At the onset of the Korean War first thing that was done was all suspected leftists were killed

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.japanfocus.org/-C__J__Hanley___J_S__Chang/2827

Summer of Terror: At least 100,000 said executed by Korean ally of US in 1950

This is the first of a multi-part article on the South Korean massacres of 1950, the US direct and indirect involvement in those massacres, and the subsequent cover up of the events in South Korea and the United States.

Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions — intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners — were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were "the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War," said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings.

[pnorman]

1. Sme of the massacres preceded the onset of that wr:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Uprising

[dipsydoodle]

3. May well do but that don't change the fact :

With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

Maybe I should repeat "With U.S. military officers sometimes present..............

[pnorman]

9. More detail on that Cheju-Do massacre

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.
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On March 1, 1948, police arrested 2,500 young people who were protesting the separate elections in South Korea then taking place, designed to cement the partition between North and South Korea. Shortly thereafter, the body of one of these young political prisoners was pulled out of a river; he had been tortured to death. This outrage triggered a widespread insurrection on April 3 that quickly became a full-scale agrarian revolt. Eleven of the island's 24 police stations were attacked, roads and bridges were destroyed, and telephone lines were cut.

This was the jaquerie of a starving peasantry armed with little more than bamboo spears, whose sole demand was for political democracy and a little more rice. In 1948 unauthorized grain collections were five times 1947 levels. After landlords took 30% of the peasants' produce, an additional 48 to 70% was seized as government taxes or "contributions" to local officials. This was a society so poor that wooden shovels were used, because iron was so scarce.

The repressive right-wing government of South Korea, ruled by Syngman Rhee, responded by fielding an all-out scorched-earth war of attrition against the peasant rebellion. Enlisting the aid of the U.S., they made Cheju-do America's first military intervention in postwar Asia, our first Vietnam. The counterinsurgency tactics employed were strikingly similar to those used in Vietnam. As a body, the peasantry, the guerrilla's' support base, was pulled out of the highlands surrounding Mount Hallasan in the center of the island, and in a move worthy of Vietnam's "Mad Dog" Samuel Huntington, placed in "strategic hamlets" (i.e., concentration/resettlement camps) along the coast.

From then on, indiscriminate slaughter raged on against villages suspected of guerrilla/"Communist" sympathies, all too reminiscent of Vietnam. These atrocities are vividly revealed in a film entitled Red Hunt directed by Sung Bong Cho, banned in South Korea, which centers around eyewitness accounts of numerous atrocities committed against innocent civilians by the South Korean army and the Cheju-do police, with the support of U.S. forces. There you see the schoolyard where 400 people were slaughtered, and an elderly woman points to a trench and tells you this is where she was dumped in a mass grave with 168 other bodies. In 1997, Jun Sik Sun, the director of a human rights film festival, was arrested and imprisoned for showing Red Hunt; he was subsequently released.
'
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http://wolcottwheeler2.blogspot.com/2007/01/1948-cheju-do-civil-war-how-to-kill.html

[dipsydoodle]

2. the subsequent cover up of the events in South Korea and the United States.

So what's new ? :(

Just part of the post WW2 obsession with communism over there and in most of Latin America.

Fucking animals.

[Greyhound]

4. "the post WW2 obsession with communism" has been replaced by the

post 9/11 obsession with terrorism and now we are seeing the same games played all over again.

The future is not looking good at all.

Other animals would never behave this way.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Leftists and intellectuals are usually killed

when dictators try to gain or maintain power. It is all thru history.

and yes, I did not miss the part about the USA being involved.
A lesson we need to be aware of these days.

History in a nutshell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres

[dipsydoodle]

6. Terrible isn't it

That's an excellent link which I'd never seen before.

Thanks.

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

10. Thanks for posting the link. Very useful. n/t

[dipsydoodle]

7. K & R

.

[Hannah Bell]

8. This kind of massacre of the left occurred in lots of other places as well under US or NATO tutelage

e.g. Indonesia, Iraq...

In post-war Japan leftist labor people were arrested and jailed...

[WinkyDink]

12. Chile,....

[pnorman]

14. The Red Purge (Japan)

As the Cold War intensified, GHQ gradually become more anti-communist in nature, and on 6 June 1950 (Showa 25), a directive from General MACARTHUR orderd Prime Minister YOSHIDA Shigeru to purge all top Communist Party officials from public office. Some twenty four members of the Communist Party Central Committee were cited as a force hindering Japan's democratization, the avowed purpose of the Occupation, and their purge from public office was ordered on the basis of both "Abolition of Certain Political Parties, Associations, Societies, and Other Groups" (SCAPIN548), and "Removal and Exclusion of Undesirable Personnel from Public Office" (SCAPIN550).

A copy of General MACARTHUR's directive appeared the same day in Vol. 58 of Kanpo (Official Gazette), along with a Japanese translation. Thereafter, the Red Purge's reach spread throughout the public and private sectors.

http://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha5/description12.html

Of particular interest: That above mentioned letter was dated a few`weeks BEFORE the onset of the Koren war!

[pnorman]

15. Googling "SCAPIN548", yielded many hits, almost all in Japanese.

But here's one in English: http://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/e/cha5/description10.html

MacArthur's G-2 man was Gen. Willoughby, a loathsome ultra right-wing fanatic, whom MacArthur had once referred to as`"My little fascist". Here's some background on him: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwilloughbyC.htm

[Judi Lynn]

11. Important material. Thank you. Recommending.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[WinkyDink]

13. Thank GOD the US is a Shining City on a Hill.

[KG]

16. america, supporting ruthless dictators with american blood and treasure since, well,

a really long time. :eyes:

[McCamy Taylor]

17. Colonialism has been the source of so much suffering.