The Korean War

The Korean War

The Korean War

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In 1999, the Associated Press (AP) revealed the existence of startling documents about the Korean War showing that United States troops had killed hundreds of civilian refugees in the early stages of the Korean War at No Gun Ri, a small town in South Korea. However, this news was neither `̀ new” nor astonishing to the Korean survivors of the mass killings who had long pleaded with the Korean government to investigate the truth and to settle their painful grievances. For the survivors, this `̀ revelation” merely con®rmed a widely known story to which Westerners had until now paid little heed. The AP’s report forced the US government for the ®rst time to inquire into the alleged mass killings committed by US forces during the Korean War. After a one-year joint investigation by US and South Korean of®cials on the No Gun Ri incident, a report acknowledging that American soldiers did shoot unarmed Korean civilians in July 1950 was released. Asked about the circumstances under which the US soldiers shot the civilians at No Gun Ri, however, the Pentagon said it found `̀ no information that the First Cavalry Division was in that area.”1 Later, the US government of®cially ascribed the shooting only to the `̀ confusion of combat,” denying the existence of written orders directing the American soldiers to engage in the shooting of civilians at No Gun Ri.2 Though President Clinton expressed regret in January 2000 for the death of the Korean refugees shot by American soldiers, no further investigations were made.

The No Gun Ri incident, however, may be the tip of the iceberg in regards to the matter of mass killings committed by US and South Korean troops during the Korean War. More than sixty cases of mass killing committed by US troops, by shooting, bombing, stra®ng or other means, have already been revealed in the aftermath of the news of No Gun Ri incident.3 However, what may be more unknown are the mass killings committed by Koreans against other Koreans in the early days of the war. Under the aegis of removing `̀ traitors,” whose threat

Journal of Genocide Research (2004), 6(4), December, 523±544

ISSN 1462-3528 print: ISSN 1469-9494 online/04/040523-23 ã 2004 Research Network in Genocide Studies DOI: 10.1080/1462352042000320592

imperiled the very survival of the state, the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) Rhee Syngman government ordered the execution of hundreds of thousands potential collaborators. Even though these stories have been of®cially left untold to this day, both the US troops’ indiscriminate shooting of Korean civilian refugees and the illegal executions by Rhee’s government have been `̀ open secrets” among at least some Koreans since the end of the Korean War.

The Korean War may be one of the bloodiest wars of modern history; it resulted in several million deaths and several times that number of wounded and maimed. Despite such violent ®ghting and enormous casualties, the Korean War, and especially the aspect of mass killings, has remained a `̀ forgotten war,” not only to Westerners but also to many Koreans themselves. From the end of World War II to the present, almost no war has had so little attention paid to it by the world public as a whole. Due to its characterization by American political leaders as `̀ an anti- communist crusade,” `̀ police action” and `̀ war between good and evil,” the bloody stories have been squelched during the last ®fty year’s Cold War period. As McCarthyism and the Korean War occurred at the same moment in time and played off against each other in a mutually reinforcing manner,4 North Korea’s `̀ illegitimate” invasion” fostered a war time anticommunism that served to justify any methods that the US and South Korean army employed to oppose it. This is why existing books or articles dealing with massacres or genocides have never included the cases of the Korean War. Except for a few Western scholars who dared to mention the misconduct of American soldiers and the brutality of the ROK army, only a small number of scholars or reporters have ever raised the issue of `̀ criminal” actions of the US and ROK army.5

Though thorough and comprehensive investigations on the Korean War massacres have not yet been conducted, existing records or testimonies of the survivors of the mass killings can demonstrate what the `̀ forgotten war” was really about, because the manner in which a war was conducted may, in some sense, be more crucial to comprehending the nature of that war than the matter of who ®red ®rst. Moreover, the revelation of hidden stories of mass killings during the Korean War may help conclusively demonstrate the character of the US’s anticommunist military interventions in the Third World and clarify what the US really did in attempting to `̀ make the world free.” The genocides or massacres are often committed simultaneously or in parallel with state-organized modern war. But it would be dif®cult to put the line between the `̀ licensed killing” and `̀ unjust killings” during a war. Especially in cases where warfare extended to cover an entire country, distinctions between soldiers and civilians may be blurred and war would bring mass deaths.6 Theoretically or legally, it would be dif®cult to justify a war having massacre as a main component, a highly politicized war like the Korean War may be a typical case. For this reason, reviewing the mass killings during the Korean War would be instructive for clarifying the existing concept of massacre and the comparative study about the wartime mass killings or political massacres (policide) during conventional war or warlike situations.7

Unfortunately, most of the records of the Korean War atrocities, if any exist, have either been lost or deliberately destroyed over the course of the long Cold

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War, just as those of other cases have been. Moreover, the majority of Korean War documents have not yet been released. Most victims and eyewitnesses to the massacres have already died. In spite of these dif®culties, I will attempt to reconstruct the untold story of the Korean War massacres by using recently disclosed materials about it and testimonies of Korean survivors. Even though most of the nightmarish stories have not yet reached Westerners, South Koreans, many of whom have been forced to keep silent for more than half century, are now raising their voices about their traumatic experiences.

The political character of the Korean WarÐcontextual considerations

The Korean War both as internal con¯ict and international war

Since the Korean peninsula still remains divided and the two Koreas stand antagonistic to one another, the Korean War may be seen as an ongoing situation rather than as a past incident. This ongoing antagonism may be the primary obstacle for the two Koreas to overcome in reaching a common ground in their historical characterizations of the Korean War. Among the opposing viewpoints that have hindered dialogue between the two Koreas, one of the abiding questions of foremost importance is `̀ who initiated the war and who is responsible for the tragedy and the sufferings caused by the war?” Traditionalists or neo-tradition- alists among US historians have generally maintained that North Korea, under Stalin’s sponsorship, attacked the South ®rst. In particular, new information from post-Soviet Russia bolstered the theory of Moscow-centered conspiracies as the catalyst for North Korea’s invasion of the South. As these viewpoints have been regarded as heavily imbued with a Cold War worldview, they intended tacitly to both demand that the communist bloc assume responsibility for every tragedy caused by the Korean War and also to justify American involvement in a `̀ just war.” On the other hand, Western revisionist scholars focused on American responsibility and the internal origin of the Korean War.8 Among them, John Merill and Bruce Cumings were the ®rst to focus on the political character of the Korean War, uncovering documents attesting to atrocities that occurred both before and during the war.

As it is said that the Korean War originated from the combination of the external clash of American and Soviet policy towards East-Asia and the internal con¯icts in the Korean peninsula, it is undeniable that America’s foreign policy after World War II played a decisive role in shaping the regional politics of East-Asia. On the Korean peninsula, the question of who would disarm the Japanese imperial troops was a pivotal issue that was connected to the future of an independent Korea after the collapse of Japanese imperialism. Thus, the US and Soviet Union’s separate disarming of the Japanese troops according to their position above or below the 38th parallel was the de facto beginning of the Korean War. In this respect, the Korean War might be interpreted as the logical extension of US and Soviet occupation policy. Had US and Soviet troops not entered the Korean peninsula and

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not picked preferential leaders, the post-colonial civil con¯ict over nation-building might not have developed into a full-scale war.

Particularly, the fact that the US military government favored the restoration of Japanese-trained military leaders and police instead of their removal ignited the political con¯ict in Korea after 1945. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 had inaugurated the US postwar policy that juxtaposed the `̀ free world” against the `̀ communist world.” His decision to aid Greece, Turkey, and later Western Europe expressed his `̀ containment” policy against world communism. In East- Asia, this policy expressed itself in a naked counter-insurgency policy and the revival of Japanese capitalism as a `̀ democratic basis” for containing the Soviet threat and Chinese communist `̀ rebels.” As Johnson mentioned, South Korea was the ®rst place in the postwar world where the Americans set up a dictatorial anticommunist government.9 Like the Vietnam War, the Korean War was a result of US containment policy, even though it was ignited by the North Korean invasion. This background explains why the Korean War, though initially a sort of civil war, eventually developed into a war between the two blocs.

From another perspective however, North Korea’s invasion in June 1950 may be regarded as a ®nal event in the sequence of post-colonial internal con¯ict towards the uni®cation of Korea. With the withdrawal of American troops from 1948 to the summer of 1949, violent political con¯ict in southern Korea had already intensi®ed into a bloody civil war such that it was only a matter of time before that civil war would lead to a full-scale war between South and North Korea.10 As the leaders of both halves of the Korean peninsula were desperate to unite the country before 1950, the withdrawal of US forces ignited the fever of uni®cation by any means. Considering the international and ideological context of the Korean War, it was highly probable that the war would bring massive civilian casualties. According to this reasoning, the Korean War was, ®rst of all, supposed to be the continuation of ®erce political con¯ict over nation building. The situation that Koreans faced after 1945 was a combination of war and revolution. It should be pointed out that the 38th parallel was more an imaginary line than a hard and fast border between states. The fact that in the South more than 100,000 Koreans were already killed from August 1945 to the outbreak of the war of June 1950 and that about 20,000 suspected communist were in jail can support this argument.11

When the total war began, there had never before been a major war like the Korean War, in which battle lines were so unstable and warfare swept south and north several times within a national territory. The Korean War was doomed to be guerilla warfare, waged among and, to some extent, by the entire population of Korea. Such a war invariably led to what John Horne called `̀ an enormous number of civilian victims.”12

As has been often discussed, the fact that Truman decided to dispatch US troops against the North Korean attack seemed to be a drastic switch from their ambiguous position before June 1950 regarding the defense of South Korea. The discourse of `̀ police action,” which Truman dubbed at the time of dispatching the US army to strike back against North Korea’s invasion,13 well conveys the rationale of US intervention in the Korean War. This rationale was also used to

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preemptively legitimize the possible civilian casualties that were sure to come. The US fought under the justi®cation that they went to Korea on a kind of anticommunist `̀ crusade,” characterizing the North Koreans as `̀ subversives, bandits, and rebels,” whose defeat in war would serve to stop the aggressive designs of Soviet `̀ imperialism.” Their intervention, executed under UN auspices, was authorized as the `̀ United command under the United States” by the UN Security Council to defend South Korea. The ROK also yielded its troops to the US controlled command. Thus, General Macarthur became Commander-in-chief of all land, sea and air forces of the Korean Republic. On June 25, 1950, American troops took charge of not only military operations but of all Korean security affairs.

The intervention of US threatened the survival of the new born Chinese communist government. After US troops reached the 39th parallel of the Korean peninsula, China also reacted, with massive force. In January 1951, the war became a Sino-US war and its nature was transformed. The armistice agreement of July 27, 1953, was ®nally signed by General Mark Clark, the UN commander; Kim Il Sung of the Korean People’s Army; and General Peng Dehuai, commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers. Since then, the US military has controlled the ROK army, leaving a lingering legacy in the minds of many that when the Korean people’s destiny fell on the military command of foreign forces, the ROK government could do nothing to safeguard their people. Lacking any security, they were destined to be victims of that hot war in the midst of the Cold War.

For the US commanders, the Korean War was a fundamentally different kind of warfare than the battles of World War II in Europe. The Korean War may stand as the ®rst test case for US troops found suddenly engaged in a Third World civil war without fully understanding its historical background. As the US government taught their soldiers that those who attacked them were all `̀ communists,” any Korean civilians who did not welcome them might be suspected as enemies, foreshadowing the later case of My Lai in Vietnam. To South Korean political leaders who had been entirely dependent on American military and economic assistance to preserve their precarious regime, North Korea’s invasion was a deadly crisis, because US had pulled its troops out of South Korea in 1949 irresponsibly without any ®rm promise to protect them in case of emergency. This life and death situation that South Korean leaders faced upon the communists’ invasion at the beginning of the Korean War may have forced them to resort to extreme measures of exterminating internal enemies who had been believed to rebel them in cooperation with the North Korean troops. In this way, both the international context and internal politics at the beginning of the Korean War created the dangerous conditions that made massive killings a sadly unavoidable probability.

Counter-revolutionary mass killings preceding the Korean War

Genocides or massacres in underdeveloped countries are an all too frequent by- product of the nation-building projects in which revolutionary fever and counter-

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revolutionary violence coexisted in a post-colonial power vacuum. Between 1947 and 1950 the southern part of the Korean peninsula was shaken by violent political con¯ict as the ex-Japanese collaborators, with the assistance of US forces, tried to defend their vested interests against the nationalists and the communists by any means. The Korean peninsula at that time was positioned in a situation similar to that of Greece.14 It was not only communists, but also those nationalists who fought against imperialism or fascism who were labeled as `̀ communists” and forced to go underground to wage guerilla warfare. Contrarily, ex-collaborators of the Japanese were revived and given positions of authority as proxies of America’s anti-communist world policy. Through this anticommunist military campaign in the early stage of the Cold war, many `̀ pure” nationalists were convicted as `̀ puppets” of the Soviet Union and eventually removed by extreme rightists. As in the cases of Taiwan and Greece,15 the coming to power of the rightists resulted in a `̀ white terror” followed by widespread repression, torture and massacres. We can view the series of Korean War massacres that happened from 1946 to 1953 in this context.

The Cheju Insurrection and Yosu-SunCheon Rebellion in 1948 in southern Korea may have been a turning point where political con¯ict developed into a civil war with accompanying massacres. When left-wing activists ¯ed to Halla Mountain in Cheju, the ROK army, under the consultation of the KMAG (Korean Military Advisory Group), burned villages and killed civilians who were suspected of collaborating with the communist guerillas. Even though the estimated guerrilla force in Cheju Island was less than 500, the number of civilians killed through the rooting out operations of the ROK army and Korean police was estimated to be more than 30,000.16 Similar massacres continued around Yosu, where a band of left-wing soldiers openly refused to serve the counterinsurgency mission for subduing the Cheju Insurrection. This unorganized rebellion of the ROK army’s Fourteenth Regiment in Yosu was soon suppressed under the direction of the KMAG, but the operation was also accompanied by widespread violence by rightists against innocent civilians, as was the case in Cheju.

Given that the South Korean armed forces were trained by the KMAG and that their equipment was completely dependent on the US, `̀ the withdrawal of US troops in June of 1949 threatened the very survival of the US-supported ROK.”17

When US troops withdrew from South Korea, leaving only a handful of KMAG soldiers, a civil war seemed highly probable. This situation made the President of South Korea take recourse in `̀ extreme measures,” namely `̀ exterminating” guerillas and political dissidents.18 From the winter of 1948 to June of 1950, massive `̀ rooting out” operations were waged against rebels in the mountainous areas of South Korea. When even the guerrillas attacked a police station or killed rightist ®gures in a village, combined forces of both police and troops would partake in reprisals twice or three times as severe against residents who were believed to have served the guerillas.

Rhee’s Korea has often been viewed as a reactionary police state, bolstered by vicious police and landlords, because its maintenance depended exclusively on the brutality of the police. When some of their members were killed by a surprise

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attack by guerrillas, corrupt police and untrained soldiers often sought revenge on innocent civilians living in isolated areas, reporting to the top command that they succeeded in cleansing the base of `̀ communists.” South Korea’s President Rhee also dehumanized `̀ communists” as the enemy of human society. He used the discourse of `̀ exterminating the traitors,” `̀ rooting out the Reds,” and `̀ removing the Soviet puppet,” legitimizing the secret killing of left-wing activists. The vengeful reprisals of Rhee’s police and soldiers on those who cooperated with guerilla force were relentless. While the guerrilla force was rendered nearly inactive through effective military operations by ROK troops, North Korea’s invasion on June 25, 1950, constituted another opportunity when the weakened guerrilla forces could revitalize their troops and, at the same time, restarted the unrestricted massacres against the internal enemies on a national level.

We can categorize the mass killings that happened during the entire war period (from the June 25 of 1950 to the July 27 of 1953) into three types. The ®rst type contains those cases committed in direct confrontation with military forces in the course of military operations. US troops shot, bombed, and bombarded Korean civilians as a part of their combat activity. ROK troops also killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in villages that were suspected of serving the North Korean force. The second type would be the ROK’s executions of `̀ suspicious civilians” or political prisoners who were expected to rebel or threaten the ROK government. Though most of the victims were `̀ suspected communists” living in South Korea, North Korea also killed many POWs and rightists when they retreated toward the North. The third type is comprised of state-sponsored political or personal reprisals committed by irregular youth groups and civilians themselves. Oftentimes, when a family member was killed in a village by a band of youths under the authority of the occupying force, the victim group would avenged itself by killing all family members of their foe when the attackers eventually retreated. This sort of village-level mutual revenge occurred at every corner of the Korean peninsula during the war. These three types of mass killings occurred almost simultaneously, but in different places and different occasions, primarily in the early stages of the Korean War.

Mass killings during the Korean WarÐWho killed whom, and under what context?

Military operations

US forces. Under the aegis of `̀ maintaining and restoring international peace,” the US decided to mobilize their soldiers onto the Korean peninsula when North Korea’s armed forces attacked South Korea. The US Eighth Army soldiers who stumbled into action in Korea at the beginning of July 1950 to repel the `̀ communists” were an ill-prepared lot, pulled away from their job of occupying Japan. The US soldiers were composed of `̀ boys in their teens and early twenties who couldn’t understand the nature and immense complexities of the problems in Asia.”19 Nobody taught them that the Korean peninsula had

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been in turmoil before the war; they were only told that the Soviet Union was behind North Korea’s attack.

To further complicate matters, the North’s surprise attack generated a severe refugee problem, clogging roads with civilians surging to the south. Fearing North Korean in®ltration of these ranks of refugees, US leadership and soldiers as well panicked. Under these circumstances, the US Eighth Army, the highest command in Korea, issued unreasonable orders to stop all Korean civilian refugees and `̀ ®re at everyone trying to cross the lines.” The panic and ill-preparedness of the US commanders might be partly responsible for the savagery that followedÐblotting out whole villages and shooting randomly into crowds of refugees, among whom North Koreans were suspected to be hiding. In 1999, the AP and BBC discovered `̀ top secret” papers showing that US commanders issued orders to forces under their control to `̀ [k]ill them all.”20 The No Gun Ri incident, which might mark one of the largest single massacres of civilians by American forces in the twentieth century, occurred under this condition of confusion and panic of the early days of the war.

After killing civilians at No Gun Ri, US soldiers went on to demolish two bridges in North KyungSang province, Ouguan bridge and Dugsung bridge, that were jammed with refugees, including women and children. Directives ordering US soldiers to treat the refugees `̀ enemies” might enable such indiscriminate shooting and bombing by American soldiers. Though it is understandable that these inexperienced soldiers could hardly distinguish their enemies from ordinary citizens, we have no records indicating that disguised North Korean columns attacked US soldiers. In the end, it is clear that the great uncertainty of the combat situation and the extreme fears of the soldiers who felt they were surrounded by an enemy disguised as civilians helped push American soldiers to commit unrestrained killings.21 However, neither panic nor the confusion of US commanders can explain the continued killings of Korean civilians.

For example, on 11 July 1950, the US Air Force bombed the peaceful Iri railway station located far south of the combat line and killed about 300 civilians, including South Korean government of®cials. US warplanes also bombed and strafed gathered inhabitants or refugees in Masan, Haman, Sachon, Pohang, Andong, Yechon, Gumi, Danyang and other regions. Roughly 50 to 400 civilians were killed at each site and several times of that number were severely wounded. In dozens of villages across southern South Korea, US planes engaged in repeated low-level stra®ng runs of the `̀ people-in white,”22 In the southeast seaside city of Pohang in August of 1950, US naval artillery bombarded the calm villages and killed more than 400 civilians. In addition, another ®fty-four separate cases of attacks equivalent to No Gun Ri are logged with South Korean authorities but have not yet been investigated.23

It has been known that `̀ saturation bombing” by American air forces and naval bombardment destroyed some North Korean cities like Wonsan and Pyangang, leaving them almost completely in rubble with no more than a few buildings standing. As British journalist Reginald Thompson testi®ed, civilians died in the rubble and ashes of their homes. Alan Winnington, a correspondent for the British

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Daily Worker, when he saw how thousands of tons of bombs had obliterated towns and resulted in thousands of civilian casualties testi®ed that `̀ it was far worse than the worst the Nazis ever did.”24 According to the witnesses, US air and ground forces shot at children, women, and aged people who were easily distinguishable as unarmed civilians. North Korean authorities have long accused American troops of `̀ criminal acts” before and after the outbreak of the Korean War.25 They maintained that the US army killed more than a million innocent civilians by bombing, shooting, and the use of napalm or chemical weapons.26 While it must be acknowledged that the North has politically exploited such claims, the facts on the ground force us to not discount their veracity. For example, though the No Gun Ri incident was reported to the world through the AP’s report in 1999, this incident was ®rst reported by North Korean newspapers and of®cially used as good materials for propaganda with other numerable cases.27 In every aspect of the warÐAmerica’s use of napalm, indiscriminate bombing, and the shooting of `̀ voiceless” civilians of the Third World, the Korean War preceded the Indochina War in many tragic ways.

Another factor that may have precipitated these mass killings by American troops may be related to the combination of deep racial prejudices of US soldiers on one hand and the relative isolation of the incidents on the other. With total ignorance of Asia, young soldiers regarded Koreans (and Chinese) as `̀ people without history.” They usually called Koreans `̀ gooks,” a term used during World War II for Paci®c Islanders.28 The fact that many Korean women in the villages were often raped in front of their husbands and parents has not been a secret among those who experienced the Korean War.29 It was known that several women were raped before being shot at No Gun Ri. Some eyewitnesses say that US soldiers played with their lives like boys sadistically playing with ¯ies.30 On the other hand, the `̀ total isolation” of the Korean situation from the Western public; McCarthyism also emboldened US commanders to issue indiscriminate com- mands which would invariably bring mass death upon innocent citizens. With McCarthyism at its peak, US authorities tightly controlled the Western media and nobody could raise doubts as to the legitimacy of the US’s military intervention or the US’s responsibility for civilian deaths. Unlike other cases of genocide before and after the Korean War, it was not just international indifference but the US’s unilateral power in the midst of the Cold War that constituted a condition in which mass killings were both probable and politically defendable.

The mass killings in¯icted by US military operations under the ¯ag of the UN may not have been intentional or designed, but they were also far from accidental or inevitable. Despite the Pentagon’s denial that no orders were issued to shoot refugees, the oral testimony given by the veterans at No Gun Ri support the existence of orders to treat the refugees as enemy. Finally, the fact that US troops were put into a civil war in the name of a `̀ police action” created the potential for unleashing mass killings against `̀ noncombatants.” By any standard, these indiscriminate bombings, stra®ngs, and shooting of defenseless civilians may be ranked as massacres at least, or possibly even genocidal at worst. There is some controversy whether relentless shooting and bombing during warfare could be

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labeled as a kind of genocide. As we usually label genocide when the shooting and stra®ng were aimed at a certain race or community with clear cut boundaries and characteristics, America’s military actions towards Korean civilians may not be regarded as a genocidal incident.31 Of critical importance, however, is the fact that the US soldiers killed civilian refugees lacking even a modicum of self-defense, including women and children, even when no North Korean soldiers or grass-root guerilla forces threatened them. If we understand the massacre as denoting an organized, state fostered, form of destructive action against the defenseless civilians,32 the existence of the orders at No Gun Ri and other places and the defenselessness of the victims can support this argument.33