiment in general is just disgusting.

South Koreans blame the Korea War on America because America withdrew. They wanted us gone. Then it's our fault when North Korea invades.

They hate us because the country is divided after World War II. Well, hell... go back to Japanese occupation then. They forget that the Russian controlled half of Korea and weren't going to give it up. Of course our liberating them from Japanese occupation wasn't enough.

They hate us because of the Gwangju Massacre. Yet it was their own government that did the brutal acts and supressed it.

[cdninkorea]

[alpope23]

[travelingfool]

U.S. Okayed Korean War Massacres

Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang

SEOUL The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it "would be permitted" to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces.

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified "secret" and filed away.

Now, a half-century later, the South Korean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating what happened in that summer of terror, a political bloodbath largely hidden from history, unlike the communist invaders' executions of southern rightists, which were widely publicized and denounced at the time.

In the now-declassified record at the U.S. National Archives and other repositories, the Korean investigators will find an ambivalent U.S. attitude in 1950 � at times hands-off, at times disapproving.

"The most important thing is that they did not stop the executions," historian Jung Byung-joon, a member of the 2-year-old commission, said of the Americans. "They were at the crime scene, and took pictures and wrote reports."

They took pictures in July 1950 at the slaughter of dozens of men at one huge killing field outside the central city of Daejeon. Between 3,000 and 7,000 South Koreans are believed to have been shot there by their own military and police, and dumped into mass graves, said Kim Dong-choon, the commission member overseeing the investigation of these government killings.

The bones of Koh Chung-ryol's father are there somewhere, and the 57-year-old woman believes South Koreans alone are not to blame.

"Although we can't present concrete evidence, we bereaved families believe the United States has some responsibility for this," she told the AP, as she visited one of the burial sites in the quiet Sannae valley.

Frank Winslow, a military adviser at Daejeon in those desperate days long ago, is one American who feels otherwise.

The Koreans were responsible for their own actions, said the retired Army lieutenant colonel, 81. "The Koreans were sovereign. To me, there was never any question that the Koreans were in charge," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Bellingham, Wash

Ok, so the US stood by and did nothing as these killings took place, so it's their fault? Hello, it was South Koreans killing other South Koreans. I am not talking about when US soldiers actually did the shooting. Read the article.

[wylies99]

Anyone notice that US lawyers are involved? This isn't about "the truth"; it's about $$$$$.

[PeteJB]

I don't think any down to earth sane Korean actually believes that things like the Gwangju massacre are to be blamed on America.

[Gamecock]

The timing of this is very suspicious. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that some Korean on Korean massacres came to light? Now, SUDDENLY, Korea is investigating American war crimes and pushing it in the media. Hmmm...

I read the article on Yahoo this morning, and what is really disturbing is some of the statements:

"The killings of Korean civilians were extensive, intentional and indiscriminate."

Really? Intentional? The U.S. Army intentionally decided to go out and wack a bunch of South Korean civilians? Sure, that makes alot of sense.

I recently watched a documentary on the war, and there was alot of paranoia among U.S. and South Korean soldiers because North Koreans were posing as civilians and mixing with the civilian populations only to engage the enemy. I'm sure there were killings of civilians that were accidental or turned out to be misidentified. This happens in the fog of war.

I'm all for my country (the USA) being held to account for legitimate war crimes, however, I'm more skeptical about the claims made by the Korean leader of this fight, Mr. Lee Yong-Hee, former vice-speaker of Seoul's national assembly, "who has since lost his leadership position as a result of elections." So this liberal politician (i.e. anti-American) was voted out along with the last president and now needs a new cause to feed his idealogy and ego.

Also, very telling, is the stated purpose of the inquiry:

"Findings are meant to "reconcile the past for the sake of national unity"

National unity? Between North and South Korea? I find it ironic that the North Korea initiated a war by surprise attack, killing extensively, intentionally, and indiscriminately all the way down to Busan before being held at bay by U.S. and UN forces. Yet they are not called to account for the hundreds of thousands they killed for the sake of national unity!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080803/ap_on_re_as/korea_us_refugee_killings;_ylt=ApPHJqYm.3Rmn8ge9e0TeZSs0NUE

[oskinny1]