Tit for tat
1950: The first Taejon massacre
The Korean War lasted from 25 June 1950 until a truce was declared on 27 July 1953. It was essentially a civil war between North and South Korea, which had been divided at the end of World War II into, respectively, Soviet and US zones of occupation. The United Nations – represented mainly by US troops – became involved when the spectre of a Communist Chinese takeover of South Korea arose.
Like virtually all civil wars, this one was marked by atrocities on both sides. However, for decades the extent of the war crimes committed by the anti-Communist regime of Syngman Rhee in the south has been hidden. In fact, at the outbreak of war, one of Rhee’s first acts was to order the execution of political prisoners – probably more than 100,000 in all – whose deaths were later blamed on the incoming forces from North Korea. When the latter arrived in the southern capital of Seoul, they began their occupation by letting out of prison the few political prisoners that Rhee had not had time to kill.
After the war, the US Army reported that civilian victims of atrocities totalled only 7,334. Of these, between 5,000 and 7,000 were supposed to have died during the Taejon massacre in September 1950, which became the focus of US accusations of brutality against North Korea. However, it now appears that there had, in fact, been two massacres, but the first, in July 1950, was simply erased from the historical record by the South Korean and US governments.
In August 1950, the British journalist Alan Winnington wrote a report in the Communist Daily Worker newspaper. Accompanying the North Korean army on their march south, he had seen mass graves near Taejon, about 100 miles south of Seoul. After inspecting them, looking at photographs and talking to local villagers, he concluded that, between 6 and 21 July, about 7,000 prisoners from the jails in and around Taejon had been summarily executed by the South Korean government.
When Winnington later published his report as a pamphlet – I Saw the Truth in Korea – the British Cabinet considered having him tried for treason. In the event, his report was ignored and eventually forgotten.
In the meantime, anti-North Korean feeling was being whipped up by reports of a massacre in Taejon on 27 September 1950, which was discovered when American forces retook the city. According to Roy E Appleman, in his book US Army in the Korean War: South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (1986), published by the US government: ‘Several thousand South Korean civilians, estimated to number between 5,000 and 7,000, 17 ROK [South Korean] Army soldiers, and at least 40 American soldiers had been killed.’
In 1992, 42 years after the event, a South Korean journalist began to investigate rumours of the first massacre. According to the academic Sheila Miyoshi Jager:
The Taejon massacre, once a symbol of Communist barbarity, has come to mean something very different from past interpretations of the event. Since not one – but two – mass killings were committed, the September massacre is now being reconsidered in light of the preceding July massacre. As one journalist of the liberal Han'gyore shinmun put it, ‘the September massacre by the NKPA [North Korean People’s Army] was an act of retaliation for the previous killings of leftist prisoners by the Republic of Korea (ROK).’
These revelations have added fuel to the increasing anti-American feeling that is apparent in South Korea today. According to Jager:
the July massacre, according to the same source, ‘was impossible without the agreement or at least, acquiescence, of the American authorities who held commanding authority during the war’. Professor Kang Man-gil of Koryo University [in Seoul] voiced these views even more forcefully: ‘Since pictures were taken and official reports made to the US government by the US military, we cannot but examine the question of American responsibility for the (July) massacre.’ What was once reviled as a despicable act of wanton violence committed by the North Korean People's Army is now being touted as a rational act of vengeance, while the earlier July killings – the new focus of concern– are being blamed on the invisible hand of American forces for allowing the ROK soldiers to pull the trigger.
