Truth and Reconciliation in South Korea by Jae-Jung Suh

Author:Jae-Jung Suh [Suh, Jae-Jung]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480050969
Google: n7veMgEACAAJ
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2012-10-04T05:50:28+00:00

No Gun Ri survivor Chung Koo-ho (with microphone) recounts the 1950 events to visiting U.S. officials, including Army Secretary Louis Caldera, at the No Gun Ri bridge on 10 January 2000, early in the investigation. (Courtesy: No Gun Ri Survivors Committee)

After the issuance of the U.S. NGRR, these and similar documents could be found in the Army investigation’s own newly archived files at the National Archives.99 With asterisks, arrows, and underlines, the investigation’s researchers had highlighted these salient passages, but the existence of these incriminating documents had not been revealed by the U.S. Review team. In sum, the U.S. Army of 2001, in an investigation of the large-scale killing of South Korean refugees in mid 1950, did not report the existence of at least fourteen Army documents showing that generals or colonels ordered or authorized the shooting of civilian noncombatants during the Korean War’s first months.100 Those orders were issued after the 25 July high-level meeting at which such a policy of shooting approaching refugees was adopted throughout the war zone, according to Ambassador Muccio’s declassified letter, still another document concealed by the 1999–2001 investigation.

In addition to this documentary evidence, the U.S. Review did not report the repeated statements by U.S. veterans, in their interviews by Army investigators in 2000, that shooting civilians was a common practice during that period. “It had been passed around that if you saw any Korean civilians in an area you were to shoot first and ask questions later,” one testified, according to a transcript obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request. “In that war we shoot everybody that wore white,” said another. “The word I heard was ‘Kill everybody from 6 to 60,’” testified a third.101

Despite the existence of the many “shoot” orders and of such testimony by veterans, proving the U.S. military had a policy and practice of indiscriminately shooting civilians, and despite the absence of the Seventh Cavalry journal, the single document that would have noted such orders at No Gun Ri, the U.S. Review declared, “Soldiers were not ordered to attack and kill civilian refugees in the vicinity of No Gun Ri.”102

Such a conclusion also ran counter to veterans’ unambiguous testimony that there were, indeed, on-scene orders at No Gun Ri to shoot the refugees. The Review acknowledged only that “some” ex-soldiers so testified, and at another point said, “Several veterans including three noncommissioned officers and two enlisted soldiers believe there must have been an order.”103 That evasive wording might suggest “several” meant five. But the South Korean investigative report of 2001 said seventeen ex-soldiers interviewed believed there were orders to shoot at No Gun Ri.104 At least twenty veterans of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, had told the Associated Press of such orders.105 The U.S. Review dismissed the testimony of any soldier who spoke of orders because, it said, none could remember the wording or the originating officer’s name and, it said, none testified to receiving the order directly himself.106 Those soldiers included four, however, who were in a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.