1950 letter shows US approved of killing Korean war refugees

June 1st, 2006 at 12:05 Björn Hallberg

What do you know. There was no accident. No bad apples. Not then and not now. The soldiers in the field had orders to strafe civilians. And the highest levels of government had full knowledge of these atrocities and the murderous policies that enabled them. Yet in the official review of the evidence a few years ago, the smoking gun letter was not mentioned.

More than half a century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war’s chaotic early days has come to light - a letter from the US ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that American soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter, dated the day of the army’s mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950, is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all US forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the US government.

Now, I’m just waiting for the letter to prove that the U.S. and its South Korean puppet regime in fact, and contrary to popular opinion, started the war as well. It is interesting to note that the U.S. has constantly complained of North Korean infiltrations, as to somehow justify No Gun Ri and other massacres. When in reality, South Korea (encouraged every bit as much by the U.S. as the North was by the Soviets) was just as guilty or more so of infiltrations and border clashes in 1949 and 1950.

See also
Wikipedia: No Gun Ri
Kimsoft: Mass Killings in Korea

Entry 558 filed under: Asia. This entry was posted 2 years, 6 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.