1st Hard Evidence U.S. Condoned Korean Slaughter

Associated Press continues to follow the story being unravelled by South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, investigating war crimes and atrocities long kept secret from the Korean War of the early 1950s. Their latest story follows an earlier report last May, which I also discussed here.

The latest news continues the grisly tale of uncovering mass graves, and unearthing formerly classified documents. The number of leftists, political opponents, and just plain innocent citizens killed at the orders of then South Korean President Syngman Rhee, shortly after North Korean troops invaded the south. The number killed is estimated to be from 100,000 to 200,000 people, many of them lined up above hastily-dug trenches and shot by military police. Some apparently were buried still alive.

There were no charges or trials for these victims. Furthermore, though U.S. officials definitely knew about the killings, and maybe condoned or even ordered some, a number of U.S. military personnel seem to have had foreknowledge of the killings. The full story of U.S. involvement awaits the declassification and study of hundreds of previously classified documents.

The bulk of the evidence thus far shows that while some U.S. commanders on-site had qualms about the killings, General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of U.S. forces there, saw the killings as an "internal matter". Other officers appeared to approve, at least conditionally.

In what is the biggest exposure thus far of U.S. involvement, in an uncensored version of a narrative of events written at the time by U.S. adviser in Korea, Lt. Col. Rollins S. Emmerich admits he gave advance sanction to summary executions in the city of Busan (now Pusan). According to the AP report, a a South Korean regimental commander wanted "to execute some 3500 suspected peace time Communists, locked up in the local prison". Lt. Col. Emmerich at first thought such atrocities unnecessary, but then seemed to change his mind. (Emphasis in bold added)

"Colonel Kim promised not to execute the prisoners until the situation became more critical," wrote Emmerich, who died in 1986. "Colonel Kim was told that if the enemy did arrive to the outskirts of (Busan) he would be permitted to open the gates of the prison and shoot the prisoners with machine guns."

Later that summer, hundreds of prisoners apparently were summarily executed in Busan.

There are plenty of atrocities to go around. A North Korean report describes the killings of 1,000 prisoners in Incheon in June 1950, supposedly at the orders of a U.S. military adviser.  A British communist journalist at the time reported U.S. forces were supervising "the butchery" at Daejeon. One U.S. officer invited another to come witness the "turkey shoot" outside the city. While the officer so invited apparently declined, others went and took photos of the killings. (Warning: these are gruesome photos.) Today, U.S. historian Bruce Cumings at the University of Chicago finds the U.S. guilty of collaboration in the Daejeon killings, and also of a cover-up. Of course, during the Cold War the U.S. labeled all communist reports of massacres in Korea as "lies".

But, it was the United States that was involved this time in massive lying, covering up serious war crimes by its South Korean "ally", who was being sold to the world as a supposed democratic alternative to the godless communists. As I wrote when this story first broke last spring:

After "shock and awe" in Iraq, the carpetbombing of Vietnam, the mass executions of the Phoenix Project, and the thousands imprisoned and untold tortured at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other "global war on terror" U.S. prisons (including the detention of thousands of minors), after these revelations and many, many more, it is time that Americans woke up and began to accept the reality of their history. That history is far bloodier than they care to imagine, and the fact that atrocities of this magnitude were done by or under the guidance of Americans is a hideous truth that we must not hide from.

More importantly, we should not let those implicated in crimes past and present escape without accountability. A civil commission of the most respected Americans -- none of whom should be from government or the military, as they are too tainted -- should be assembled to investigate the full extent of U.S. involved war crimes. This should include the evidence about use of biological weapons by the United States, as well, during the Korean War. [The cover-up of this aspect of the war has been implicated in the origins of the U.S. torture program at Guantanamo and throughout Bush's "war on terror" gulag.] The use of torture post-9/11 should also top the agenda.

We cannot have a clean start, a la Obama, without facing the truth, as ugly as it may be. I ask all of you: are we really a genocidal country? Do we let mass murder go unpunished? How has it come to this, that one has to even ask such questions in this day and age? Speak out now. U.S. militarism has led us to the gates of a moral holocaust. It is happening now.

Also posted at Invictus

•  Tip Jar

  OK, OK, I know this is two very depressing diaries in a row (or three, if anyone is counting). But either you believe our history is important, or you don't. Bush and the neo-cons have tried to destroy education in this country, precisely because they want to cultivate ignorance and lazy thinking. They have also pushed an agenda of secret government almost unprecedented in our history.

  The truth isn't always pretty, to make an understatement. But it's all we have. Without it we have nothing. We are naked before the powerful, and at their mercy.

  by Valtin on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 08:19:18 PM PDT

•  Recommend.

  Indispensible history, and still very incomplete.

  by Mogolori on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 08:30:06 PM PDT

  •  The article says

    The Korean commission has until 2010 to complete its task of investigating the crimes. It's now looking to U.S. archives and hopeful access to tons of yet to be declassified materials.

    My guess is: there's worse to come.

    by Valtin on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 08:35:36 PM PDT

•  I wonder how many Korean vets who were there

  will testify to this. They've kept this truth inside them out of fear, being labeled liars, anti-American, whatever reason.

  by Rogneid on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 08:47:34 PM PDT

  •  Vets have backed me up on previous stories

    although they don't always agree with some of my analysis (which is fine). I'll be curious if any have much to say on this. The Korean vets are getting pretty old now. My stepfather is one. He has not blinked on my stories about torture and  biological warfare in Korea. He says that a lot of "shit" happened, and he's put it behind him. (He was a Navy Seal; every guy in his outfit either died or was seriously wounded -- working underwater demolition.) I don't know what he'd say about this. Not a lot of soldiers were there in 1950, the time of the reported massacres, which were, remember, only weeks after North Korea invaded. The UN authorization for troops didn't come until June 27, 1950.

    There were hundreds of thousands of political supporters of the north residing and active in the South at the time of the invasion. The north steamrolled over the low morale southern troops. Many of the 10,000s killed were political prisoners held by the Rhee regime.

    When people at this site rant and rave about how unlikely it was certain secrets could be kept for decades (a la the Kennedy assassination business), they should keep in mind these terrible slaughters, kept secret entirely in the U.S. for longer than I, in my mid-50s, have been alive.

    by Valtin on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 09:04:17 PM PDT

    •  Navy SEALs founded in 1962 by Kennedy

      Not a trivial mistake because it makes your step father an untrustworthy witness. The SEALs succeeded the UDT (underwater demolition teams) which cleared beach obstructions in WWII and Korea. I was a Marine in that war, but didn't visit South Korea for 25 years. The hatred for America was picking up because of our support of dictators from Rhee on.
         My best friend was also a veteran of that war. This is the story he told me. He had been drafted into the North Korean army as a medic. He was captured by the South when the North Army was crushed between the breakout of the 8th Army from Pusan and the recapture of Seoul by Xth Corps coming from  Inchon. He was sentenced to death because he was an educated Marxist scholar. His family had fled South in the 40's. His uncle a certifiable right winger (he was an RC bishop) and was able to get him out of prison, and exiled to the U.S. where he proceeded to earn a Ph.D. and later brought his 9 brothers over one at a time, got most of them through graduate school or into the green grocery business. He was a good democrat and became a loyal American citizen, even though he had perjured himself to conceal his commie background. I urged him to write a memoir of his life, and to describe some of the executions and atrocities he had seen. He told me that most young Koreans of his time were reluctant to discuss the times because of fear. In his own case, it could have cost him his life in America. He had no doubt that the murders were the result of a conspiracy by the Rhee clique to destroy their political enemies. He thought MacArthur and the USArmy were complicit.
         I believe the USGovt and Army will do anything necessary to conceal the truth. Most ranking Americans and Koreans of the time are dead or dying. Few like to remember their connections with atrocities. Few will leave circumstantial accounts. Few will be willing to testify and be cross exmined.  

      by nihil on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 11:17:32 PM PDT

      •  Incredible story

        I'm sorry your friend never wrote up his story, but it's understandable.

        As for my stepfather, he did work underwater demolition. He never wants to talk about it, I know only what I've dragged out of him. He may, over the years, had said he was like the Seals or in the Seals, I don't remember. In any case, I don't think his memory is suspect. The fact that he still (according to my mother) wakes up sometimes screaming with nightmares, or in a cold sweat because of things that happened in Korea tells me something he's telling me is the truth.

        In the end, wars seem to seal up their secrets with the graves of their soldiers.

        by Valtin on Tue Jul 08, 2008 at 07:52:55 AM PDT

•  Credit the AP reporter Charles J. Hanley

  ...about whom Bill Moyers writes:

  ...

  One of my journalistic heroes is Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press. He covered the weapons inspectors in Iraq for several months before the invasion, and his reporting should have caused everyone to see the administration's claims for what they were—fiction. But Hanley's own reporting was altered by editors who didn't want to be caught out on a limb.

  This is the fellow, by the way, who reported the torture of Iraqis in American prisons before anyone else. American newspapers ignored it because, as Hanley said, "it was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source." Think about that the next time you read or watch the news from Washington.

  http://christiancentury.org/...

  With Sang-Hun Choe and Martha Mendoza of the Associated Press (and their outstanding researcher Randy Herschaft), Hanley won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2000 for revealing, with extensive documentation, the decades-old secret of how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of Korean civilians in a massacre at the No Gun Ri Bridge. The story is told in their book, No Gun Ri.

  And if you go to the history of the No gun Ri story on Wikipedia, you will know there has been a fierce fight over that story to preserve the narrative most friendly to the United States.

  Kossack Greg Mitchell, who is also the editor of Editor & Publisher which is the trade journal of the newspaper industry, wrote in 2004: "Where Was Press When 1st Iraq Prison Allegations Arose? November 2003 AP report got little play or followup."

  Greg wrote:

  (May 13, 2004) -- Is the press trying to make up for lost time once again? The media is now bursting with accounts of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons, but where were they last fall when evidence of wrongdoing started to emerge -- when a public accounting might have halted what turned out to be the worst of the incidents?

  "It was not an officially sanctioned story that begins with a handout from an official source," Charles J. Hanley, Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for The Associated Press, told me this week. Hanley was the first reporter to dig into the accusations of abuse when he returned to Baghdad for his latest tour of press duty last September. It led to a series of stories, culminating in a shocking report on Nov. 1, 2003, based on interviews with six released detainees.

  He is still amazed that apparently no one else was looking into the allegations, and no major newspaper picked up on his reporting after it appeared. Why? "That's something you'd have to ask editors at major newspapers," he said. "But there does seem to be a very strong prejudice toward investing U.S. official statements with credibility while disregarding statements from almost any other source -- and in this current situation, Iraqi sources."

  The Hanley stories last fall told of detainees being attacked by dogs, humiliated by guards and spending days with hoods over their heads, now familiar images in the American -- and Arab -- mind.

  Even after the Pentagon promised an investigation in January, and announced arrests in March, Hanley was "surprised there was not more interest and investigative reporting done. It's hard to fault my colleagues in Baghdad considering the pressure and danger they feel. Many stories are missed -- that's the way it is in war. But clearly there is a mindset in the U.S. media that slows the aggressive pursuit of stories that make the U.S. military look bad."...

  (Hanley's story for AP had all the elements of what we now know is the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. controlled prisons, which Mitchell's Q&A with Hanley describes (behind a firewall)--a story we pretty much know the outlines of )
  ...

  (and then Mitchell asks:)
  Q. So what happened after your AP story came out on Nov. 1?

  A. I was still in Baghdad, so I was not in touch with how much play it got, but later in November when I came back to New York I found out that the play was very disappointing. A few papers ran it, like the Tulsa (Okla.) World, Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, and The State (of Columbia, S.C.). It got wide use in Germany. None of the major U.S. newspapers published the story. And I was surprised to see that none of them followed up.
  ...

  Q. Why didn't more papers just run your story, when it was handed to them, then?

  A. That's something you'd have to ask editors at major newspapers. But I do think there's often disproportionate weight of credibility given to the statements of U.S. officials. There seems to be a tendency at times to discount the statements of others -- people like Iraqi former detainees -- if they're not somehow supported by a U.S. source, or perhaps by photographs.

  The greatest fall down in connection with Iraq in the media, of course, was the uncritical and often ignorant swallowing of claims about weapons of mass destruction presented by often unidentified sources. ...

  If you go to news.google.com and search for Hanley's stories on the U.S.-sanctioned mass murder of leftists and peasants in Korea, you will notice that only the Chicago Tribune and WP, and very few others, ran these wire stories.

  History repeats itself. US mainstream media is reluctant to run stories that demonstrate that the US is every bit as savage as communists (or any other enemy). US mainstream likes feel-good stories that don't preempt the positive visions spread by the government that the US spreads democracy and wholesomeness throughout the world.

  Tell it to the Iraqis, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and the indigenous peoples of North America. They'll all tell you they know torture and mass murder when they see it.

  Thanks, Charles Hanley, chief of the investigative team at the AP. Thanks for pressing on, even when your stories don't get much play.

  And thanks, Valtin. I would have missed this if you hadn't taken the time to link.

  
  

  by skywriter on Mon Jul 07, 2008 at 10:49:17 PM PDT

  •  You are right

    I should have credited the reporters. I usually do, and this was a bad oversight. The AP reporters were, of course, Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang.

    by Valtin on Tue Jul 08, 2008 at 07:54:42 AM PDT

•   Last April This Was in the NYTs

  Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was ''not deliberate,'' the Army has acknowledged it found but did not divulge that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.

  You can find more Here in a diary of last April here at dkos.

  by SmileySam on Tue Jul 08, 2008 at 12:26:10 AM PDT

  •  Important Info

    We can thank OneCrankyDom for all he did.

    by Valtin on Tue Jul 08, 2008 at 07:56:27 AM PDT