Anyone know what occurred at the onset of the Korean War in 1950?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1305783

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/articl...

Note: The timesonline link doesn't work any more without paying a fee to see the article. But the DU link above still works.

November 27, 2009

Commission calls on South Korea to apologise for wartime massacre

Richard Lloyd Parry,

Asia Editor

South Korea should make a formal apology and pay compensation to the families of thousands of civilians massacred on the orders of the Government during the early months of the Korean War, an official investigation recommended yesterday.

The country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced that it had confirmed the murders of almost 5,000 alleged leftwingers who were rounded up and killed by the police and army between June and September 1950.

These are believed to represent a fraction of the total number killed during an anti-communist frenzy as the army of North Korea surged down the peninsula, almost overwhelming South Korean and US forces. Historians and researchers estimate that the true number is at least 100,000, and could be twice as much.

The killings, ordered, according to the commission, at the highest levels of the South Korean Government, were a taboo for decades. Surviving families hid the death of relatives in the massacres for fear of being smeared as communist, under the right-wing military dictatorships that governed South Korea after the war. snip

With the passive collusion, and sometimes in the presence of US troops, the league members, sometimes including women and children, were slaughtered en masse, often being shot and then dumped into the sea or into mass graves ...

[FarCenter]

1. Pretty standard stuff in war -- round up suspected sympathizers with the enemy and kill them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre

Letter on Korean War Massacre Reveals Plan to Shoot Refugees

More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war's chaotic early days has come to light -- a letter from the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that U.S. soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter -- dated the day of the Army's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 -- is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

The letter reported on decisions made at a high-level meeting in South Korea on July 25, 1950, the night before the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment shot the refugees at No Gun Ri.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052900914.html

Or just shoot anyone who may be a threat.

[NNN0LHI]

2. And don't forget to kill all the children too

They might grow up into subversives.

Right?

Don

[HopeHoops]

3. The war was not pretty and isn't officially over, but we're the ones who wanted to use nuclear waste

We planned to spread nuclear waste along the N. Korean border with China. FORTUNATELY, more rational heads prevailed, but it wasn't just "on the table" - it was the plan. All wars are disgusting on every level. There are no winners, only losers.

[Starry Messenger]

4. AP: U.S. Allowed Korean Massacre In 1950

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-4234885.html

Emmerich was told by a subordinate that a South Korean regimental commander, determined to keep Busan's political prisoners from joining the enemy, planned "to execute some 3500 suspected peace time Communists, locked up in the local prison," according to the declassified 78-page narrative, first uncovered by the newspaper Busan Ilbo at the U.S. National Archives.

<snip>

As that summer wore on, and the invaders pressed their attack on the southern zone, Busan-area prisoners were shot by the hundreds, Korean and foreign witnesses later said.

Emmerich wrote that soon after his session with Kim, he met with South Korean officials in Daegu, 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of Busan, and persuaded them "at that time" not to execute 4,500 prisoners immediately, as planned. Within weeks, hundreds were being executed in the Daegu area.

The bloody anticommunist purge, begun immediately after the invasion, is believed by the fall of 1950 to have filled some 150 mass graves in secluded spots stretching to the peninsula's southernmost counties. Commissioner Kim said the commission's estimate of 100,000 dead is "very conservative." The commission later this month will resume excavating massacre sites, after having recovered remains of more than 400 people at four sites last year.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Thank you very much for finding a still working link to this story

[Starry Messenger]

6. Happy to help, Don.

I'd never heard of this before, actually.