[KS] Korean War atrocities

[George Katsiaficas]

Dear all,

The full text of Charles Hanley¹s new article is much longer (and more
disturbing) than the one on Yahoo to which Bruce Cumings linked.  Check it
at:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h2rT2wzhviymfyfyRdmdKw6tciagD90O9DJ80

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:

:

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 government¹s actions.

Georgy Katsiaficas
Visiting Professor and Senior Fulbright Scholar
Department of Sociology
Chonnam National University
Buk-ku Yongbongdong 300
500-757 GWANGJU 
South Korea

Cell phone +82-10-6798-5852
Home phone +82-62-530-0549
Fax +82-62-530-2649
www.eroseffect.com


> From: Bruce Cumings <rufus88 at uchicago.edu>
> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 19:51:41 -0400
> To: <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Subject: [KS] Korean War atrocities
> 
> Below is a very good report by Charles Hanley of Associate Press, who
> was one of the AP reporters who brought the Nogun-ri massacre to
> American attentions in 1999. In addition to his discussion of
> American suppression of information about the Taejon massacre, note
> that in his official history of the war, South to the Naktong, North
> to the Yalu, with full access to secret documentation, Roy Appleman
> blamed the Taejon massacre entirely on the North Koreans.
> 
> Fear, secrecy kept 1950 Korea mass killings hidden
> By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
> May 18, 2008
>   http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080518/ap_on_re_as/
> korea_mass_executions_covered_up
> 
> 
> SEOUL, South Korea - One journalist's bid to report mass murder in
> South Korea in 1950 was blocked by his British publisher. Another
> correspondent was denounced as a possibly treasonous fabricator when
> he did report it. In South Korea, down the generations, fear silenced
> those who knew.
> 
> Fifty-eight years ago, at the outbreak of the Korean War, South
> Korean authorities secretively executed, usually without legal
> process, tens of thousands of southern leftists and others rightly or
> wrongly identified as sympathizers. Today a government Truth and
> Reconciliation Commission is working to dig up the facts, and the
> remains of victims.
> 
> How could such a bloodbath have been hidden from history?
> 
> Among the Koreans who witnessed, took part in or lost family members
> to the mass killings, the events were hardly hidden, but they became
> a "public secret," barely whispered about through four decades of
> right-wing dictatorship here.
> 
> "The family couldn't talk about it, or we'd be stigmatized as
> leftists," said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, leader of an organization of
> families seeking redress for their loved ones' deaths in 1950.
> 
> Kim, whose father was shot and buried in a mass grave outside the
> central city of Daejeon, noted that in 1960-61, a one-year democratic
> interlude in South Korea, family groups began investigating wartime
> atrocities. But a military coup closed that window, and "the leaders
> of those organizations were arrested and punished."
> 
> Then, "from 1961 to 1988, nobody could challenge the regime, to try
> again to reveal these hidden truths," said Park Myung-lim of Seoul's
> Yonsei University, a leading Korean War historian. As a doctoral
> student in the late 1980s, when South Korea was moving toward
> democracy, Park was among the few scholars to begin researching the
> mass killings. He was regularly harassed by the police.
> 
> Scattered reports of the killings did emerge in 1950 ‹ and some did not.
> 
> British journalist James Cameron wrote about mass prisoner shootings
> in the South Korean port city of Busan ‹ then spelled Pusan ‹ for
> London's Picture Post magazine in the fall of 1950, but publisher
> Edward Hulton ordered the story removed at the last minute.
> 
> Earlier, correspondent Alan Winnington reported on the shooting of
> thousands of prisoners at Daejeon in the British communist newspaper
> The Daily Worker, only to have his reporting denounced by the U.S.
> Embassy in London as an "atrocity fabrication." The British Cabinet
> then briefly considered laying treason charges against Winnington,
> historian Jon Halliday has written.
> 
> Associated Press correspondent O.H.P. King reported on the shooting
> of 60 political prisoners in Suwon, south of Seoul, and wrote in a
> later memoir he was "shocked that American officers were unconcerned"
> by questions he raised about due process for the detainees.
> 
> Some U.S. officers ‹ and U.S. diplomats ‹ were among others who
> reported on the killings. But their classified reports were kept
> secret for decades.
> 

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