No Gun-ri the Comic Book, Coming to Europe

From the Hanky:

 The Nogeun-ri civilian massacre, a much chronicled event in 1950 that divulged one of the most grueling scenes of the Korean War, has hit bookstores in South Korea and is to advance to Europe in the form of a cartoon book.

Nogunri Story Volume 1, a 612-page hard-cover illustration by Park Kun-woong, is the latest art work on the tragedy in South Korea where efforts to remember it have gained momentum in recent years through documentaries, theater plays, a novel and a movie.

“It’s a history we should remember. If we forget, it will repeat over and over. There is an idea that usually goes around that during the war we can kill people. I want to break this notion,” Park said.

Based on a novel by Chung Eun-yong, a survivor of the incident who lost his two children to it, the cartoon opens with rural scenes of Nogeun-ri (also spelled as Nogunri), Yeongdong County, North Chungcheong Province, where a little boy plays with his sister floating a paper boat on a village stream. Soon, the village people receive an order from U.S. soldiers to leave their homes in advance of North Korean communists and, during their toilsome evacuation, U.S. warplanes appear and strafe hundreds of them as they walk along a railroad track. Survivors cornered under the railroad bridge are machine-gunned.

The mythology of Nogun-ri continues.  I have my own series about what happened at Nogun-ri that can be read here.  For some good debate go through the comments section in this Marmot’s Hole posting where I lay out many of my viewpoints.  The bottom line on this is that I higly recommend that everyone read all the information out there and make your own opinion.  Don’t listen to the propaganda merchants such as the people making this comic book.

The massacre did happen but what is in dispute are the numbers of dead and the motivations behind what happened.

The Korean War is known as the Forgotten War and now is becoming the Rewritten War especially now with this comic book release and with so many Korean War veterans now passing away they can’t even defend themselves anymore as a mythology of them being war criminals is being created.

HT: Yeolchae