AP has run a rather lengthy report on the widespread killing of leftists and suspected leftists in the wake of North Korea’s invasion of the South.
The report is an interesting read, even if it contains nothing we haven’t read before. For that matter, if we really want to “air out the dirty laundry, so to speak, the massacres go back at least to 1948, and perhaps earlier.
18 Comments
baduk, we’re waiting for you…
Well, there is this bit about the author of said reports:
Ouch.
GI Korea did an excellent fisking of the Nogunri fiction. I hope he has it in him to do it again with this one.
From the link in #2:
As I was reading this story, what I couldn’t make out was why it was being told like it was a major breaking story. After reading Joshua’s comment, it makes a lot more sense.
I posted a link at ROKdrop yesterday, and he said he probably would blog it. The story appears at the Huffington Post, and some of the comments are painfully ignorant.
Robert, this story is making the news now because U.S. military photos documenting the even have just now been declassified after 57 years.
As for the “U.S. backed Regime” bit, bear in mind that there were less than 500 U.S. military advisors assigned to KMAG in June 1950, none of whom spoke Korean, and a small chunk of whom were strictly administrative personnel. This latter category included then Sergeant Nichols, who was the Motor Pool NCOIC when the war started. He had learned a fair bit of Korean, and parlayed his knowledge of Korea into a Warrant Officer’s bar, later a commission into Air Force intelligence, by Armistice time. If memory serves, he ended the war as a Major and only got promoted Colonel later. I think the author did try to add some balance, but he is up against a general ignorance of 1945-50 Korea that leads many to imagine a robust American presence directing a massive, well equipped ROK military when the first Nork guns went off, something that was hardly the case.
One might want to enlist someone who grew up in the North and witnessed the tender loving care offered to ordinary folks who declined to kiss the great leader’s hangmoon in unison…
The difference here is that the folks pooh-poohing the actions of Syngman Rhee and his semi-gangster regime are not showing us the context of the events (immediately post WW2, post Japanese Occupation, etc.) and they are not at all intellectually honest about the orders of magnitude greater brutality shown to dissenters by the Communists.
“Leftists” my pimply butt! The “innocents slaughtered” at Jeju and Gwangju were armed rebels. And although it may be true that innocent people were killed by the ROK government during the 625 war, it should be remembered that ALL of the dead got that way as a direct result of the Nork invasion…
I have utter contempt for so-called “historians” who point out the blemishes of democracies without pointing out their freedom to do so without fear of death or imprisonment.
Let them tell their tale of woe to the hundreds of millions killed by communist aggression around the world since 1917… Oh wait… They can’t… They’re all dead…
South Korea’s government, much like our own, is imperfect. But it’s unlikely that any of the fatuous posers are going to try defecting North…
The “innocents slaughtered” at Jeju and Gwangju were armed rebels.
Less than half of the people killed in Kwangju in 1980 were armed. The only people armed in this picture were the soldiers, who would, after the photo was taken, open up on the crowd with M16s. For some odd reason, people decided to arm themselves after that.
I love how a lot of emotion and a little knowledge will produce an expert. In ANY area of discussion.
That makes a shitload of Koreans experts #10.
Take for example the idiot who told me last week that American rice farms are own mostly by Chinese-Americans!
I said prove it and well, like most of the bullshit the locals spout off about here, he couldn’t. The look on his face was classic!!
Koreans just can’t accept the fact that they are the same as everyone else in the world. Most of them think they are morally and racially better than everyong else, so they blame others for what happens to them. The rest of the world knows better though.
This week I get around to posting a response to Hanley. After reading his article there is nothing new he is providing other than new photographs of people being executed. He is trying to make it out that the killing of civilians by the ROK government is some new revelation which is untrue.
South Korea has had books and even movies describing how the ROK government executed civilians they suspected of being communist sympathizers. Despite how well documented the killing of civilians is, Hanley, just like with his No Gun Ri reporting, is playing off the American public’s general ignorance of Korean War history to make this seem like something recently uncovered.
Joshua described him correctly as a professional atrocity mongerer and this is just another example.
#12: Let the games begin. I look forward to it.
I went over to the Puffington Host and it’s the usual ignorant lefty crap. One example:
“Is this the country that we defended???? And now we find out that they were capable of the same atrocities that the country we fought for them??? The older I get and the more I learn makes me not too proud of my country. Did we ever do anything right?????”
#9:
I’m not sure he meant the 1980 Kwangju incident.
They’re not leftists, they’re Japanese.
#14, yes, my bad… The people in Kwangju openly rebelled… They ought to have known that treason in time of war is dealt with harshly in every country…
Anf the war is still on, regardless of the minefields, the ceasefire, and the Swiss…
jtb: “I have utter contempt for so-called “historians” who point out the blemishes of democracies without pointing out their freedom to do so without fear of death or imprisonment.”
They have only enjoyed that luxury for the last 15 years or so. What came before that can’t fairly be called democracy.
“Is this the country that we defended???? And now we find out that they were capable of the same atrocities that the country we fought for them??? The older I get and the more I learn makes me not too proud of my country. Did we ever do anything right?????”
Funny, as one of the items on my list of things to research is to dig up how this war was pitched to the public by the Truman administration. I suspect it had more to do with the Domino Theory, and less to do with the freedom of south Koreans.