There’s an old saying that goes “the truth will always come out”; unfortunately, it does not apply to the Vietnam War. Forty years after it ended, powerful forces take great pains to sugarcoat the tragedy that befell the people of this tiny Asian country at the hands of foreigners who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
The war was originally a battle between communist Vietnam and France for the former’s independence. Before World War 2, Vietnam was one of the colonies under the French colonial empire, a large empire second only to the largest that was Britain then. Japan took over in the course of the Second World War and after its defeat, France wanted to regain its colonies. The communists fought back and France, foreseeing more bloodshed, retreated in accordance with the Geneva Accord of 1954.
From here, the combat that became known as the Vietnam War began when the United States took up what the French had left behind. Its goal was the containment of communism. But the means to the goal (which, in the end, was not achieved) left collateral damage that was beyond incredible. Three million Vietnamese were killed, many of them the elderly, women and children. More than 5 million were injured and 11 million became refugees, fleeing their own country to seek a better life elsewhere.
The US, paranoid about the spread of communism, began a battle against the ideology that deceives the masses, but along the way it turned into an all-out war against the people of Vietnam. It was supposed to help the anti-communist South Vietnam fight the Viet Cong communist guerillas and the North Vietnamese army but American soldiers could not tell one from the other. To solve the problem, US commanding officers ordered their troops to “kill anything that moves,” a command that became the title of a book by Nick Turse. It was this order that resulted in the infamous US-led My Lai massacre and almost fifty other mass annihilations perpetrated by the South Korean forces under Park Chung-hee. What made the ROK-led massacres truly heinous were the indignities the victims suffered before they were murdered. There was torture, mutilation, rape of women, assault and dismemberment of bodies before they were thrown into mass graves. Little children and old people were not spared and the survivors who had pretended to be dead were left to clean up the villages and bury the remaining dead bodies.
The South Korean soldiers forced the Vietnamese women and young girls into sexual slavery, impregnating many who bore the mixed-race children now known as Lai Dai Han, a derogatory term for the offspring of Korean fathers and Vietnamese mothers. Abandoned and unrecognized by their fathers, they are shunned by society and live with their mothers in sordid poverty.
The Republic of Korea had the biggest number of armed forces in Vietnam next to the US. It sent military support in exchange for monetary aid and subsidies to propel its economy post-war. But, while persistently seeking apologies from Japan for its comfort women, it has refused to own up to the truth of its atrocities and continue to perpetuate the fiction that it fought the Vietnam War to help the people fight against the communists and that no Korean intentionally harmed innocent civilians. The Korean veterans of war are seen as heroes for the sacrifices they made. Their names are engraved on black marble stone at the Korean War Memorial in Seoul to honor their memories. There is pride in their reputation as one of the toughest troops during hostilities and their willingness to employ the most inhumane and merciless methods of torture and killing.
But even the Korean veterans themselves are not happy with the way their government is revising the truth of the war and why their officials at that time were too eager to respond to America’s call for help. They are asking for the government’s support, especially for treatment for the effects of Agent Orange, the chemical used to kill Vietnam's forest where the Viet Congs were suspected to be hiding. In the US, veterans who have lived through the war say that it was an immoral and ignoble war that taught them to kill without hesitation.
The question on many people’s lips is, when will the US and South Korea stop fooling their citizens by memorializing the Vietnam War and justifying their countries’ participation in a battle that wasn’t worth the lives lost?