Fishing for the Next No Gun-ri

In the Associated Press’ latest attempt to make old news, new again that I blogged about earlier this week, they made mention about another possible incident of civilians being killed by US forces in Pohang during the Korean War. Now South Korean AP writer Jae Soon-chang has released an article about this incident from the Korean War:

A half-century on, the cold, matter-of-fact words leap from the typewritten page of a U.S. warship’s journal: “DeHaven received orders from the SFCP to open fire on a large group of refugee personnel located on the beach.”

The destroyer’s officers questioned the order, then complied. What happened next is frozen forever in the minds of those who were there.

“The sea was a pool of blood,” said Choi Il-chool, 75. “Dead bodies lay all over the place.” Witnesses say 100 to 200 civilians were killed in the Navy shelling.

For seven years, since going public with their private grief, the survivors of that day, Sept. 1, 1950, have demanded an investigation of what they say was an unprovoked U.S. attack on refugee families huddled on a Pohang beach early in the Korean War. The Seoul government said in February it would launch such an inquiry, armed now with firsthand evidence — the declassified U.S. Navy journal — to back up what the victims say.

This sounds like a very tragic incident however it is short in context and details and jumps to the conclusion that this was done intentionally to kill innocent civilians. Jae of course then goes on to use the Muccio Letter to confirm his thesis:

Last May, The Associated Press reported the discovery of a declassified July 1950 document in which the U.S. ambassador in South Korea informed Washington the U.S. military had adopted a policy of shooting approaching refugees, to guard against North Korean infiltrators. A subsequent series of such U.S. Army orders, once secret, has been found in the U.S. National Archives.

I highly recommend everyone that has not read about the Muccio Letter to read my prior posting about this. Notice how Jae makes no mention that the refugee policy discussed in the Muccio Letter was a policy agreed upon by the South Korean and American government, military, and law enforcement officials at the time. Also Jae suggests that the policy was merely to shoot refugees without providing details about how this was a comprehensive policy that included measures such as leaflet drops, curfews, escort of Korean refugees by the national police, & warning shots to name a few of the measures included in the policy.

This is what the ships diary said happened that tragic day:

But at 2:08 p.m. on Sept. 1, the USS DeHaven received the order from its Shore Fire Control Party to open fire, according to the ship’s declassified war diary, found at the National Archives by the South Korean newspaper Busan Ilbo and authenticated by the AP.

The Navy crew questioned the order and was told U.S. Army intelligence said enemy troops were among the refugees and “the army desired that group be fired upon.”

Within minutes, the DeHaven’s 5-inch guns turned the unsuspecting refugee encampment, backed up against a steep hill, into a scene of carnage. (…)

The diary noted 15 rounds fired over 11 minutes. The DeHaven ceased fire after hearing from an air spotter that “personnel consisted almost entirely of old men, women and children,” the shipboard report said. Refugees had been desperately waving white undershirts at the plane.

This sounds horrible right? It is but let’s now look at this in the context of what was going on in the Korean War on September 1, 1950, which the AP article provides absolutely zero context of. August through September of 1950 was pivotal weeks of fighting on the Pusan Perimeter. To find out what was happening on September 1st of 1950 I pulled out my trusty copy of the history of the Korean War of my bookshelf entitled, This Kind of War by T.R. Fehrenbach. The book has a very detailed history complete with maps of the defense of the Pusan Perimeter. Both Chapter 13 Death on the Naktong and Chapter 14 The Turn of the Tide include details about what was happening in the eastern portion of the perimeter around Pohang.

A strategic decision was made by the 8th Army commander Walton Walker to use the majority of US combat power to fight off the North Korean attacks on the southwest and northwest portions of the perimeter. Walker took strategic risk in the east and allowed the ROK Army 3rd Division supported by a few US tanks hold the entire eastern sector of the perimeter against the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) 12th Division. Walker felt the terrain favored the defenders enough that the NKPA would not be able to budge the ROK 3rd Division from their positions north of Pohang. However, Walker was wrong and the NKPA penetrated the ROK 3rd’s lines and forced them to retreat. Yonil Airbase in Pohang was a key US Air Force base that had to be evacuated and the planes moved to the island of Kyushu in Japan. The fighting got so desperate for the ROK 3rd that on August 17 they were evacuated by sea before they were destroyed by the NKPA. The ROK 3rd was moved by sea south of Pohang to defend the final ridge line before the North Koreans would reach Pusan. Pohang fell to the North Koreans, however the heavy fighting to capture Pohang had taken its toll on the NKPA 12th Division as they were tired and running short on supplies. Now they had to fight the ROK 3rd one last time in desperate bid to reach Pusan.

The ROK 3rd was just as desperate because they received no reinforcements because all the 8th Army reserve forces had been committed to the Masan and Taegu areas of the perimeter. General Walker was going to rely on massive naval and air power to augment the ROK 3rd Division’s defense in the east. The forces in the east along with everyone else around the Pusan Perimeter were in a final do or die battle to save not only themselves, but their country from the North Koreans. To kind give you all an idea how desperate the battle was, here is what General Walker had to say about what had become known as the September Crisis:

I don’t want to see you back from the front again unless it’s in your coffin.
General Walton Walker
This Kind of War, pg. 135

This is what one commander said in response of September 1st, 1950 the day of the tragedy in Pohang:

I never intended to withdraw. There was no place to go.
Colonel Henry Fisher
This Kind of War, pg. 148

Times were very, very desperate and according to Fehrenbach on page 155, the ROK 3rd Division by September 2nd was crumbling from the NKPA onslaught and American combined arms fire was the only thing that prevented the complete destruction of the ROK forces. In the middle of this climatic battle in the east are South Korean civilians sitting on a beach. The ships journal claims the order to fire came from the army who said North Koreans were hiding with the refugees. The survivors claim there was no North Korean soldiers intermingled with the refugees and actually provide a possible explanation for what happened:

Survivors speculated that an earlier observer plane may have seen the refugees scrambling under a sudden rain shower and viewed this as suspicious.

Basically it sounds like you have a spotter in a plane with bad visibility seeing people moving below him moving around along the frontlines during one of the most desperate days of the war. The spotter had two choices; he could not order the attack and risk enemy infiltration that could lead to the collapse of the entire Pusan Perimeter and the loss of the country or order the attack and hope the people he cannot positively identify are in fact enemy. He chose to order an attack. The Navy was hesitant about the order, however they fired out in the ocean off the beach and not directly at the refugees in the hopes of getting the people to scatter:

Without giving specifics, the ship’s diary asserted there were “very light casualties … due to fire having been directed to scatter and chase personnel.”

Survivor Bang said most shells did fall just offshore, but their shrapnel cut through the throngs of refugees at the water’s edge.

So now this is where readers in the Navy I hope can provide some idea of the extent of damage 15 rounds from a destroyer with 5 inch guns fired over 11 minutes with the rounds landing in the water just off the beach could do. I find it very unlikely that 200 people died from these 15 rounds. 5 inch guns on a destroyer are not a massive gun like on a battleship and the rounds dispersion radius would not be as great due to the rounds landing in the water. When the first rounds land the people would start running away from the beach thus reducing the casualties. People undoubtedly tragically died on the beach, but once again just like No Gun-ri, the AP plays the body count game by claiming that hundreds died when evidence suggests otherwise. The ship’s journal that Jae is using to validate this tragedy says the casualties were light and yet Jae claims 200 people died. Additionally notice that Jae does not quote any one specific person as saying that 200 people died, he just simply says “witnesses say”.

I think other explanations of what happened are possible also, such as maybe the ship firing at the wrong coordinate than what the spotter plane saw or maybe there really was North Korean soldiers hiding in the group. To give everyone idea the lengths the North Korean military was going to use deception to penetrate the Pusan Perimeter here is a perfect example:

On the hill, Love and Item found more than 200 enemy dead, wearing American uniforms, boots, and helmets, holding American M-1s and carbines. They also found the bodies of four American GIs, hands bound shot, and bayoneted. And they found one officer, tied hand and foot, lying charred and blackened beside an empty five-gallon gasoline tin. He had been burned alive by the retreating enemy.

This Kind of War
page 157

A lot of bad things happened to civilians during the fighting around the Pusan Perimeter because of the enemy’s tactics to dress up soldiers in not only South Korean civilian clothes, but also American military uniforms. This caused many problems on the battlefield that led to civilian deaths. The other thing to keep in mind is that it was not only civilians that were getting killed by friendly fire. There are plenty of incidents of friendly fire killing American servicemembers as well due to the confusion of the battlefield.

Much like with the No Gun-ri reporting this article is written to appeal to people’s emotions about this tragedy without providing any context about what was going on and pushing the highest possible body count number in order to give the tragedy a larger scale than what it really was. Additionally just like No Gun-ri this is nothing new. The killing of civilians during the Korean War is well documented since the Korean War ended and is old news. However, the American public knows little about the Korean War and the AP has played off the ignorance of the American public about the war in order to make these claims that they have uncovered these hidden tragedies from the war that the American government is trying to cover up, even though the very documents they claim proves a cover up are found sitting declassified for decades in the National Archives.

The AP was fishing for headlines with these last two articles because they were hoping to piggyback off the current anti-Iraq sentiment in the media and the anti-war movement in general in order to add creditability to their story. Unfortunately the AP released this article the same day that South Korean college student Cho Seung-hui went on a killing rampage on the Virginia Tech campus. The AP’s reporting on No Gun-ri and civilian deaths during the Korean War will get no traction now in light of this tragedy, because demands for memorials and $400 million dollar compensation packages like what the No Gun-ri crowd have been demanding will seem very hollow in the wake of this current tragedy. Some how I doubt the survivors and families of the Virginia Tech massacre will demand a memorial and $400 million dollars from the South Korean government, nor should they. What happened at Virginia Tech when put into context shows that this tragedy was just the act of a lone mentally ill person and not representative of South Korea in general. When the events of the Korean War are put into context the killing of civilians was a tragedy caused by a variety of factors first and foremost the actions of the North Korean military using civilians as shields and for infiltrating the US and ROK frontlines.

Context is very important but the AP is more concerned about perceptions. As we have seen with the AP before and the news media in general, facts run second to perception and creating a negative perception of war criminal GI’s during the Korean War complete with a great government cover up is the kind of perception that Pulitzer Prizes are made of. Like I have said before, it is bad enough the Korean War is considered the Forgotten War in America, but now it is becoming the Revised War as well, in an effort to smear the veterans who traveled half way around the world to fight for freedom in a country they never heard of.