Choe Sang-hun reports that the clock’s a’tickin’ on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which will likely end when its current mandate expires next year:
On a heavily forested hilltop behind this village, investigators are excavating the long-buried history of the South Korean men, women and children who cowered in a trench as their own country’s troops mowed them down during the Korean War.
It is a race against time. The investigators, from the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, are tapping into the memories of a dwindling number of survivors as they pursue their mission of examining some of modern Korea’s most traumatic moments. They also face the possibility that their mandate, which expires next year, could be ended or drastically curtailed under the conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak.
What they are finding as they dig up the remains at Kwangamri, 175 miles south of Seoul, is physical evidence that backs up once suppressed stories of atrocities during the 1950-53 war.
Read the rest on your own.
(HT to reader)
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Over the years, I have had ambivalent feelings about S Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For example, the Commission seemed at times pursuing a politically, antiestablishment hidden agenda by the last government’s appointees.
On the other hand, there is a legitimate cause to uncover as much of history as possible to restore the names of falsely accused victims. In any event, I have come to recognize that the Commission members do have a sense of justice to go after the massacres’ perpetrators, regardless of their own or the perpetrators’ political motivations.
To make this all the more complicated, there are surviving families wishing to get sudden money from the government, and there are also other surviving families desiring that government busy-bodies to mind their own business so they can let the whole sorrowful affairs and incriminations fade into the past.
Commission members have told me on top of that, there are also families who remain reluctant to come forward to government employees, since something similar to the Commission was established to make redresses in the early 60’s, only to be suddenly reversed when Park Chung-hee seized power, making matters worse for those families who did come forward.
Finally, unlike other truth and reconciliation commissions in other countries dealing with recent events, Korea’s commission is largely investigating events almost two generations ago. Yet, should Korea’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission be decommissioned next March, and possibly as early as this November, it will leave a large amount of records behind as a legacy that scholars, journalists and others may one day shift through. And even that mountain of evidence covers only a small percentage of what happened.
And even by then, the Commission hardly will have had the time to instigate political redresses and reinstatements on behalf of the 1980’s democracy advocates who still carry a stigma for their actions in contemporary society, whereas the stigma associated with the so-called reds’ survivors and their families has pretty much dissipated the past six decades.
In any event, it is virtually impossible to deal with this area of concerns in a purely apolitical manner, no matter the motivation. It is all too explosive. And for right or wrong, that is probably why the Commission is facing a short shelf life.
“I have come to recognize that the Commission members do have a sense of justice to go after the massacres’ perpetrators, ”
What if they were accusing US troops instead?
Have I missed something in the past two years. The linked article claims that the pentagon has “acknowledged” the deaths at Nogunri. I am under the impression that there were serious falws in those claims.
In addition to Tom’s comments, I’d add that the Commission’s work to date has been relatively — and commendably — free of attempts to overly politicize what should be an honest examination of the events of a generation ago. Some politicization is inevitable, and in fact most of the effort to politicize the Commission’s work has come from Korea’s Right wing, which is very conservative indeed. But by most objective accounts, Prof. Ahn has brought a high level of integrity to his shepparding of the Commission’s work, and its mandate should be renewed for another two year term.
And whatever one thinks of Minbyun, the Commission itself is made up of a very respectable roster of professors and lawyers, including Park Sang-hoon of the Hwawoo law firm. The last time I checked, respect for the rule of law was still a conservative value that is supposed to trump political expediency. President Lee should give the families of those killed — both Leftists and Rightists — the opportunity to give their family members proper burials.
DLB
lirelou– indeed there does exist some contraversy over the issue at No Gun Ri, I have read two books on the issue, each written from the “other’s” point of view. Nonetheless, Clinton, during his presidency, did apologize for the incident. And from what I have been able to patch together, one could lay blame on both sides.
A great write up on the Nogun-ri controversy:
http://rokdrop.com/2009/07/27/the-no-gun-ri-document-shell-game/
Did it really happen?
While we can all agree that there were atrocities and mass executions on both sides, the Nogun-ri thing seems to have been a way of diverting everyone to focus on the ‘evil’ US soldiers and what awful things they did to innocent Koreans.
In my opinion, Nogun-ri was an attempt (and a successful one) at diverting people from thinking about the Korean on Korean atrocities and focus solely on pointing the finger at American troops for atrocities.
While there are no angels in war, this sort of crap eroded the legitimacy and need for the T & R Commission. If they are disbanded, then I feel it’s because they did get too embroiled in politics.
Here’s a BBC World Service programme on the same issue:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00447rc/Outlook_07_09_2009/
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