century Killing Your Own: Massacres During the Korean War

By Michael Breen

Korea Times Columnist

The admission in November last year by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a governmental body, that South Korea had murdered thousands of its own citizens in the opening weeks of the 1950-53 Korean War, marked a landmark moment in the painful journey to historical truth.

Through methodical excavation of burial sites, forensic examinations, and interviews with eyewitnesses, the commission verified 4,934 of what some researchers suspect may have been tens of thousands of unlawful executions without trial.

Although it has been 60 years since the horrific events, this first ever admission by a South Korean government did not rest easily.

Indeed, the commission, which was established when Kim Dae-jung was president, is viewed with suspicion by the present government, ruling party, and dominant media, which are more conservative on such matters and see leftist mischief rather than national truth and reconciliation in the commission's work.

In part, this reaction is fueled by ignorance. The war crimes by the Syngman Rhee government against its own citizenry are little known in Korea because they were covered up, and not only by the perpetrators.

The 1953 United States Army report on the massacre said it was the worst atrocity of the war and that the North Koreans were to blame. Stories and photographs by British reporters for the Picture Post, a news magazine, showing otherwise were spiked by its publisher.

The victims were mostly members of the National Guidance League, a body set up by the government in the pre-war years, when it was battling leftist partisans, to re-educate people who had given up their alleged support for communism.