it's ok if the mass graves are full of commies

[sophiaserpentia]

I suppose the mass media is downplaying this because they think it's ancient history and no one will care. But if there are people alive now who remember it, it's not ancient history.

As the Chinese-backed North Korean army rapidly overran South Korea in 1950, they released leftists whom the southern regime had rounded up in mass arrests and recruited them to help administer their occupation. When southern Korean leaders learned this was going on, they decided to slaughter their political prisoners en masse rather than allow them to be freed and assist the North Korean regime.

It will never be known how many people were thusly murdered, but an estimate of 100,000 is called by at least one historian "very conservative." US General Douglas MacArthur was aware of the mass executions and numerous men under his command colluded in them.

On June 29, 1950, as the southern army and its U.S. advisers retreated southward, reports from Seoul said the conquering northerners had emptied the southern capital's prisons, and ex-inmates were reinforcing the new occupation regime.

In a confidential narrative he later wrote for Army historians, Lt. Col. Rollins S. Emmerich, a senior U.S. adviser, described what then happened in the southern port city of Busan, formerly known as Pusan.

Emmerich was told by a subordinate that a South Korean regimental commander, determined to keep Busan’s political prisoners from joining the enemy, planned "to execute some 3,500 suspected peace-time Communists, locked up in the local prison," according to the declassified 78-page narrative, first uncovered by the newspaper Busan Ilbo at the U.S. National Archives.

Emmerich wrote that he summoned the Korean, Col. Kim Chong-won, and told him the enemy would not reach Busan in a few days as Kim feared, and that "atrocities could not be condoned."

But the American then indicated conditional acceptance of the plan.

"Colonel Kim promised not to execute the prisoners until the situation became more critical," wrote Emmerich, who died in 1986. "Colonel Kim was told that if the enemy did arrive to the outskirts of (Busan) he would be permitted to open the gates of the prison and shoot the prisoners with machine guns."

... Emmerich wrote that soon after his session with Kim, he met with South Korean officials in Daegu, 55 miles north of Busan, and persuaded them "at that time" not to execute 4,500 prisoners immediately, as planned. Within weeks, hundreds were being executed in the Daegu area.

from U.S. ignored Korea killings; Ally executed 100,000, new research shows

In a way, this is of a piece with US forces operating under rules of engagement that called for the killing of literally anyone who moved.

On 26 July the US 8th Army, the highest level of command in Korea, issued orders to stop all Korean civilians. 'No, repeat, no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time. Movement of all Koreans in group will cease immediately.' On the very same day the first major disaster involving civilians struck.

The stone bridge near the village of No Gun Ri spans a small stream. It is similar to a great many others that cross the landscape of South Korea, except that the walls of this bridge were, until very recently, pockmarked by hundreds of bullet holes. On the very day that the US 8th Army delivered its stop refugee order in July 1950, up to 400 South Korean civilians gathered by the bridge were killed by US forces from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Some were shot above the bridge, on the railroad tracks. Others were strafed by US planes. More were killed under the arches in an ordeal that local survivors say lasted for three days.

Comments

[nebris.livejournal.com]

Korea was a pretty dicey situation and some Harsh Decisions had to be made far too quickly, [would you want Kim Il-sung to control the entire Korean Peninsula?] but all this hand wringing fifty years after the fact just shows how we Americans are actually lousy imperialists.

If we were really serious about this Imperialism shit, we'd have nuked Pyongyang as soon as the North Koreans took Seoul. Trust me, Moscow and Beijing would have backtracked PDQ.

~M~

..yeah, I'm kinda unsentimental about these matters..

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

How is the South Korean regime any better than the Northern one if it slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens in the span of a few weeks? That isn't a means to an end. That isn't collateral damage. It is cannibalism.

any better

[nebris.livejournal.com]

I'd say the proof is in the pudding. Look at each today and tell me which state would y'all rather live in? Me, if I wanted to eat grass, I'd have been born a dog.

I'm not really trying defending mass murder. I'm simply saying that, all in all, we're a pretty cannibalistic species whatever nation state we come from and only some Profound Change* will make us otherwise.

~M~

*And I believe you know my position (http://community.livejournal.com/e_speaks/36317.html) on that matter.