AP: U.S. Allowed Korean Massacre In 1950
Declassified Files Show Thousands Of Political Prisoners Were Executed By S. Korea, With U.S. Approval
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This U.S. Army photograph, once classified "top secret,'' is one of a series depicting the summary execution of 1,800 South Korean political prisoners by the South Korean military at Taejon, South Korea, over three days in July 1950. Historians and survivors claim South Korean troops executed many civilians behind frontlines as U.N. forces retreated before the North Korean army in mid-1950, on suspicion that they were communist sympathizers and might collaborate with the advancing enemy. (AP/National Archives/U.S. Army)
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In this undated photo, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Rollins S. Emmerich (left), here conferring with a Navy officer early in the Korean War, at first discouraged and then approved a South Korean colonel's conditional plan to shoot political prisoners. (AP/National Archives/U.S. Navy)
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The Emmerich narrative is seen at the National Archives in College Park, Md. on Thursday, June 19, 2008. In this once-classified narrative on the early days of the Korean War, written for U.S. Army historians in 1953, a senior U.S. adviser to the South Korean army reported he had conditionally approved a South Korean plan to kill 3,500 political prisoners. This episode, reported by Lt. Col. Rollins S. Emmerich, was not included in the Army's official history. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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In this photograph taken by the U.S. Army in April 1951, South Korean troops shoot political prisoners near Daegu, South Korea. The South Korean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating such mass political executions during the Korean War, and the U.S. military's connection with them. (AP/National Archives/U.S. Army)
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Interactive The Korean War The Korean War erupted on June 25, 1950, and for half a year the rapid thrusts of combat raged up and down the peninsula. The fighting settled into 2 1/2 years of trench warfare before a truce was signed, creating the two Korean nations.
He wrote that his witnesses claimed jeeploads of American officers "supervised the butchery." Secret CIA and Army intelligence communications reported on the Daejeon and Suwon killings as early as July 3, but said nothing about the U.S. presence or about any U.S. oversight.
In mid-August, MacArthur, in Tokyo, learned of the mass shooting of 200 to 300 people near Daegu, including women and a 12- or 13-year-old girl. A top-secret Army report from Korea, uncovered by AP research, told of the "extreme cruelty" of the South Korean military policemen. The bodies fell into a ravine, where hours later some "were still alive and moaning," wrote a U.S. military policeman who happened on the scene.
Although MacArthur had command of South Korean forces from early in the war, he took no action on this report, other than to refer it to John J. Muccio, U.S. ambassador in South Korea. Muccio later wrote that he urged South Korean officials to stage executions humanely and only after due process of law.
The AP found that during this same period, on Aug. 15, Brig. Gen. Francis W. Farrell, chief U.S. military adviser to the South Koreans, recommended the U.S. command investigate the executions. There was no sign such an inquiry was conducted. A month later, the Daejeon execution photos were sent to the Pentagon in Washington, with a U.S. colonel's report that the South Koreans had killed "thousands" of political prisoners.
The declassified record shows an equivocal U.S. attitude continuing into the fall, when Seoul was retaken and South Korean forces began shooting residents who collaborated with the northern occupiers.
When Washington's British allies protested, Dean Rusk, assistant secretary of state, told them U.S. commanders were doing "everything they can to curb such atrocities," according to a Rusk memo of Oct. 28, 1950.
But on Dec. 19, W.J. Sebald, State Department liaison to MacArthur, cabled Secretary of State Dean Acheson to say MacArthur's command viewed the killings as a South Korean "internal matter" and had "refrained from taking any action."
It was the British who took action, according to news reports at the time. On Dec. 7, in occupied North Korea, British officers saved 21 civilians lined up to be shot, by threatening to shoot the South Korean officer responsible. Later that month, British troops seized "Execution Hill," outside Seoul, to block further mass killings there.
To quiet the protests, the South Koreans barred journalists from execution sites and the State Department told diplomats to avoid commenting on atrocity reports. Earlier, the U.S. Embassy in London had denounced as "fabrication" Winnington's Daily Worker reporting on the Daejeon slaughter. The Army eventually blamed all the thousands of Daejeon deaths on the North Koreans, who in fact had carried out executions of rightists there and elsewhere.
An American historian of the Korean War, the University of Chicago's Bruce Cumings, sees a share of U.S. guilt in what happened in 1950.
"After the fact - with thousands murdered - the U.S. not only did nothing, but covered up the Daejeon massacres," he said.
Another Korean War scholar, Allan R. Millett, an emeritus Ohio State professor, is doubtful. "I'm not sure there's enough evidence to pin culpability on these guys," he said, referring to the advisers and other Americans.
The swiftness and nationwide nature of the 1950 roundups and mass killings point to orders from the top, President Rhee and his security chiefs, Korean historians say. Those officials are long dead, and Korean documentary evidence is scarce.
To piece together a fuller story, investigators of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission will sift through tens of thousands of pages of declassified U.S. documents.
The commission's mandate extends to at least 2010, and its president, historian Ahn Byung-ook, expects to turn then to Washington for help in finding the truth.
"Our plan is that when we complete our investigation of cases involving the U.S. Army, we'll make an overall recommendation, a request to the U.S. government to conduct an overall investigation," he said.
Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.
© MMVIII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 34 CommentsIn 1973, the Nixon administration thru the CIA tolerated the Chilean military junta tortured, kidnapped & killed political prisoners.
In the 60s thru 70s different US administrations turned a blind eye when the CIA trained SAVAK(the Shah domestic intelligence) tortured & killed various political oppositions in Iran.
In the 70s, the US Embassy in Saigon in concert with the CIA station chief ran the "Tiger camps" a French built penal colony off the coast of S. Vietnam, a location infamous for torturing college students, Buddist monks & NLF fighters.
LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN & THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the [war] with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match...%u201D John F Kennedy, 1961.
"Anyone who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither". Ben Franklin (paraphrased)
"I would rather die with the constitution clinched in my fist, then live with shackles on my feet" Greywolf
Posted by didnt_inhale
No, the GC should apply to everyone. But the excuse "well, the enemy does it" is a bull s h i t excuse your seven year old might say when caught doing something wrong. As America, we are strong and powerful and never need to lower ourselves by acting dishonorably. Except for a few rare instances, we have done the right way for 200 years, even when the enemy hasn''t, and we have survived just fine.
Posted by nsSherlock1
If the fact that it occurred fifty years ago means it''s no longer important, then why do people make such a fuss about Hitler''s antics twenty years earlier??
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Posted by washrealtor at 05:38 PM : Jul 05, 2008
Is Iraq a police action?
After all we arrested Saddam...
Posted by washrealtor at 05:38 PM : Jul 05, 2008
It''s true as history shows that war can at times be inevitible as people fight for their freedom and yes, tragic loss of life occurs. But our current war, the war for oil profits invented by George (962 time liar and mass murderer) Bush, doesn''t qualify as either necessary nor inevitible.
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