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<TITLE>Re: [KS] Korean War atrocities</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Dear all,<BR>
<BR>
The full text of Charles Hanley’s new article is much longer (and more disturbing) than the one on Yahoo to which Bruce Cumings linked. Check it at:<BR>
<a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2rT2wzhviymfyfyRdmdKw6tciagD90O9DJ80">http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2rT2wzhviymfyfyRdmdKw6tciagD90O9DJ80</a><BR>
<BR>
I have been in the macabre cave to which the article refers and to several other massacre sites, including the one in Taejon in this photo:<BR>
<BR>
:<IMG src="cid:3294098753_7656363" ><BR>
<BR>
The original uncropped version of this moving photo in Taejon (which I was shown by the son of one of these executed prisoners in 2002) clearly depicts a uniformed American standing in the foreground overseeing the executions. I am surprised that the uncropped version was not mentioned--nor was direct US involvement in this particular massacre. Apparently, more than half a century after this tragedy, the American public continues to be denied full disclosure and an accurate accounting of our government’s actions.<BR>
<BR>
Georgy Katsiaficas<BR>
Visiting Professor and Senior Fulbright Scholar<BR>
Department of Sociology<BR>
Chonnam National University<BR>
Buk-ku Yongbongdong 300<BR>
500-757 GWANGJU <BR>
South Korea<BR>
<BR>
Cell phone +82-10-6798-5852<BR>
Home phone +82-62-530-0549<BR>
Fax +82-62-530-2649<BR>
www.eroseffect.com<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF">> From: Bruce Cumings <rufus88@uchicago.edu><BR>
> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws><BR>
> Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 19:51:41 -0400<BR>
> To: <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws><BR>
> Subject: [KS] Korean War atrocities<BR>
> <BR>
> Below is a very good report by Charles Hanley of Associate Press, who <BR>
> was one of the AP reporters who brought the Nogun-ri massacre to <BR>
> American attentions in 1999. In addition to his discussion of <BR>
> American suppression of information about the Taejon massacre, note <BR>
> that in his official history of the war, South to the Naktong, North <BR>
> to the Yalu, with full access to secret documentation, Roy Appleman <BR>
> blamed the Taejon massacre entirely on the North Koreans.<BR>
> <BR>
> Fear, secrecy kept 1950 Korea mass killings hidden<BR>
> By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent<BR>
> May 18, 2008<BR>
> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080518/ap_on_re_as/">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080518/ap_on_re_as/</a> <BR>
> korea_mass_executions_covered_up<BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> SEOUL, South Korea - One journalist's bid to report mass murder in <BR>
> South Korea in 1950 was blocked by his British publisher. Another <BR>
> correspondent was denounced as a possibly treasonous fabricator when <BR>
> he did report it. In South Korea, down the generations, fear silenced <BR>
> those who knew.<BR>
> <BR>
> Fifty-eight years ago, at the outbreak of the Korean War, South <BR>
> Korean authorities secretively executed, usually without legal <BR>
> process, tens of thousands of southern leftists and others rightly or <BR>
> wrongly identified as sympathizers. Today a government Truth and <BR>
> Reconciliation Commission is working to dig up the facts, and the <BR>
> remains of victims.<BR>
> <BR>
> How could such a bloodbath have been hidden from history?<BR>
> <BR>
> Among the Koreans who witnessed, took part in or lost family members <BR>
> to the mass killings, the events were hardly hidden, but they became <BR>
> a "public secret," barely whispered about through four decades of <BR>
> right-wing dictatorship here.<BR>
> <BR>
> "The family couldn't talk about it, or we'd be stigmatized as <BR>
> leftists," said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, leader of an organization of <BR>
> families seeking redress for their loved ones' deaths in 1950.<BR>
> <BR>
> Kim, whose father was shot and buried in a mass grave outside the <BR>
> central city of Daejeon, noted that in 1960-61, a one-year democratic <BR>
> interlude in South Korea, family groups began investigating wartime <BR>
> atrocities. But a military coup closed that window, and "the leaders <BR>
> of those organizations were arrested and punished."<BR>
> <BR>
> Then, "from 1961 to 1988, nobody could challenge the regime, to try <BR>
> again to reveal these hidden truths," said Park Myung-lim of Seoul's <BR>
> Yonsei University, a leading Korean War historian. As a doctoral <BR>
> student in the late 1980s, when South Korea was moving toward <BR>
> democracy, Park was among the few scholars to begin researching the <BR>
> mass killings. He was regularly harassed by the police.<BR>
> <BR>
> Scattered reports of the killings did emerge in 1950 — and some did not.<BR>
> <BR>
> British journalist James Cameron wrote about mass prisoner shootings <BR>
> in the South Korean port city of Busan — then spelled Pusan — for <BR>
> London's Picture Post magazine in the fall of 1950, but publisher <BR>
> Edward Hulton ordered the story removed at the last minute.<BR>
> <BR>
> Earlier, correspondent Alan Winnington reported on the shooting of <BR>
> thousands of prisoners at Daejeon in the British communist newspaper <BR>
> The Daily Worker, only to have his reporting denounced by the U.S. <BR>
> Embassy in London as an "atrocity fabrication." The British Cabinet <BR>
> then briefly considered laying treason charges against Winnington, <BR>
> historian Jon Halliday has written.<BR>
> <BR>
> Associated Press correspondent O.H.P. King reported on the shooting <BR>
> of 60 political prisoners in Suwon, south of Seoul, and wrote in a <BR>
> later memoir he was "shocked that American officers were unconcerned" <BR>
> by questions he raised about due process for the detainees.<BR>
> <BR>
> Some U.S. officers — and U.S. diplomats — were among others who <BR>
> reported on the killings. But their classified reports were kept <BR>
> secret for decades.<BR>
> <BR>
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