Survivor of Korean troops’ civilian killings in Vietnam files suit against Korean government

A Vietnamese woman filed a lawsuit against the Korean government on Tuesday over a massacre of civilians allegedly committed by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War, in the first of its kind filed some five decades after the atrocity.

The plaintiff is Nguyen Thi Thanh, 60, who lost family members at the hands of Korean troops in Phong Nhi in Quang Nam province in February 1968. She seeks 30,000,100 won ($24,400) in compensation and an apology from the Korean government.

According to her testimony, the incident took place when she was 8 years old, and she had to spend nearly a year in hospital after being shot in the stomach by Korean soldiers. In the village, some 74 people are believed to have been killed during the massacre.

“I hope this serves as a chance to restore honor for all Vietnamese victims, not only for the sake of my own rights and interests,” Nguyen said in a video call at a press conference held Tuesday in front of the Seoul Central District Court.

Korean soldiers are accused of brutally killing Vietnamese civilians, including many women and children, in villages such as Phong Nhi, Phong Nhat and Ha My in Quang Nam province during Korea’s 1964-1973 involvement in the US-led Vietnam War.

Under the authoritarian Park Chung-hee administration, Korea offered to send more than 320,000 soldiers during the Vietnam War to support the US in its fight against communism. Korea had the second-largest troop presence, following the US.

With no official figures available, the Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation put the total killed in these massacres at 9,000 or greater.

The lawsuit marks the first of its kind since allegations of the wartime actrocities by Korean soldiers surfaced in 1999.

Korea has never formally acknowledged any massacres of Vietnamese civilians by its

Vietnamese communists conducted countless massacres of civilians related to government employees. Even the the notorious photo of a Vietcong captive being shot on the street had to do with his massacre of a South Vietnamese light colonel's mother, wife and 6 children, 3 generations in all. And then there was the massacre at Hue, the aftermath of which was depicted in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, where 5,000 South Vietnamese government employees and their family members were killed. Successful counter-insurgency required that insurgent atrocities be matched, or restive populations be exiled, Russian-style, such that mere survival would take up all their energies. The Koreans did what they had to, in order to maintain a balance of terror that dissuaded the local civilians from helping the Vietcong.

It's one thing to turn the other cheek when the enemy is suborning civilians to hijack trucks and quite another to do so when it's gunning down soldiers. The Geneva Convention have elevated the lives of guerrillas and guerrilla supporters above that of uniformed soldiers. Not everyone subscribes to the values of of the perfumed lawyers who drafted those legal shackles. At any rate, the Koreans lost 5,000 dead in the Vietnam War, which is higher than that sustained by any other US ally, in any war involving both countries' participation, that did not also involve that ally's own national survival.

The first thing to know is the Koreans hated Communists, any Communists, with good reason. After having gone through the Korean War, they didn’t take any crap from Communists, any Communists. They announced early on that if their troops suffered any attacks, they would retaliate strongly. The Koreans also did not take prisoners, they executed any enemy soldiers they captured. So when ROK troops were attacked by the Viet Cong, they then went in and killed the whole village from which the attackers came, as they said they would. The Viet Kong eventually got the message and stopped attacking Korean troops. It was much easier to attack American troops, they didn’t retaliate.

War is hell. You are not going to get any apologies from Korea.

Ironically, Vietnam and South Korea are strong business patners now, and you see Korean factories and businesses throughout Vietnam, there are even whole towns servicing these factories where all the signage is in hangul as well as Vietnamese. And Vietnam is one of Korea’s biggest tourist destinations, there are tons of Korean tourists in places like Hue.

I remembered his comments a couple of decades back during the LA riots: the Korean shop-keepers took up arms, and pretty much nobody screwed with them at that time either.

You have to remember that virtually every one of those immigrant shopkeepers had served in the Korean military, so they knew what to do. They had no problem arming up and opening fire on the looters. Once a Korean shopkeeper lady was killed by the ferals play time was over, the word went out on the Korean language radio station and the Korean community immediately armed up and responded. To this day the Korean community remembers how the L.A. police abandoned them and they had to defend themselves. And to this day there is not an accurate count of how many looters were killed by the shopkeepers in self defense, L.A. didn’t keep track they just buried them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCYT9Hew9ZU

In 1969 in Quang Nam province I had the opportunity to attend a dinner hosted by the ROK Marines prior to kicking off a joint search and destroy operation with my unit (2/1 Marines).

Officers were seated by rank and time-in-rank along the table with the ROK Colonel at the head of the table and the least senior 2nd Lieutenants at the far end.

I was seated near the middle. The food was very spicy and the drink was very strong. Not sure what is was. There were two rules:

(1) If the senior officer drank, you drank too.

(2) You could not leave unless you were the senior officer present.

Dinner started about 2000, the Colonel left around 2200, I got to leave around 0100. I heard that the last 2nd Lt didn't leave until 0400--really felt bad for those guys. Operation started at 0430. Worst hangover of my life, but quite a memorable experience.

To all: A little commentary on the ROK troops in SVN which I got from people who either served with them or knew about them, plus an addition about the Hue Massacre casualties.

At least two ROK divisions, White and Black Horse, were the most feared troops in SVN. Excellent soldiers, well trained and highly motivated against the Reds (usually because someone in their family had been killed by the Communists during the Korean War).

The tactic of leveling a village if they took hostile fire is widespread but has several versions. Never heard of them skinning anyone. The main version is that if ROK troops were shot at (and anyone killed) by fire from a village, they would level the place as a lesson to the next village. The people feared the Koreans more than the Communists and these types of incidents dropped a lot.

Also, 3 ROK troops were convicted by their own leaders of raping/killing a SVN girl. They were publicly stripped of their uniform markings and executed in front of their own soldiers because they had dishonored themselves and other ROK troops/country, as well as committing a capital crime.

I’ve heard that there was a third ROK Division also in Nam but never got its name or number. I couldn’t get to Coastal II & III Corps because a typhoon wiped out all air transportation in late Oct. 1970. But did have a fellow high school friend who served as an advisor to the Black Horse Division and he told me a little about them.

Not sure about ROK KIA’s in VN. The American media usually skipped writing about them at all.

Re the Hue Massacre, the final figures of those killed, govt officials, POWS, SVN civilians and foreign civilians (medical and clergy) is roughly 8,000. I have the names of at least 3,000 on one early list the SVN gave me plus many more in a larger (mid-1972) book of those killed/kidnapped by the VC/NVA from the 1950’s until late 1971 or early 72. This volume had information on 65,000 SVN KIA/kidnapped/MIA.

You can find some references to it at the site www.VVFH.org. This is an organization I belong to that has written almost 15 “Yellow Book” yearly volumes on the war from those who were there. Published by the Radix Foundation which has many still in stock. Some of the best war research ever mainly because they were there in nearly every combat and diplomatic position around. Very well documented too, each chapter, plus bibliographies.

Just thought this old VN/Cambodia journalist would add his two cents worth to the discussion. Started my initial support work for our efforts in 1965 and have never stopped, as have those in VVFH, Inc.

When you fight for freedom, you never renounce that effort if you knew what was going on, believed in the cause and knew what the costs of losing would be. Some of this is found in the Yellow Year Books in the VVFH series 1963-1975 (last edition coming out this summer).

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