Efforts continue to uncover the truth about the massacre by South Korean troops during the Indochina Wars

Tragic news of wars around the world and efforts to uncover the truth about past war crimes

From Ukraine to Palestine to Lebanon, we have been hearing about tragic wars around the world lately. What's even sadder than the military conflicts is that horrific massacres of children, women, and civilians are still taking place in the 21st Century. To avoid more civilians becoming victims of war crimes, we need to document and remember what is happening today. We also need to uncover the truth about war crimes that have happened in the past but have not yet been identified. This is especially true on the Korean Peninsula, where South Korea and North Korea are still technically in a ceasefire and pointing guns at each other. In addition, the truth about war crimes committed in the Vietnam War must be uncovered because South Korea sent more than 300,000 troops to Vietnam and committed massacres of civilians.

Fortunately, South Korea has enacted legislation and in 2005 established a national body, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Republic of Korea (TRCK), to investigate civilian massacres during the Korean War. The TRCK has investigated and continues to investigate various incidents of massacres of South Korean civilians by the South Korean army, police, and US military. The president has also apologized to survivors on behalf of the nation. However, the South Korean government has not attempted to investigate the massacres of civilians by the South Korean military during the Vietnam War, and has not officially acknowledged or apologized for the massacres more than 50 years after its withdrawal from Vietnam.

Civilian massacres committed by the South Korean military in the Vietnam War

Despite having no direct stake in the conflict, South Korea deployed more than 320,000 combat troops at the request of the United States from 1964 to 1973 during the Vietnam War. More than 5,000 of those troops were killed, and many more were wounded and suffered from exposure to AgentOranger, a herbicide used to reduce the vegetation used by enemy combatants for cover. The massacre of Vietnamese civilians by South Korean soldiers was long buried behind the sacrifices of South Korean soldiers.Even after Vietnam and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992, it wasn't until 1999 that the progressive news weekly Hankyoreh 21 first reported on the massacre of civilians by South Korean soldiers. A researcher at Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh University published a paper estimating that there were more than 80 massacres of civilians and about 9,000 victims during South Korea’s involvement in the conflict.

Two of the most notable are the Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất Massacre and the Hà My Massacre. In February 1968, South Korean marines brutally murdered more than 70 civilians in Phong Nhi- Phong Nhất village in Quảng Nam province in central Vietnam, burning their homes and corpses. Shortly after South Korean troops left the village, U.S. troops entered the village to rescue survivors and retrieve bodies. In the process, the U.S. troops took photos of the incident and made a report after investigating their soldiers, Vietnamese soldiers, witnesses, and local officials. The photos show horrific images of children shot dead, young women still alive with their chests cut off, and bodies burned after being killed. These photos make it difficult to deny the massacre of civilians. About 32 percent of the casualties were children under the age of 10, 12 percent were over the age of 60, and 64 percent were women. Nguyen Thi Thanh, then 8 years old, was at home with her family when South Korean troops stormed in and killed her mother, sister, younger brother, aunt, and four uncles; she barely survived being shot in the stomach, and her brother in the buttocks.

Hà My Village in the central Vietnamese province of Quảng Nam was also attacked in February 1968 by South Korean Marines who killed 151 villagers. Here, more than 60 of the dead were children under the age of 10, and many of them were women. Nguyen Thi Thanh (the same name as Nguyen Thi Thanh in the Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất massacre) was 11 years old when a grenade from South Korean marines killed her mother, younger brother, eldest sister, and cousin,and severely injured her ears, hips, and thighs while she was hiding in the air-raid shelter in her home. As with most civilian massacres, there are no photos, no third-party witnesses, and no US military investigation report of the Hà My Massacre.

South Korean society's struggle to reflect on the massacres and government inaction

Reports of massacres during the Vietnam War by South Korean troops shocked South Korean society when they emerged in the late 1990s. Progressive civil society organizations were appalled that South Korea, which had been persecuted by Japan, had committed such a brutal massacre in a foreign country. Such organizations organized the movement called Mianhaeyo, Vietnam (Korean 미안해요, 베트남, or “Sorry, Vietnam”) to visit the victims and their families to express their apologies. Then-President Roh Moo-hyun visited Vietnam in 2004 and told the Vietnamese president, “Our people owe you a debt of gratitude, which is why we sincerely want Vietnam's prosperity,” and expressed his regret. Through official development assistance, the South Korean government has built more than 40 elementary schools and one general hospital in areas affected by the massacre. In 2018, then-President Moon Jae-in visited Vietnam and told his Vietnamese counterpart, “I express my regret for the unfortunate history between our two countries that remains in our hearts.” Despite the presidential expressions of regret, there has been no progress on official state recognition for a long time.

Holding Citizens' Peace Courts to prosecute massacres of civilians

South Korean civil society actively organized the “Sorry, Vietnam” movement after the first reports of the massacres, but the enthusiasm cooled. Then, in 2015, Nguyen Thi Thanh, the survivor of the massacre at Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất villages, held a press conference at the South Korean National Assembly calling for investigation of the massacres in Vietnam. South Korean civil society's interest in the Vietnam War civilian massacres has increased again. Since 2017, South Korean civil society has been campaigning to open a Citizens' Peace Court, a kind of mock tribunal, to discover the truth about the Vietnam War civilian massacres. The movement has petitioned the president for the truth and filed several lawsuits.

The Citizens' Peace Court was organized by Korean civil society organizations, a progressive lawyers' group called MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, and many citizens. The plaintiffs are two female victims of the same name, Nguyen Thi Thanh, who are survivors of the Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất massacre and the Hà My massacre. The plaintiffs took great courage to participate, because they were traumatized by the Korean men, and because the veterans of the Vietnam War at the time denied the massacres and were expected to protest threateningly against them. “We are scared and trembling, but we want to take courage and speak on behalf of the victims to ask the South Korean government to recognize the truth,” they said in a small, shaky voice in court.

The plaintiffs testified that their family members were massacred during the Vietnam War, and that they themselves were wounded by gunfire, and demanded that the defendant, the Republic of Korea, recognize the massacre and pay compensation. The defence was handled by MINBYUN lawyers who split their time between the plaintiffs and the defendant. Progressive scholars worked alongside the lawyers to conduct field research, interviews with victims and witnesses, and documentation. The closing arguments were held over two days in Seoul. At the end of the trial on January 7, 2023, the court ruled that the defendant, the Republic of Korea, must pay the plaintiffs compensation of 30 milllion Korean Won under the State Compensation Act, admit legal responsibilities, and declare measures to restore their dignity and honour. The Citizens' Peace Court resonated deeply with South Korean society, once again reminding us of the massacres of civilians committed by the South Korean military during the Vietnam War. Citizens expected the Moon Jae-in government, which took power in mid-2017, to step up and address the issue, but to their disappointment, no official changes were made. To pressure the Moon administration, 103 Vietnamese civilian victims of the massacre petitioned in 2019 to recognize the massacre. The South Korean Ministry of Defense responded to the petition by saying that it had no evidence to recognize the massacre. The South Korean government officially rejected the victims' request to recognize the massacre.

A lawsuit against the South Korean government and a meaningful win

When the South Korean government officially denied its responsibility, the victims had no choice but to go through an actual litigation. In 2020, Nguyen Thi Thanh from Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất filed a complaint with the Seoul Central District Court. The decision was made to prosecute this massacre first due to the availability of photographic evidence. The plaintiff and her uncle, who witnessed the massacre, appeared in court to testify about the massacre and the damage done. A veteran who served in the platoon that committed the massacre testified that his platoon was operating in Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất Village and that he was told by another platoon member the next day that his platoon had committed the massacre. Other evidence was also presented, including photographs of the immediate aftermath of the massacre taken by the US military, a US military inspection report, and a media interview in which a platoon leader from the company that committed the massacre said that his company had committed the massacre. The Republic of Korea argued that the company had not entered the village, that the massacre was a psychological warfare operation carried out by enemy forces disguised as South Korean marines, that the people killed, including the plaintiff' family members, were guerrillas or family members of guerrillas, and that such harm was an inevitable consequence of war. 

The defendant argued that even if the plaintiff had the right of claims, it had expired with the completion of extinctive prescription, since it happened more than 50 years earlier. The court of the first instance ruled in favour of the plaintiff in February 2023.  None of the defendant's arguments were accepted by the court. The first instance court acknowledged that the South Korean marines entered the village, killed the plaintiffs' families, and shot at the plaintiffs, and found that these actions were clearly unlawful. The first instance court also found that it would not be in the interests of justice for a defendant who violated human rights to invoke the statute of limitations, ruling that the plaintiffs' claims were still alive and well.

With this ruling, South Korea finally recognized, for the first time at the national level, that its military massacred civilians during the Vietnam War. Civil society and Vietnamese victims, who have been working on this issue in South Korea for more than 20 years, welcomed the verdict. However, the South Korean government immediately appealed the trial court's ruling. The plaintiff, Nguyen Thi Thanh, was outraged by the appeal. Even the Vietnamese government criticized the South Korean government's appeal, saying, “The South Korean government's decision does not reflect the objective truth of the matter.”, in late November 2024, the second trial is in its final stages. The South Korean government is repeating the same arguments it made in the first trial. During the second trial, the South Korean government's defence attorneys said they would call a veteran from the company in testimony to prove that there was no massacre, but they have not been able to find such soldier to testify and have not requested an interrogation of a witness as of now when the second trial is nearing its end. Since the Korean judicial system includes the possibility of a third trial, it will take a long time for this case to be finalized even after the second trial.
    
The struggle to uncover the truth behind the Hà My Village massacre

Nguyen Thi Thanh of the Hà My village massacre applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in April 2022 to uncover the truth. After the Citizens' Peace Court, the South Korean National Assembly amended the law to allow the re-launched TRCK to operate. Because the second TRCK had begun its work, the application was accepted. Like the first Commission, the second TRCK can investigate civilian massacres and gross human rights violations committed by the South Korean government during the Korean War. The commission’s investigation officials can collect evidence extensively with expertise through witness interviews, fieldwork, and archival research. 

The TRCK has actually been successful in uncovering the truth by investigating the massacre of civilians during the Korean War and other past human rights violations by the government. Nguyen Thi Thanh and five other survivors or relatives of victims of the Hà My massacre hoped that the second Truth and Reconciliation Commission would uncover the truth. Unfortunately, after the application, Yun Seok-yeol came to power and the composition of the second TRCK was changed to favour conservatives. In May 2023, the second TRCK rejected the case on the grounds that the massacre at Hami Village was not subject to investigation. Specifically, the TRCK had no authority to investigate human rights infringements committed by the South Korean military against foreigners in foreign countries. Nevertheless, there was no such limitation in the relevant law. In July 2023, the five applicants filed an administrative lawsuit seeking to withdraw this decision. The first instance court dismissed the case in June 2024. The case is now at the second instance court.

Movement for special legislation to investigate intelligence cover-ups of massacres and uncover the truth

In addition to the lawsuit mentioned before, MINBYUN has been pursuing an administrative lawsuit since 2017 seeking the release of documents related to the investigation of the Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất massacre held by the South Korean government. After the news coverage on the massacre in the US in 1969, the South Korean government requested that the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) investigate the soldiers, and the KCIA has stored the records to this day. In 2021, MINBYUN finally won the case, received the titles of the documents in accordance with the judgment, and submitted the sentencing and the titles as evidence in the Phong Ninh-Phong Nhất massacre state reparations case. MINBYUN also demanded that the South Korean government provide the records in their entirety to the court. However, the South Korean government has not released the records yet. 

A small glimmer of hope for humanity

As such, South Korean civil society and Vietnamese victims have been working tirelessly to uncover the truth about the massacre and to obtain an apology and reparations. The achievements are still small in comparison to the hardships endured and the time consumed, but they still bear significant meaning in that they are the first official recognition of state wrongdoing by the judiciary. Regardless of how you look at it, there is still a lot of work ahead. And there are many obstacles. The state compensation lawsuit still needs to be won, intelligence agency records need to be made public, and a special law needs to be enacted to discover the truth. Even after that, we have many mountains to climb: different languages and distances, diplomatic friction, the fact that the victims are elderly and have limited time left, the lack of evidence, and so on. Nonetheless, I believe that with each small step forward, we will be able to uncover the truth about the massacre of civilians by the South Korean military during the Vietnam War. I also believe that the day will come when the South Korean government will officially recognize and apologize to the victims. I hope that this effort will bring a little hope to humanity, which is currently discouraged by the sad news coming from war zones around the world.
 

The views in this article are not necessarily those of FES.