The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is recommending the government begin negotiations with the United States to secure compensation for a January 1951 bombing in Sinseong-dong, Bomun-myeon (nice temple, BTW), Yecheon-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do that killed 51 villagers and left the village in ashes.
It’s the commission’s first decision concerning losses caused by the US military.
According to the commission, the US Army’s X Corps and 5th Air Force, believing the North Korean army to be active in the area, bombed the Sinseong area with 18 Corsair fighter-bombers. The strike killed 18 men and 33 women, 16 of whom were children under the age of 10.
The commission said — sit down for this — “The bombing took place despite the fact that — at the time — the Korean People’s Army had never occupied or passed through Sinseong-dong, and this was because the Air Force pilots and commanders had not faithfully reconnoitered the area.”
How’s that for some Monday morning generaliship. The commission, however, arrived at its conclusion based on US military documents, so they think they have something, apparently.
The commission advised, “The US military’s direct attack on the civilians of a defenseless village could come under a war crime… The Korean government must start active negotiations so that the US launches a joint investigation or takes measures to take responsibility, such as paying compensation.”
I was thinking 36,000 dead, 92,000 wounded, 8,000 MIA and half a century of security guarantees backed up by US troops might be compensation enough. Apparently, I was wrong.
There is a bright side to all this, though. Despite the South Korean government sitting out yet another UN vote on North Korean human rights, the committee’s diligence in uncovering the truth behind Korean War-era air raids gives us hope that 50 years from now, Seoul might take an interest in uncovering the truth about atrocities happening in North Korea today.
PS: Are there cases where the US paid compensation for killing allied civilians in air raids during WWII? I’m assuming, for instance, that US bombers occasionally hit the wrong targets during missions in occupied France, the Netherlands and elsewhere. I ask this in all seriousness, because I honestly do not know.
31 Comments
Thus undermines the name of “Truth and Reconciliation Committee.” Two stories on them in one day, wow.
Lest we forget, last month President Roh said that North Korea should not have to apologize for past wrongs. Talk about mixed messages. http://english.yonhapnews.co.k.....0315F.HTML
From the linked article I read about the killing fields it seems that no penalty other than a suggestion to apologize will be required of Korean war criminals from the T&R commission. Why then is the army of a sovereign state who was fighting to defend this one subject to a fine?
why can’t the koreans get over this? the us isn’t japan. the us is why south korea exists. the us didn’t try to erase korea from the map; the us preserved korean identity. koreans need to think about that. time to get over it and move on, and look for ways to strengthen the alliance that now barely exists between the two nations.
happy thanksgiving to all my fellow americans!
Robert, one possible incident to look into to see if any compensation was paid is the 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.
If North Korea invades again and the South asks for those mythical 690,000 reinforcements, the answer from the U.S. President would have to be: “Uh, sorry, but we wouldn’t want to be responsible for bombing, shelling or shooting any poor villagers by mistake. However, we’ll give you plenty of moral support. Good luck with the NKPA!”
But seriously, this is an internal thing. If the South feels a need to compensate these people for a mistake their ally made in saving the nation’s collective ass, then they can knock themselves out.
did you ever just want to end it all and have all US troops removed from the peninsula? YOU CAN!!!!! - Ron Paul 2008 ^^
“I was thinking 36,000 dead, 92,000 wounded, 8,000 MIA and half a century of security guarantees backed up by US troops might be compensation enough. Apparently, I was wrong.”
Shame is nobody here invited these whitebreads to throw their lives on the line, washington’s imperialist intentions are to blame for that. However, the stupid fools that let themselves be sent over here and found themselves in questionable operational positions should still be held accountable for the mistakes they committed once they got here. Shame is most of these dumb cunts are probably already dead without facing the music. probably sleepless nights till their bodies went into rot though. nice to know.
Thankfully many of the US troops that were stationed here over that period were progressively minded enough to demonstrate to the Korean people that marrying scrap Korean women (whores / peasants / the sexually abused) was not an offense to heaven, and whether they stayed, or went back to Idaho with their concubine. Another positive byproduct of these liaisons is that many of these brave veterans now populate the Internet and can pass on their experience, unlike the poor sods that died for their governments.
Yeah. After reading swlee’s comment.
Question from original post: “Are there cases where the US paid compensation for killing allied civilians in air raids during WWII? I’m assuming, for instance, that US bombers occasionally hit the wrong targets during missions in occupied France, the Netherlands and elsewhere. I ask this in all seriousness, because I honestly do not know.”
It’s probably too generous of you to say “occasionally”. The US conducted extensive and concentrated aerial bombing of targets in France, particularly during the approx six months prior to D-Day when even most of the “heavy” bombers were withdrawn from attacks against “strategic” targets in Germany and used to supplement the attacks of medium bombers, and fighter-bombers against targets in France in support of the immediate tactical objectives that were to follow a (hopefully successful) Allied invasion landing.
Also, how would a grieving surviving relative on the ground know for a fact that it was an “American” bomb? One imagines the RAF (and RCAF?) conducted extensive bombing raids of their own in France as well, in both strategic and immediate tactical support of their own forces areas of operations.
I tried to look for a specific answer but if it’s on-line anywhere, it may take a combination of an exact search phrase and the will to search through umpteen gazillion results.
If any arrangement was legally formulated (a possibly big “if”) I would guess the US State Department and the post-war French government concluded a treaty in which each government agreed to assume any claims made by their own citizens against the other.
Aside from stray bombs, navigation errors, crashes of aircraft due to enemy action, etc., in most cases deliberate concentrated US bombing in France would have been directed against German military targets mixed right in with varying levels of civilian French populace. These raids would then have been followed up (again, in most cases) by later extensive ground combat Americans/British/Canadians vs Germans, causing considerable additional damage.
To the extent that it would have taken literally armies of claims assessors and lawyers to adjudicate such claims in the immediate post war aftermath. It’s not difficult to imagine hard-headed French “peasants” (to borrow swlee’s eloquent phraseology) and small shopowners/businessmen — learning of a hypothetically generous US postwar compensation scheme for civilian French deaths and property damage caused by its own forces — to roll into their own claims the deaths of relatives and property damage done by German (or other Allied) military action. In the postwar aftermath, what objective observer would have been able to say whether or not a small shopowner’s wife was killed (and his shop in Normandy destroyed) by pre-invasion US bombing — or by post-invasion extensive local fighting?
But — maybe one of your French readers will see this and come up with something more specific. One way to research it would be working from the specific case to the general, ie what were the specific experiences of a Frenchman (or woman) as to any formal postwar governmental aid/compensation they received towards reconstituting their lives and livelihood — after losing a loved one and/or personal property, in what was clearly (in retrospect according to their account) an “American” (as opposed to “Allied”) bombing raid?
One answer to any such hypothetical request for compensation would of course have been to mutely display a picture of the extensive US war cemetaries in France/ Belgium/ Luxembourg. There are of course none of these in the ROK; maybe in retrospect it was a political mistake not to offer the possibility of burial of US Korean war dead in a dedicated, ROK-located US military cemetary. No doubt at least some of the surviving family members would have elected such burial as an option.
(Note: I’m aware of the UN cemetary but don’t recall if any US Korean War KIA are located there or not; I suppose there could be a few).
From your earlier post on the Truth and Reconciliation commission (IHT article by Choe Sang-Hun):
“…Investigators have since identified 1,222 probable instances of mass killings during the Korean War, after canvassing witnesses and excavating remains. The cases include 215 incidents in which survivors say U.S. warplanes and ground troops killed unarmed refugees….”
Let’s get all 215 cases out there and “up front” for consideration, with a to-be-hoped-for result of getting the US media thoroughly involved and interested (like with Nogun-ri). If any survivors are deserving of compensation, time’s a-wasting; they’re not getting any younger.
Could it be only one US bombing case is being “floated” — in Korean-language media only — as an attempt by the T&R commission to influence the upcoming election? I ask this not as a cynical suggestion but as a genuine question.
(follow-up to my #11)
The idea being that only one case being “recommended” for action to the ROK government will not be enough to draw the attention of English-language US media but yet enough to make an impact within ROK.
Of the 18 “Corsair” pilots, you’d figure there’s got to be at least one 75-80 year old still alive. (”Corsair” is a fancy English language word for “pirate”, and I recall that “pirate” was one of the good old-fashioned Cold War DPRK/PRC adjectives for US forces; maybe somebody can tell me if that’s explained in the article for the benefit of younger Korean readers).
If we’re lucky, this survivor is a “whitebread” (or maybe “white potato”) living high on the hog up in Idaho, attended by one (or more) aging-but-still-slavish Korean “concubines”. And perhaps once he’s found and interviewed, he’ll be able to pop the tab on a cold Miller and explain how he enjoyed his day back in January of 51 machine-gunning terrified ROK civilian villagers. Maybe he’ll have some snapshots.
I’m also wondering if this particular case was deliberately selected by the commission because it has aspects that are evocative of what I’ve read about “Welcome to Dongmakgol”.
Well — let’s get the story out there and see what happens. PBS, the major US regular networks and CNN/other cable news — put them all on the story and I’ll bet one of them can find something of further interest, if it’s there to be found.
The Korean gov’t should compensate all UN/US vets and/or their families directly with cash. I mean all of them. This would include all those who have served here from 1950 to the present. Especially in the case of the US which has suffered greatly for an ungrateful Korea. Just being separated from one’s family is too much of a burden. It’s time for the Korean gov’t to pay up for the intentional murder of foreign nationals by Koreans. This should definitely include those who died in Korean POW camps.
compensation for wartime casualties is a hippie-left concept.
At the end of the war, if you are alive and you are free,
then, damn, that was all you could ask for.
Did you learn that from the guys in your unit when you served in the ROK military?
Since you believe that then tell the Commision so they’ll close their cake holes in regards to seeking comp from the US.
“I was thinking 36,000 dead, 92,000 wounded, 8,000 MIA and half a century of security guarantees backed up by US troops might be compensation enough. Apparently, I was wrong.”
That statement seems pretty biased to me. There’s a difference between innocent civilians being killed and professionally trained soldiers who volunteer of their own accord getting killed, regardless of the quantitative numbers.
I’m fairly certain the U.S. had their reasons (i.e. economic, strategic, political) for “helping” South Korea out during the war. I doubt they’d do it out of the goodness of their heart without expecting some windfall, direct or indirect, come their way.
I very much agree that the US media should really get on this issue.
Let the wonderful Korean “face” speak for itself and be judged by
the world outside of this very small well. Personally,
in my dealings with and interviews of US Korean War veterans,
I feel extremely ashamed to be associated with this very
ungrateful North-East Asian country. When you actually speak with
these veterans, the issue becomes very real. It is very difficult
to express the feelings I’ve experienced when speaking to
these U.S. veterans when we’ve discussed the anti-Americanism
in this country. My grandmother’s brother wasn’t an American imperialist
bent on crushing the Korean spirit. Before he left, he explained
to the family that he was going off to help a little-known Asian country
and its people. He truly believed this. He never came back.
I would like to request that my grandmother and her sisters be compensated for the loss of her brother at the hands of 100% Korean-blooded Koreans in the Korean War.
Not biased at all. Those are the numbers.
Yeah, so? We also had our reasons for bombing the crap out of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, too. Are you suggesting, therefore, that the nations liberated through said bombing should begin demanding compensation for bad military decisions made during said efforts?
I recall that the tiny republic of San Marino, which is located within Italy, and was neutral during WW2, was bombed by the allies(US).
I believe that they successfully sued for damages, both property and lives, and won a cash settlement. I was unable to find specifics after a cursory check on the Internet. Just remember it from a pol.geography class.
#14/WJK. Just what on earth is a ‘hippie-left concept’? Left I can understand but, as far as I know, hippies were primarily concerned with communal living, free love and dropping out. Nice coinage there, guy.
It’s not a hippie-left concept, it’s a concept coming from someone who thinks the wrong team won the war.
France had the bejeezus bombed out of it in the course of liberation, especially Normandy. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure 99% of them considered that as the necessary cost of liberation. And I don’t think the residents of Arnhem sued Monty for his sending airborne troops a bridge too far with the destruction of a good chunk of their city. They were happy an attempt was made to get the Germans off their back.
Anyway, as I said originally, a country demanding this kind of compensation is no longer worth defending and should no longer be considered an ally.
Truth and Reconciliation, my @$$! Whose truth? Kim Jong-il’s? It sounds like a ploy to pass off the “truth” which means highlight mistakes made by the US IN DEFENDING THIS COUNTRY, whilst giving the North free pass (Oh, they’re Korean, they would never hurt a fellow member of the minjok). And just whom are they reconciling with?
Let’s start the countdown to how many more days we have to endure this atrocious administration in Seoul.
“Are there cases where the US paid compensation for killing allied civilians in air raids during WWII?”
I checked the NY Times archives from 1945 to 1979 using World War II bombing compensation and didn’t find any articles on that specific issue.
Some further notes:
1) The Corsair was a US naval aircraft, designed for carrier operations; this airstrike almost certaintly came from a US Navy carrier offshore (undoubtedly in the “East Sea”). Also the strike would have received high-level authorization from 5th US Air Force (a 3 or 4 star USAF general HQ in charge of controlling all operations in the airspace over the pensinsula).
The strike was probably in response to a request from the X Corps (a US Army 3 star General HQ, in charge of ROK and US forces in this eastern sector of the peninsula battlefront).
2) However —
as best I can tell from the hard-to-read photocopy of the archive memo (only a portion of the original & without a visible date(?)) — the airstrike was pre-planned, but only in the sense that a certain geographical area was declared to be completely enemy-controlled and that therefore anything in there should be attacked (in Vietnam later these would be called “free-fire zones” but I don’t think that terminology was yet in use in the Korean War).
3) US generals (and their staffs) wouldn’t have just waved their hands over their situation room maps and said “bomb here” at random. So the question becomes: “Who was it on the ground that first identified this “area” as a target”? .
4) The memo (addressed to the 2nd ROK division, in X Corps sector and under X Corps commander control) directs them to move to a certain area and immediately attack the enemy. It goes on to indicate that their TACP (Tactical Air Control Party, a small unit of US Air Force ground personnel designed to identify and control airstrikes with the maneuver ground forces, either ROK or US) was not yet back with them but rather with the 17th ROK Regiment.
5) The general situation at the beginning of January 1951 was that the Chinese PLA (evidently concentrated in the west of the country) had just retaken Seoul and were posed to continue attacking south to try and expel the UN forces from the country, in order to finally accomplish what the NKPA had come close to doing in August 1950.
So the overall war situation could be reasonably characterized as “desperate” (assuming you the reader were/are rooting for the “good guys” of course). However, the new 8th Army commander Ridgway (who was now also in control of the previously independent X Corps) had completed his initial assessment of the situation and had reported to MacArthur in Tokyo that he was confident he could stabilize the situation and eventually resume the offensive, to retake Seoul and at least regain enemy-controlled ROK terrritory.
(to be cont’d)
More notes (cont’d from above)
6) The specific lines of attack for the North Korean offensive against the UN X Corps sector, from 7-22 Jan 1951, can be seen on this map from the US Army official history:
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/boo.....7_full.jpg
Without a specific day in Jan 51 for the airstrike (if it’s in the Korean-language portion of the link, I can’t read it) it’s impossible to be certain if the date of the air strike is within this time frame. Given the possible proximity of the airstrike to the deepest penetration shown on the map, though, it seems likely that one of these particular NK offensives 7-22 Jan is the “proximate cause” of the error.
7) I suppose another possible cause could have been an identification of the area as having a pro-Communist armed population. In either case, it seems very possible that such an identification would have originated with locally defending ROK forces. If no American advisors or TACP were present when such an identification was made originally by ROK troops and then sent upward to X Corps, it would be rather disingenuous 50 plus years later to then blame the airstrike on a lack of “faithful reconnissance” by Americans.
The Americans couldn’t be everywhere and had to rely on their ROK troop allies, particularly in the matter of identifying friendly vs enemy sympathizers among the local population. And we can see (from the other portions of the commission’s work) just how abrupt the ROK forces could be in making those type of judgements.
9) BTW, these specific attacks by NK forces would have been characterized as “supporting” ones, in support of the main battle going on with Chinese PLA to the west (south of Seoul). Other maps and the text of the US Army history (extremely detailed and therefore very difficult reading) can be found here:
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/boo.....b/ch11.htm
(see subsection entitled “Wonju and Hill 247″; from the bottom of page 216 through the end of the chapter on page 227).
I’ve only skimmed them very briefly, as it’s just too difficult for me to work with the varying various map and text windows on my slow computer; I’ve got nothing handy in “hard copy”. Maybe someone else could review them and discern other possibilities I’ve missed — assuming anyone is interested.
10) At any rate, I’ll be interested to see if a final version of the commission’s “recommendation” includes this type of overall appraisal of the general situation facing the UN Command in Jan 1951. I won’t be able to read it of course w/o an English translation; so if the recommendation never really progresses to any further concrete action by this ROK administration (or some future one), I suppose such a translation is unlikely.
11) Some further links of interest:
a)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F4U_Corsair#Korean_War
b) map references (to show approx locations for those (like me) who don’t know their detailed ROK geography):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Gyeongsang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yecheon_County
moderator: please delete the smiley face in #24 immediately above, don’t know how it got there (random error keystoke I suppose).
Does anyone think this committee is going to demand compensation from other allies that fought in the war like Australia for civilian casualties?
The Aussies were actually the first nation to fly aircraft over Korea and were involved in a number of friendly fire incidents as well as accidental strafing of civilians.
The fact this committee is going after US civilian casualty incidents only shows that this is nothing more than another attempt to promote anti-US sentiment. The truth of what really happened matters little.
#20: “….France had the bejeezus bombed out of it in the course of liberation, especially Normandy. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m sure 99% of them considered that as the necessary cost of liberation…”
I doubt if Normandy resident would quite take to it that way, if you were to present the proposition to them in those terms. However –
I can recall reading print articles (and seeing TV shows) about the D-Day celebrations in the Normandy area on both the 40th and 50th anniversaries. American/British/Canadian flags on display everywhere and the residents were really glad to see Americans.
You might think it was only the older generation who would have this attitude but my vague recollection is that the authors/reporters said it extended into the younger generation as well. I sure don’t recall anything being said about how this gratitude is due (in whole or even in part) to any US monetary compensation schemes, direct from Uncle Sam to indiv Frenchmen
It probably helps that US war graveyards are present in the Normandy area, and also that we haven’t had garrisons of young soldiers present continously since the war annoying the natives. De Gaulle did us a big favor (in retrospect; we didn’t see it that way at the time) in giving US forces stationed in France the boot in 1965-66 — lock stock and barrel.
A similar ROK “force de frappe”, followed by the consequent withdrawl of all US forces — that’s the ticket, one that will lead to the best of all possible worlds. Either a north/south embrace of amour propre, or un coup de deux veuves; machts nichts, as long as les Amis are “out from under”.
“It probably helps that US war graveyards are present in the Normandy area, and also that we haven’t had garrisons of young soldiers present continously since the war annoying the natives.”
Very good point.
Exit86 has indicated the nature of the appropriate US response to this nonsense: a reciprocal demand for comepensation of the families of every UN Forces soldier kia/mia in Korea, every living wounded UN trooper and every living UN combatant.
What’s truly disappointing about episodes like this, though, is the complete silence of the pstensibly responsible Korean political leadership of all political stripes in the face of this sort of mewling.
I happen to be reading parts of Churchill’s volumes on WWII when this thread came up.
Besides bombing the hell out of former allies in order to prepare for invasion and weaken Germany’s war effort, there were a lot of other things done by the allies that could raise the ire of some natives - and did raise the heckles of some of the leadership in the former allies.
I was just reading of Britain invading Madagascar with a small commando group with support units in 1942 to secure a naval base that would be troublesome if it fell into Japanese hands. The island was Vichy French at the time, and they did fight back, though the book states most of the locals were not in line with the French government’s anti-British position.
I also remember from having read the earlier volumes of Churchill’s series sometime before, I believe it was, that De Gualle himself was angry about the British attacking and sinking French warships when it became clear France was going to surrender and was going to refuse to send its warships to Britain or neutral ports for the duration of the conflict. I believe they even boarded some French vessels by force that were docked in England, if my memory is holding up.
That stuff did create a lot of bad blood at the time, but doesn’t seem to have held after the war.
Churchill also talks about bad blood over having bombed Paris production facilities early in the war, I believe it was, as a defensive measure way before the UK was into strategic bombing of Germany and conquered nations.
Anyway, you would think that compensation was going to be raised by anybody, it might be Japan and the citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but I don’t think that has happened much.
Perhaps the massive Marshal Plan that helped rebuild all of Europe, including enemy nations, and the help rebuilding Japan was considered just compensation?
Its just too much to hope the Koreans would see it the same way….
There were several different individual actions by British forces against French military (mostly naval) assets, ones who did not immediately declare themselves for De Gaulle and the Free French; Churchill’s memoirs is undoubtedly a prime source for learning about these.
However, you ought to hear the other side of the story as well. Undoubtedly the most notorious British action (and the one which caused the most long-term resentment amongst the French people, lasting well after the war) was the death of almost 2000 of their sailors due to the British navy bombardment attack on the heavy French naval units at anchor in an Algerian port.
Unlike the ones at Toulon, these French naval units were not subject to any immediate danger of being seized intact by the Germans. Of course, Churchill viewed the matter as one of capability rather than intent; he was afraid the French would sail for Toulon to join the French navy units located there, making it too tempting a prize for Hitler not to grab. And the British couldn’t afford to tie up major British fleet assets to blockade Algeria indefinitely while the French decided what to do.
And afterwards, several French naval vessels did in fact escape from Mers and sail to Toulon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....K%C3%A9bir
I’m sure Churchill must have justified the attack on Mers in your reading as a hard but necessary decision; however, in retrospect IMO it was almost certainly unnecessary (see the comment in the wiki article by the British admiral commanding the bombardment at Mers).
This lack of necessity is shown by the actions of the French naval forces in harbor at Toulon in France proper on 27 Nov 42, when they were in fact subject to the immediate presence of German forces who were trying to seize all their remaining ships:
http://www.bobhenneman.info/bhst.htm
Churchill should have had more faith in the honor of his former French allies.
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