South Korea
Says U.S. Killed Hundreds of Civilians
“When the napalm hit our village, many people were still
sleeping in their homes,” said Lee Beom-ki, 76. “Those who
survived the flames ran to the tidal flats. We were trying to
show the American pilots that we were civilians. But they
strafed us, women and children.”
By CHOE SANG-HUN
03/08/08 "NYTimes"
-- -- WOLMI ISLAND, South Korea — When American troops stormed
this island more than half a century ago, it was a hive of
Communist trenches and pillboxes. Now it is a park where
children play and retirees stroll along a tree-shaded esplanade.
From a hilltop across a narrow channel, Gen. Douglas MacArthur,
memorialized in bronze, appears to gaze down at the beaches of
Inchon where his troops splashed ashore in September 1950,
changing the course of the Korean War and making him a hero
here.
In the port below, rows of cars, gleaming in the sun, wait to be
shipped around the world — testimony to South Korea’s industrial
might and a reminder of which side has triumphed economically
since the conflict ended 55 years ago.
But inside a ragged tent at the entrance of the park, some aging
South Koreans gather daily to draw attention to their side of
the conflict, a story of carnage not mentioned in South Korea’s
official histories or textbooks.
“When the napalm hit our village, many people were still
sleeping in their homes,” said Lee Beom-ki, 76. “Those who
survived the flames ran to the tidal flats. We were trying to
show the American pilots that we were civilians. But they
strafed us, women and children.”
Village residents say dozens of civilians were killed.
The attack, though not the civilian casualties, has been
corroborated by declassified United States military documents
recently reviewed by South Korean investigators. On Sept. 10,
1950, five days before the Inchon landing, according to the
documents, 43 American warplanes swarmed over Wolmi, dropping 93
napalm canisters to “burn out” its eastern slope in an attempt
to clear the way for American troops.
The documents and survivors’ stories persuaded a South Korean
commission investigating long-suppressed allegations of wartime
atrocities by Koreans and Americans to rule recently that the
attack violated international conventions on war and to ask the
country’s leaders to seek compensation from the United States.
The ruling was one of several by the government’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission in recent months that accused the
United States military of using indiscriminate force on three
separate occasions in 1950 and 1951 as troops struggled against
Communists from the North and from China. The commission says at
least 228 civilians, and perhaps hundreds more, were killed in
the three attacks.
In one case, the commission said, at least 167 villagers, more
than half of them women, were burned to death or asphyxiated in
Tanyang, 87 miles southeast of Seoul, when American planes
dropped napalm at the entrance of a cave filled with refugees.
“We should not ignore or conceal the deaths of unarmed civilians
that resulted not from the mistakes of a few soldiers but from
systematic aerial bombing and strafing,” said Kim Dong-choon, a
senior commission official. “History teaches us that we need an
alliance, but that alliance should be based on humanitarian
principles.”
The South Korean government has not disclosed how it plans to
follow up on the findings. And Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense
Department spokesman in Washington, said the Pentagon could not
comment on the reports pending formal action by the South Korean
government.
Under South Korea’s earlier authoritarian and staunchly
anti-Communist governments, criticism of American actions in the
war was taboo.
But after investigations showed that American soldiers killed
South Korean civilians in air and ground attacks on the hamlet
of No Gun Ri in 1950 — and after the United States acknowledged
the deaths but refused to investigate other claims — a liberal
government set up the fact-finding commission in 2005. More than
500 petitions, some describing the same actions, were filed to
demand the investigation of allegations of mass killings by
American troops, mostly in airstrikes.
The recent findings were the commission’s first against the
United States, and it is unlikely that the commission has the
time or resources to investigate many more before it is
disbanded, as early as 2010.
Separately, the commission has also ruled that the South Korean
government summarily executed thousands of political prisoners
and killed many unarmed villagers during the war.
The Wolmi victims’ demands for recognition tap into complicated
emotions underlying South Korea’s alliance with the United
States.
“We thank the American troops for saving our country from
Communism, for the peace and prosperity we have today,” said Han
In-deuk, chairwoman of a Wolmi advocacy group. “Does that mean
we have to shut up about what happened to our families?”
The airstrikes came during desperate times for the American
forces and for the South Koreans they came to defend.
The war broke out in June 1950 with a Communist invasion from
the north. In September, when the American military planned the
landing at Inchon to relieve United Nations forces cornered in
the southeastern tip of the peninsula, it decided it first had
to neutralize Wolmi, which overlooks the channel that approaches
the harbor.
“The mission was to saturate the area so thoroughly with napalm
that all installations on that area would be burned,” Marine
pilots said in one of their mission reports on Wolmi that were
retrieved by the commission from the National Archives and
Records Administration of the United States.
They also reported that no troops were seen, “but the flashes
observed on the ground indicated the intensity of the fire to be
accurate enough to destroy any about.”
The reports describe strafing on the beach but make no mention
of civilian casualties.
The Inchon landing helped United Nations troops recapture Seoul
and drive the North Koreans back. But the tide turned again when
China entered the war.
The other two attacks the commission ruled on, in Tanyang and
Sansong, south of Seoul, occurred as Communist forces barreled
down the peninsula. As the allies fell back, they were attacked
by guerrillas they could not easily distinguish from refugees.
Fearing enemy infiltration, American troops stopped refugees
streaming down the roads and told them to return home or stay in
the hills, or risk getting shot by allied troops. On Jan. 14,
1951, the Army’s X Corps under Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond
ordered the “methodical destruction of dwellings and other
buildings forward of front lines which are, or susceptible of
being, utilized by the enemy for shelter.” It recommended
airstrikes.
“Excellent results” was how American pilots summarized their
strikes at Sansong on Jan. 19, 1951.
The same day, however, one of General Almond’s subordinates,
Brig. Gen. David G. Barr of the Seventh Infantry Division, wrote
to General Almond that “methodical burning out poor farmers when
no enemy is present is against the grain of U.S. soldiers.” At
least 51 villagers, including 16 children, were killed in
Sansong, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The attack on Tanyang followed the next day, when, survivors
say, American planes dropped napalm near the entrance of the
cave where refugees had sought shelter.
“When the napalm hit the entrance, the blast and smoke knocked
out kerosene and castor-oil lamps we had in the cave,” Eom
Han-won, then 15, said in an interview. “It was a pitch-black
chaos — people shouting for each other, stampeding, choking.
Some said we should crawl in deeper, covering our faces with wet
cloth. Some said we should rush out through the blaze. Those who
were not burned to death suffocated.”
Like Mr. Eom’s family, most of the people there were refugees
who had been turned back at an American roadblock south of
Tanyang, survivors said. In the days before the attack, the cave
was packed with families. When the American warplanes flew in
from the southwest, children were playing outside amid cattle
and baggage.
That day, the Seventh Division’s operations logs noted that 13
planes attacked “enemy troops” and “pack animals and cave.” It
reported “many casualties and got all animals.”
Mr. Eom, who rushed out of the cave into a hail of machine-gun
fire from the planes but survived, said, “The Americans pushed
us back toward the enemy area and then bombed us.” He said he
lost 10 family members.
Shortly afterward, South Korea’s Second Division reported 34
civilians killed and 72 wounded at Sansong, but “no enemy
casualties,” prompting the American military to open an
investigation. The American investigators did not dispute the
South Korean report but concluded that the airstrike was “amply
justified.” They said that Sansong was considered an enemy haven
and that its residents had been warned to evacuate.
The case appeared closed until several years ago, when, in the
course of a Korean television reporter’s investigation,
villagers acquired a copy of the American military’s wartime
report and read that they had been told to evacuate. They
insist, and the commission agreed, that this was not true. They
say the village where North Korean troops were sighted was
elsewhere and was never bombed.
Regarding the Wolmi attack, the commission said that while it
recognized the need for the landing at Inchon, it could find “no
evidence of efforts to limit civilian casualties.”
Wolmi survivors said the North Korean officers’ housing was
about 1,000 feet away from their village. They say the American
pilots, whose mission reports noted “visibility unlimited” and
firing altitudes as low as 100 feet, should not have mistaken
villagers, including many women and children, for the enemy.
They said the American troops later bulldozed their charred
village to build a base.
“If you say these killings were not deliberate and were
mistakes, how can you explain the fact that there were so many
of these incidents?” asked Park Myung-lim, a historian at Yonsei
University in Seoul.
The victims’ grievances found an outlet in 2005, when
left-leaning civic groups tried to topple the MacArthur statue.
But Wolmi survivors said they did not join the protest for fear
they might be branded anti-American.
“We consider MacArthur a hero to our country, but no one can
know the suffering our family endured,” said Chung Ji-eun, an
Inchon cabdriver whose father died at Wolmi. “Both governments
emphasize the alliance, but they never care about people like us
who were sacrificed in the name of alliance.”
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