Mike Breen doesn’t pull any punches in his discussion of the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recent verification of mass murders of converted leftists in the opening stages of the Korean War:
Through methodical excavation of burial sites, forensic examination and interviews with eyewitnesses, the Commission said it had verified 4,934 of what some researchers suspect may have been over 100,000 unlawful executions without trial on this side of the DMZ.
Add the killings during the left-right struggles on Jeju Island and elsewhere even before the start of the war and it becomes apparent that South Koreans were more brutalized in the early days of the republic by their own authorities than under the previous 36 years of Japanese rule.
Yet 60 years later, the suffering of the Japanese period is closer to the surface. The smallest wrong comment inflames nationalistic sentiment and seems to bring the memories flooding back. The more recent murder of Korea’s own, however, is forgotten.
That is a consequence of education.
Namely, the result of a “nationalist governments” teaching children to “point the finger of accusation for Korean suffering elsewhere,” namely, towards the Japanese, North Koreans and Americans.
Anyway, Mr. Breen argues that while the actions taken by the South Korean government in those dark times may be explained, the fact remains the massacres happened and were covered up, and that the country will be “ill at ease with itself” until it comes to terms with its history.
Anyway, read the piece on your own.
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First!
Not to mention Korean army’s terrifying reputation during the Vietnam War, where they were known to kill everyone including women and children…
I am still guardedly optimistic that Korea will eventually (emphasis on “eventually”) come around to acknowledging that history. Truth can remain hidden only for so long.
Interesting. I had never heard of this. Do you have a reference?
how do koreans know about these massacres? did mr breen inform them of such? further, is mr breen suggesting koreans need to focus on that instead of what the japanese did? rubbish. koreans can spit and chew gum at the same time. mr breen is an apologist for the japanese.
i’m sorry i ever bought his book.
Related aspect, of course, was the North Korean army routinely rounding up S Korean supporters and doing similar massacres on both sides of the 38th Parallel. During the heydays of the Sunshine Policy, the T&RC actually inquired if the DPRK would be willing to do joint investigations north of the DMZ. (No, I’m not making this stuff up…) Well, it came as less than a surprise that Pyongyang refused.
Since then, as Breen implies, there is more than a little shifting of blame to US troops who are occassion only witnessed, as opposed to intervene, with S Korean authorities were running amok. In those cases where the US military did nothing, the Americans are held accountable by many S Korean “leftists.” Go figure…
I would like to say that Americans intervened and prevented the massacres from happening 100% of the time, but they did not. Let’s face it. Back in 1951, most GIs had never seen an Asian until arriving in Busan – and the whole place seemed really exotic and weird to most of them. And, there was at least latent racism that allowed for the “gooks” to do whatever they do in their “own culture.” The US Army was never accused of ethical and cross cutural sophistication back in those days. And of course, the “better dead than Red” mentality was also a huge factor. But in many cases, on both sides of the DMZ, I have heard of GIs stopping S Korean solidiers killing, young male defenseless civilians of military age. Naturally, one rarely hears Koreans retelling those tales.
Links about atrocities by Korean army in Vietnam. (They are all in Korean. If you can’t read Korean, well, isn’t it about damn time you learned?)
Summary of atrocities, documented in investigative files of the U.S. army: Link
Stories of Vietnamese women who were raped by Korean army: Link
Story about a documentary that chronicled certain Korean civic groups trying to publicize the truth about atrocities in Vietnam: Link
Sorry for linking to Hani, Robert. I know how you feel about them. But you gotta admit — they are about the only newspaper in Korea that owns up to this stuff.
Pawi, I think everyone understands your message: Korea is perfect, any negative thing said about Korea is wrong. Anything neutral said about Korea, by non-Koreans, is also probably wrong. We all understand you feel this way, so why not save yourself some time and just stop?
You mean the only newspaper in Korea that owns up to this stuff when it can be used against the Korean Left’s contemporary domestic political enemies?
“Let’s face it. Back in 1951, most GIs had never seen an Asian until arriving in Busan – and the whole place seemed really exotic and weird to most of them.”
That’s not true. A good many troops fought in the Pacific during WWII, and were stationed in Japan.
Good point. But they own up to it nonetheless.
Ah yes…
Here in America, the Left accuses White people of killing all the Natives and stealing their land.
Response? The Natives were already doing that to each other before Whitey arrived.
Here in America, the Left accuses White people of enslaving Africans and bring them to the New World.
Response? Africans were already fighting each other and selling other Africans to slavetraders.
In Korea, the Left accuses Americans of the Korean suffering.
Response? Koreans were doing it to each other also!
Anyone notice a pattern here?
Tu quoque blame deflection of responsibility. Expats are very skilled at this. They’ve had plenty of practice back home.
An American’s interest in Truth & Reconciliation of massacres in Korea is motivated just as much by a certain political agenda as the Left, Right, Up, Down, or Sideways.
There is no such thing as Truth for Truth’s own sake…..Anywhere.
Of course, I do have my issues with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee:
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2007/11/24/more-on-the-truth-commission-and-wartime-compensation/
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2007/11/22/commission-recommends-us-pay-compensation-for-wartime-bombing/
I’m having a bit of hard time believing that a significant number of koreans aren’t aware at least to some degree about the vietnam atrocities. I mean, if a korean american like me knows something about it, they must too right?
i look into the efforts korea is making for the killing of its’ own just as sson as i look into the efforts america is making in the killing of a million iraqis. it’s funny, ain’t it? korea’s got to do all sorts of things that no-one else has to do? and why?
because the japanese are warm and fuzzy to westerners. not too long ago, a woman living in japan visited korea and made this remark when she discovered koreans burned down kyongbok when king sonjo fled:
‘finally, soemthing the koreans can’t blame the japanese for.’
tsk, tsk, tsk….
yeah, even a ‘fake’ korean like me knows about korea in vietnam.
Tu quoque indeed. Spoken like a true expat with extensive first-hand experience.
Yes–that you are patching a lot of shit together to illustrate some point or another. But to everyone else, it’s just a bunch of shit.
Other patterns: that you are a laughable, predictable ass when you post. And that you are sitting at home fighting the good fight with your keyboard instead of being out trying to get laid, which you drastically need.
No, he’s not. Read it again.
‘Yet 60 years later, the suffering of the Japanese period is closer to the surface. The smallest wrong comment inflames nationalistic sentiment and seems to bring the memories flooding back. The more recent murder of Korea’s own, however, is forgotten.’
perhaps you should read it again, darth. why does he bring up japan? he’s apologist for them.
you’re an apologist mr breen.
yeah, back at ya.
man, i need to proof my sh+t. sorry.
Right, just a few million who fought in the Pacific War in WW2. K-rist, what a moronic comment.
While Mr. Breen does make some good points, I’m curious if he’s actually looked at any Korean history books in the library or just looked at texts given to junior school texts; there are a number of texts that do cover this and it can’t really be “covered up” in the traditional sense when there are enough elderly that do remember these times.
Also recall reading an account of a Korean soldier who was in a unit that had to sniff out rats and enemy locations, of course torture was their one and only method.
The one positive thing about Korean literature in Asia is that, perhaps it may just be due to incompetence, but they don’t really do too much book burning/tossing even when they don’t wish for certain info to get out. Just hit a local library in Seoul and there are plenty of these kind of books one can comb through :/
No doubt white people should focus on their own crimes first, something which should keep them far too busy to start looking at other people’s; but the point of Breen’s article is that it is for Koreans to reflect on their own past for their own sakes.
The signs are that the process is underway and my impression is the facts about these atrocities are already widely known, which is all to the good.
I don’t know what school textbooks these days have to say about the period. Does anyone have info on that?
Reminds me of one internet conversation I read recently:
Person 1: Koreans cover up every negative things about their country, including all the killings they did in the Korean War.
Person 2: How do you know they cover up everything?
Person 1: Links here, and here, and here. (They’re all English language Korean newspaper articles written by Korean news reporters).
Civil war, atrocities, mowing down thousands of people who don’t agree with the prevailing system of thought. Shocking.
The last time I visited a Korean library in Seoul, which was around 2002-03, it was basically a bookless study hall for students schlepping inbetween unsuccessful attempts at the college entrace exam. But I guess that was more like a branch library. The other kind of library though, e.g., the National Library like the one in Gangnam, seemed to be most popular with sleepyhead salarymen playing hooky from work — although it doubled as a repository for government publications and obscure academic journals — but again, hardly any books. Which library are you talking about?
I find it interesting that Americans would be on the hook for complicity in Korean-on-Korean atrocities; that there is subtle racism in the “Hey, it’s their country, let the gooks do what they want to each.” I find it interesting because in response to recent expat criticism of a certain Korean hate-group, expats were told “Hey, it’s their country, let them have whatever hate groups they want.”
Gee, it’s almost as if foreigners are going to blamed no matter what they do . . .
Right, because mass murder is totally what AES is doing right now.
I don’t want to hijack this thread with AES-talk, but exactly where are foreigners supposed to draw the line between things that are just “Korea being Korea” and things that we have a moral obligation to intervene against?
I’d say murder is a pretty clear line, wouldn’t you agree?
So as long as nobody gets killed, I shouldn’t get involved? How about wife-beating? Or student-beating? Do I have to wait until it looks life-threatening?
I swear upon my life that I was typing below before I saw your response, because I just knew you were about to twist my words. This is what I wrote:
Or, more accurately — wherever the line is, murder is clearly on the “moral obligation to intervene” side. The question of in which side of the line AES falls is up for debate. The moral location – as it were – of murder has no bearing on that of AES.
I believe you. My response was pretty predictable, actually.
Also, you’re right. I owe you a Coke (but not a beer: I’m not necessarily wrong, just drawing a parallel that doesn’t support my case well).
Wow, an amicable resolution to a debate? I can hardly believe my eyes. I’ll take a diet Pepsi, please.
I’m out to enjoy the Friday night.
I can’t speak about textbooks as I am one of those despicable expats who has been in Korea for some time (nearly 2 years) and is struggling with the language.
Any Korean-speaker in Seoul looking for a language buddy?
But I can say that Korean modern literature (in translation) deals with intra-Korean strife (by which I mean murder, massacre and the lot) explicitly. Take a look at “Land of the Banished.”
I’m not sure what that means in the larger argument here, but I do think that focusing on textbooks (which contain the national lies of every nation within which they are published) is far too narrow.
Korea deals with its rather full plate of recent national trauma in many ways, and I’m not sure the discussion here includes a wide enough view?
It isn’t “love it or leave it” for the Pawi crowd, nor is it “hypocritical Koreans” or anything to do with the AES.
It’s an ongoing political discussion about what a nation has been and is trying to be..
Damn not this again–LISten it was civil war–do you guys get it? What happened during the American civil war? Where in the world did the phrase “brother versus brother and father versus son” come from? Eventually some of the stories will surface–but like most war atrocities–the books will come out later. And by the way–ty to the white liberal Brit for leaving out the Norks.
You can’t have it both ways. The Korean War was either a civil war and foreigners intervened when they weren’t wanted or it was an invasion of the South by the Soviet-and-Chinese-backed North and the UN forces saved the South.You can’t say you are glad the UN helped you but you don’t want foreigners asking questions about the war. It’s either foreigners out and juche forever or normalize things and start behaving like the rest of the world. If you want sympathy about the Japanese occupation, you have to deal with the messy isues of the Korean War too.
Sigh–this again–like the Emancipation Proclamation was about internal American politics? England did not help the South out? Like there were not 2000 or so military attaches from Europe to study the American civil war. The Union wanted to go after the Southern officers for war crimes, but Lincoln said no–straight out. So was Lincoln the wise and thoughtful president or was a suppressor of truth? You really can’t have it both ways, lol.
Double sigh.
see how clearly you can see when you ain’t no ET?
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-korea5-2009dec05,0,3511473.story
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