South Korea Admits Civilian Killings During War

[Bozita]

Source: NYTimes

South Korea Admits Civilian Killings During War
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: November 26, 2009


SEOUL, South Korea — In the opening months of the Korean War, the South Korean military and the police executed at least 4,900 civilians who had earlier signed up — often under force — for re-education classes meant to turn them against Communism, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced Thursday.

The government killed the civilians out of fear that they would help the Communists who were invading from the north and forcing South Korean and American forces into retreat during the first desperate weeks of the war, the commission said.

Although the panel has reported on similar civilian massacres in the past, the announcement Thursday represented the first time that a state investigative agency confirmed the nature and scale of what is known as “the National Guidance League incident” — one of the most horrific and controversial episodes of the war.

The anti-Communist and authoritarian government of President Syngman Rhee had set up the league to re-educate people who had disavowed Communism in the months before the war, and forced an estimated 300,000 South Koreans to join. At the time, the government was facing a vicious and prolonged insurgency by leftist guerrillas.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/world/asia/27korea.html?_r=1&ref=asia

[cowcommander]

1. It's been common knowledge for years

The movie "Tae-guk-gi: Brotherhood of War" has a scene where the government forces kill anyone who attended a communist rally, even those who were just there for the free food. It was a very bloody and forgotten war, our own vets have many first-hand accounts of seeing SK troops doing massacres, but we couldn't interfere.

[pnorman]

4. "Tae-guk-gi: Brotherhood of War"

I had heard of that movie a while back, but couldn't recall the name. THANKS! Here it is at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Tae-Guk-Gi-Brotherhood-War/dp/B0006VL1J2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1259460738&sr=1-2

At less than $7 (new) it's in the shopping cart!

[cowcommander]

6. You won't regret watching it

It's one of the best war movies ever made, IMO. Far better than anything Hollywood has to offer.

[pnorman]

8. Many of the Amazon reviewers compare it to "Saving Private Ryan".

(Although not all that favorably). It's a 2 disk set, and one reviewer said that the second disk contains a lot of historical material. I've always had a deep interest in that "police action", and have collected a lot of historical material about it. I ordered it shortly after that above posting, and hopefully it'll have something of interest in that second disk.

[heliarc]

7. I find it fascinating that...

"we could not interfere" when 5000 Chileans were murdered for their participation in democratically elected Salvador Allende's presidency in Chile too...

There seem to be a lot of instances where American Forces were present but "could not interfere" with mass murder. Most often because our intelligence community and armed forces were complicit in atrocities committed which favored our political ends.

[GreenStormCloud]

2. Civil rights are always the first things lost when a country is a battlefield.

The thought process of the government is to survive first, worry about legal problems later. During the American Civil War, Lincoln suspended many civil rights. Sherman burned a huge swath thrugh the South. Homes of the innocent burned along with the guilty. During the Great Plains Indian Wars we killed entire villages that were trying to surrender.

War is Hell.

I am NOT saying that what they did was right. I am saying that it always happens on battlefields. Generations later, maybe, somebody writes a book about it.

I don't remember which war it was, but I was reading recently about an ancient army. The commander was bragging about how polite his soldiers were. The other commander replied, "They haven't seen battle yet." Two months later the new army were battle veterans and were as corse as any others.

[Truth2Tell]

3. The only news here is that the NYT has decided to talk about this.

Strange. This breaks with the official American mythology that we were somehow helping out the good guys in that war. Bill Keller must be on Thanksgiving vacation, letting this blasphemy slip through the filters.

[ronnie624]

5. True. The U.S. was definitely not helping any Koreans during that war.

In fact, at the very moment these massacres were occurring, Curtis LeMay was raining death and destruction on North Korean cities with an efficiency never before seen. It's likely that as many as 2 million people died as a result of the U.S. bombing campaign. Truly staggering.

And people wonder why North Korea might be a little on the kooky side.