Korean Job Discussion Forums

bikefast · Joined: 04 Jun 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/world/asia/27korea.html?hpw

fermentation · Joined: 22 Jun 2009

It's about time.

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

This is a huge national shame which very few Koreans know much about. It's a kind of a 'sleeping dogs' thing.

The most conservative estimate is that 100,000 civilians suspected of any contact with the North Koreans during the war were executed by South Korean death squads.

Some people also claim that many of these murders were sanctioned by Rhee Syngman who was simply using the chaos of war to wipe out all his political opponents.

The other national shame that Koreans are trying to not deal with is that those who collaborated with the Japanese during the occupation were allowed to keep their senior government and business positions by the Americans who simply wanted experienced South Koreans to get the new government going after the WWII........

Many of the Korean elite are only where they are today because their parents or grandparents worked closely with the Japanese.

jvalmer · Joined: 06 Jun 2003

pkang0202 · Joined: 09 Mar 2007

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here and say, what is wrong with that? They elimated all the threats to the new country. They silenced opposition. Reconstruction and the formation of the South Korean government may have taken longer to implement.

Korea may have turned out just like any other 3rd world South Asian country. (Cambodia, Laos, etc...)

I think back in the 1940's stuff like this was status quo. You have Germans wiping the Jewish off the face of the planet, Japanese using Chinese like lab rats, and Russians using their people as bullet shields because they didn't have enough guns.

Korea was just following the trend of the times.

jvalmer · Joined: 06 Jun 2003

mc_jc · Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I

I know I am guilty of shoving negative aspects of Korean history in their faces- however, I'd like to say that I find it nobel for them to admit to wrongdoings done in the past, even if it took a long while to do it.

In the US, it took the government a long while to admit to taking Native American lands against their will and even apologizing for the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. But I think a government (and a nation) truly matures when they are able to start reflecting on all the bad things that happened in their history.

History might be altered or fixed to fit the needs of national pride (which is done in ALL nations), but when the truth is found and recorded into history, that is when a nation could fully come to terms with their identity.

ChopChaeJoe · Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Location: Seoul

The U.S. has never apologized for ANYTHING as far as I know. We just don't do that as a nation.

Anyway, war is hell. It should be avoided at all costs just because of stuff like this.

Konglishman · Joined: 14 Sep 2007 Location: Nanjing

kabrams · Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Location: your Dad's house

ChopChaeJoe · Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Location: Seoul

Well I'll be damned, the U.S. has apologized 3 times. Learn something new everyday. As for the sicko quoted above, my comments should in no way be construed as concurring, only to say that in war horrible things happen and afterwards its best not to hold grudges.

VFRinterceptor · Joined: 22 Jun 2009

endo · Joined: 14 Mar 2004 Location: Seoul...my home

mc_jc · Joined: 13 Aug 2009 Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I

The comment is not necessarily disgusting. It just expressed the way things were back then.
War is indeed hell and during war, it is difficult to determine who is "friend" and who is "foe".
A good current example of this is the population of Afghanistan. Although they don't like the Taliban, they hate the central Afghan government more. To them, the Taliban are the lesser of the two evils and actually perceive the IFOR coalition as propping up an unpopular government. However, thats not good for us as it means that we don't have the trust of the people we are suppose to be protecting.
Now, we can't leave Afghanistan because of the fear that the Taliban and Al Qaeda would make a definite comeback.

We are guilty of killing civilians during airstrikes in populated areas, which turned previous supporters against us.
This is almost similar to the massacre of Korean civilians at No Gun Ri in the early days of the war.
The difference between the two is that it didn't take the government almost 50 years to admit it.

The best thing I could say about the concept of history is that it is used to serve the interests of those in charge. However, when those people are removed from power, historical context is also changed to fit the needs and interests of those who took power.
When this continues to happen, it is very difficult to determine which is real and with is distortion.

shinramyun · Joined: 31 Jul 2009

americans are still killing innocent people as of right now.