A bloody business: Koreans in Vietnam

By Andrew Salmon

It has been painted as the first misstep by newly minted President Moon Jae-in. On Memorial Day, he praised Korean Vietnam War veterans for their service, noting that their sacrifices had earned generous payments from ally the United States. Those U.S. dollars granted Korea much of the seed capital required for its “economic miracle.”

owever, Koreans were not the only people monitoring Moon. The Vietnamese government took exception to his comments, which did not mention the sufferings of the Vietnamese people. A portion of those sufferings were brutalities inflicted on them by Korean troops ― including massacres of civilians.

Was Moon right to thank the veterans? Yes. Should he also apologize to Vietnam? Yes. Would the two statements be contradictory? Not necessarily.

The Korean troops deployed to Vietnam between 1965-1973 were considered highly effective by their U.S. allies; a British observer admiringly dubbed them “The Prussians of Asia.“ But much of the Vietnam fighting was against insurgents ― and counterinsurgency is a damnable business.

When the line between civilian and combatant is blurred, as it commonly is during guerilla conflicts, the risks of civilians becoming victims ― of “collateral damage” during engagements when insurgents, attired as civilians, are fighting among civilians, or of full-on massacres at the hands of enraged troops ― soar.

It is not widely known that counterinsurgent measures initiated the cruelest slaughter in modern history, the Holocaust. As German forces advanced into the USSR after June 1941, SS “Einstatzgruppen” (Task Forces) deployed behind the front-line units, murdering Soviet Jews in the hundreds of thousands. The ostensible reason for these killings was a fear that Jews (regardless of the fact that many of them were women and children) would become a fifth column in the German rear. Einsatzgruppen pioneered a new tool of mass murder, gas, which was subsequently perfected in the death camps.

Nor is it coincidental that the most notorious combat unit of World War II was tasked with counterinsurgency: The SS anti-partisan brigade led by convicted pedophile Oskar Dirlewanger, who recruited poachers, military criminals and eventually the criminally insane to man his ranks. The Dirlewanger Brigade’s revolting conduct in the USSR, and during the Warsaw uprising of 1944, is barely printable even today.

Yet while Germany prosecuted war criminals and compensated Holocaust survivors, it also maintained veterans’ cemeteries and paid pensions to veterans, including SS men. Just as most German troops in World War II never murdered a civilian, nor did most Korean troops in Vietnam.

So, it is perfectly appropriate for their president to commend them for their service. What Moon said was accurate and appropriate, given the setting and the audience.

Then, should Moon apologize to Vietnam for Korean atrocities? Perhaps ― but he should do so in an appropriate forum, such as a state visit. And an apology does not invalidate his comments thanking Korean troops. There is no disingenuity in this: Different messages apply to different audiences.

Moon, I suspect, gets this. His PR people have trumpeted his service in the airborne “black berets.” That elite unit is noted for its toughness ― but it also perpetrated the Gwangju massacre.

If Moon’s government does recognize this principle, it should refrain from criticizing Japanese politicians who visit Yasukuni. While the souls of a handful of war criminals are, indeed, enshrined there, the vast majority are war dead, not war criminals. Likewise, the fact that Japanese politicians apologize to Korea for colonial-era misdeeds, but also visit Yasukuni and pray for their war dead, is not necessarily contradictory.

War is terrible, but it has rules. When those rules are broken, even more terrible things happen. Should civilized societies investigate and prosecute war criminals within their own soldiery? Absolutely. Should they also honor the soldiers they deploy into the fire? Definitely.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.