Revisiting Nogun-ri (Nogeun-ri)
UPDATE: I highly recommend everyone read my prior postings on this subject:
- Responding to the Bridge at No Gun Ri
- The Forensics of No Gun Ri
- Revisiting No Gun Ri
- Transcript of Briefing to Seoul Rotary Club
- The No Gun Ri Document Shell Game
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Recently many Korean news media have been providing inaccurate reports about the tragic events that happened today, 55 years ago, on July 26, 1950 near the village of Nogun-ri during the first month of combat during the Korean War. In an effort to set the record straight and hopefully educate the wide audience I have and appreciate that read my blog, I have decided to have my next Focus On series dedicated to the tragedy that happened at No Gun-ri during those dark days of the Korean War.
This topic is highly controversial and filled with inaccuracies and mythology that is taken to be fact by many people who have certain anti-military or anti-USFK agendas or are just not aware of all the changing stories and retractions made from the original Pulitzer Prize winning AP story from 1999.
Unfortunately this perception of war criminal GIs from the Korean War created by this irresponsible reporting continues to slime the slowly dying generation of veterans who left America to fight for the freedom of a country that many of them had never heard of before.
In an effort to get the opposing viewpoint of what happened at No Gun-ri out and restore honor to these veterans, I wrote a series of articles on the topic that are posted below to help people become more educated about what really happened at No Gun-ri:
Controversies of the Korean War: The Tragedy at No Gun-ri?
Part 1 – Who Were the Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry?
Part 2 – What Happened at No Gun-ri?
Parth 3 – The Aftemath of No Gun-ri
Part 4 – The Media and No Gun-ri
The AP tried everything in their power to discredit Robert Bateman who wrote the book No Gun-ri which challenged the original misreporting by the AP. The AP even contacted his publisher and boss at West Point to intimidate them. This is your freedom of the press in action. It didn’t work and his book was published, which exposed the distortions, frauds, and dishonesty in the original AP article.
Amazingly one of the AP reporters found time to even go after me for posting about No Gun-ri. I guess my No Gun-ri postings have been getting to many hits from readers which they don’t like.
The No Gun-ri issues continues to be a hot button issue that has been shaped with to much emotion and myth making and not enough facts. Unlike the AP I want you to judge the facts of No Gun-ri for yourself and make your own decision about what happened at No Gun-ri. Read all my postings and then I highly recommend you read both Bateman’s and the AP’s books and then judge the information for yourself. It also helps to read some of the good quality Korean War books available as well to further educate yourself about the Korean War.
Below are more No Gun-ri related postings that I have done and I update this list as new No Gun-ri information becomes available:
No Gun-ri Compensation Money Goes Unused
Claimants Want Washington to Show them the Money
AP Reporter Charles Hanley Responds to GI Korea Criticism
No Gun-ri Compensation Money Goes Unused
No Gun-ri the Comic Book, Coming to Europe
What Does Iraq and No Gun-ri Have in Common?
Bateman Responds to Latest AP Scandal
No Gun-ri Misreporting Continues
An outstanding choice for a topic. I've been meaning to look into this myself "in detail" ever since Nogun-ri became a byword as a result of the stories.
I wish I could recall where, but I read an account of how (during the North Korea advance in July 1950), the NorKs would commandeer terrified South Korean civilians and group them in front of their columns, when advancing towards hastily established US blocking positions. If you have sources to verify this, I would be interested in knowing just how standard a practice this was
Maybe it happened just a few times, but my recollection (from where ever I read it) is that (at least once) US Army forces confronted by this tactic (which is of course a violation of the law of war) faltered in firing and as a result suffered heavy losses.
And I can well understand how a story like this would be propagated immediately across the battlefield, and cause other US units to go to a "hair-trigger" at other places such as the bridge at Nogun-ri.
The story of Nogun-ri was almost always re-told during the recent period of controversy as simply just an arbitrary decision by the US to fire on civilians (as was certainly the case at My Lai). My Lai was certainly the frame of reference for the reporters who covered this.
If the shooting was completely unprovoked then so be it, let the blame fall where it belongs; but, I wonder if in fact the North Koreans were pushing hapless civilians before them when the shooting occurred (I gather it happened over a period of many hours, so maybe the US unit concerned had been attacked in an immediately prior period by North Koreans using this tactic and was overreacting as a result).
I also suggest you try (as best you can) to portray just how chaotic the battlefield was, as the US had had to throw in infantry regiments piecemeal to try to stem the North Korean advance south.
Remember too that we still were organized in US Army "regiments" as actual fighting organizations at that time (not the mostly "honorary" regimental organization that you are used to now).
I think this is important because (I think) the heavy machine gun teams for a rifle company defensive position would have come from other companies in the regiment (attached to the rifle company for the defense, so maybe haven't worked with the company before, not organic machine gun teams as you are used to from current USA rifle company TO&E's).
In the chaos of a rapid deployment from Japan into immediate battlefield conditions "under pressure" — and given a shot-up (or simply weak) rifle company(ies) and battalion(s) leadership –I can well see how skittish machine gun teams, not under proper control in a company or battalion fire plan, could be left on their own to "fire up" whatever they thought was an enemy target.
However, I have just a vague sense that this is what happened. I hope you will be able to either confirm or deny this supposition.
The term "gook" was invented by the US army to describe the Korean civilians and soldeirs (enemy or not didn't matter). The phrase "the only good gooks are dead gooks" came from the Korean War, invented by the GI's.
Many US soldiers had no empathy, if not, had nothing but outright contempt for the Koreans (both north and south, soldiers or civilians), as smelly, backward, primitive, inferior, and untrustworthy. Thus the word "gook" to describe all Koreans, as inanimate, unfeeling dangerous objects to be thrown around. If we understand this, I can certainly see how events like the No Gun Ri can easily happen. Of course I do not believe that US soldiers intentionally shot down civilans for fun (and no one is saying that). But it's certainly plausible that the US command and their soldiers did not try hard enough to avoid civilian casualties as they could have, because many US soldiers had the notion that Korans were cheaply expendable anyway, so why risk even one US soldier for some worthless Koreans.
Of course I'm not saying that all of the US soldiers in Korea were this way, far from it. Some US soldiers were kind and helped orphans for example. And I'm sure there are many more examples where individual US soldiers acted out in kindness and who should be commended and recognized.
But to claim all US soldiers were all angels in white who did nothing but good for Koreans is a blatant lie based on impossibility. It's bull shit. There were certainly kind and good American soldiers. There were also neither bad nor good American soldiers who just did their duty. There were just plain bad US soldiers who did some bad things. Then there were also many, if not most Americans, who were simply racist soldiers who no fault of their own, grew up that way. That was the reality back then, and to say otherwise would leave you without credibility. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't MASH or some noble war movie.
What I'm saying is that, let's look at this in the vortex of its time. We are talking about the 1950 USA where segregation based on race was the norm. Blacks couldn't vote. The Few Asians that dotted America were popularly called "chinamen". It was illegal to be interracially married. There were lynchings and mob justice. Japanese Americans who were interned during WWII were not too long ago freed. Most Americans had the image of orientals as WWII propaganda posters showing them as having buck teeth and slit for eyes. Black soldiers could not even serve with white soldiers (or just began to). There were no terms as 'multicultralism', 'equality of races', 'tolerance for other cultures', and 'political correctness'. What makes everyone so certain that the make up of America of that time, wasn't also true of the US soldiers in Korea?
Look, I'm not trying to single out the US as the sole perpetrator of killing of civilians. That honor must go to the North Koreans, and to a lesser degree, South Koreans. All I'm saying is that I just can't buy that all the US soldiers were squeaky clean people who had nothing but self sacrificing urge to help the poor native Koreans who are now being ungrateful by digging up the past which should be left alone, how dare they. That's the image I get.
Look, I'm not trying to bash anyone here, nor am I trying to bash the US here. So I hope I don't get attacked (which by the way, I know will inevitably come my way) for my unpopular views. All I'm saying is that let's look at this with the open mind that we're talking about the 1950's here, when stuff like No Gun Ri could very well have happened if you take all the contexts of that time. It could have happened. It's plausible, and it's not out of the question. But to simply dismiss all the eyewithnesses based on a US and World Report magazine's (or was it Newsweek?) because of some doubts about the couple of eyewithnesses presented by AP news, is seriously lacking. I think everything pretty much summed up when AP wrote the rebuttal articles in the following days after that article. I'll try to dig it up again.
This was a dirty war, just say shit happened and will continue to happen. Why bother trying to be defensive, and deny? You can discredit couple of withnesses, you still have to answer for the many others. You can discredit AP, but you still have to answer for the BBC documentary. Or you can just simply say, "All Lies!"
I'm sure I'll provide everyone with some food for thought with this series of posts. I tell you I learned a lot about the individual soldiers who fought in the Korean War and also journalism today from reading the books and articles related to this topic.
You all bring up good points that I think will be properly addressed in this series. The tragedy at Nogun-ri did happen and no one has ever disputed that. It is an established fact that many civilians were gunned down at that bridge. It is the amount of civilians killed and the motivations of the soldiers that everyone is disputing.
The popular opinion is that 400 people died that day at Nogun-ri and that the soldiers gunned them down under orders from higher because the army did not want to deal with refugees. This is what I'm focusing on in this series. I'm not trying to make it look like Nogun-ri didn't happen because it did happen. In fact there were probably many Nogun-ris that happened during the Korean War caused by UN Forces, ROK Army, and the Communist Forces.
However, the US is the only one getting singled out for this. So that is why I am exploring what happened based on established facts not testimony from witnesses that were not there and I am also focusing on the motivations of why this story has been so highly publicized compared to greater tragedies that happened during the war.
So hopefully over the next week of my series I can provide some good food for thought for everyone to discuss on this topic. It should be interesting.
Actually, the term "gook" likely came from the Koreans themselves. Mee-gook, meaning American probably led to the terms usage among US soldiers. Imagine a platoon of US soldiers moving down a road, a group of Korean kids run up to them, "mee-gook, mee-gook", to the non-Korean speaking Americans wouldn't that sound like they are calling themselves "gooks"?
Unless the term was in use before then?
Wow Tom, (or are you really Bruce Cummings?), I don't know where to begin. First of all, the origins of the word "gook" are highly debatable and nobody knows for sure where it came from. For example, I found the following on a Google search in about ten seconds:
"The most authoritative source that I've read of the etymology of "gook" is _American Slang_ by Robert L. Chapman. Apparently its sordid history goes way back to the early 1900s when GI's called a Filipino insurrectionary a gook, then a Nicaraguan, then any Pacific Islander during WWII, embraced [sic] Koreans after 1950, Vietnamese and any Asian from 1960s. Originated from "gugu," a Filipino term, perhaps from Vicol "gururang," "familiar spirit, personal demon," adopted by US troops during the Filipino Insurrection in 1899, and spread among US troops in other
places, invasions, etc. Probably revived after 1950 by the Korean term, "kuk," which is a suffix of nationality, as in "Chungkuk," "China", etc. [Even better, "Mi-kuk", "America."]"
Secondly, if it did in fact originate during the Korean War it can more than likely be attributed to the term Koreans use for Americans, which is Mi-guk (pronounced mee-gook). All Private Joe Johnson from Missouri heard when the Koreans referred to him was "mee-gook," so he thought they were gooks. I realize that that's a bit simplistic, and probably doesn't quench an intelligent man's "thirst for the truth" such as yours, but consider that it was plausible enough for my Korean Linguistics Professor to lecture on it in college.
You make some very valid points about American culture in the 50's, but remember that you're looking at things through 20th century multicultural politically correct lenses my friend. Even you admit that through no fault of their own, "that's just the way things were." Do I agree with that way of thinking? Hell no! Could the slaughter of innocent civilians by US GI's in Korea have happened? Hell yes it could have. I acknowledge that, and do so as the son of a proud Korean War Veteran.
You said, "…poor native Koreans who are now being ungrateful by digging up the past which should be left alone, how dare they." Why is it that Americans are always held to a higher standard than the rest of the world? You admit that both South and North Korean soldiers committed horrendous killings as well. Why couldn't the authors of the original work have peppered their article with a little of that…you know…just to put the events into their proper and factual historical perspective instead of creating an uproar in Korean society because the Ugly Americans slaughtered poor innocent Koreans? Oh, the intentions of the original authors is obvious. They weren't looking for the truth, only smut that they could use to smear Uncle Sam.
Why don’t we just agree that war is hell and horrible things happen amid the mass confusion and the innate sense to preserve one’s own life? Until you have been sent into harms way and ordered to fight an enemy you have no earthly ability to understand…until you have been thrust into a situation where you have to make a choice between losing your own life or taking another’s, you have absolutely no right to judge the actions of these men as barbaric, ruthless, or inhumane, especially when facts about atrocities committed by other troops during the War are conveniently ignored because they weren’t American.
It might prove helpful if you were to modify the map to indicate the location of Nogun-Ri as being approximately 40km ESE of Taejon.
I notice that the log entries are time-stamped in 'KDT'. I have been under the impression that only 'Standard Time' is recognized in the ROK. Has there been a change in this respect?
My blogging program allows me to set the time stamp for what country I'm in. So if I put Japan down as my time zone it would be JDT.
David and Rob, it really doesn't matter where the term 'gook' came from. The main point was that it was a US military derogory term to describe Koreans by dehuminizing them. Later on, that term was used against the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The common theme is very clear here, Asians – all the same inhumanoids. That you cannot dispute. This very fact shatters the very myth of white American soldiers being saviors of Asians from communism. American soldiers were there fighting and dying because of geopolitical reasons of that time, not because they were particularly interested in seeing Koreans, Vietnamese or whatever being free and happy.
I can forgive mistakes. But trying cover it up is another story. The evidences of orders to kill from the command central cannot be disputed. The 7th calvalry vets themselves have said so, and fairly recently declassified documents also says otherwise. This had nothing to do with poor military preparation or lack of training. Those are poor excuses.
The US military command made serious mistakes and judgement in error. Admit it, then move on.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/coldwar/korea_us…
You really need to read the rest of the series because you are falling for the mythology of what happened. That BBC report you linked to is based off the book the AP writers wrote which was based mainly off the testimony of veterans that have since been found to be untrue. The only testimony I will take with a grain of salt is testimony of people who were actually there because memories from 50 years ago that had been polluted by a handful of other people claiming to be there will not be accurate. That is why forensic evidence and documentation is so important. That is what I focus on.
Tom, you started off your argument by saying that "The term "gook" was invented by the US army to describe the Korean civilians and soldeirs." Oh, but now, after objective evidence has been provided to the contrary it doesn't really matter anymore. Ok. I see that you are not interested in objective reasoning.
For the record I concede that the term "gook" is a derogatory term used to describe Asians, probably invented by GI's somewhere. I don't like the term, never use it, and don't agree with its connotation.
Do you realize how hard it is for a human to kill another human, or for that matter, how hard it is for a any mamal to kill a like mamal? For example, when a horned animal, such as a deer, is trying to protect itself from a predator they'll try to punch right through the gut with their horns, going for the kill. However, when they're fighting each other they'll simply lock horns and wrestle around, usually avoiding the kill zone. Why, because they are the same and it's hard for them to kill one another.
Dehumanizing the enemy is a common tactic employed by all countries so that the enemy is easier to kill. That's pretty sad, but true. If a soldier in a foxhole looks at the enemy running at him as a fellow human being with a wife and a kids then he'll be reluctant to shoot him.
Very true, American soldiers were there fighting and dying because of geopolitical reasons, not because they were particularly interested in seeing Koreans, Vietnamese or whatever being free and happy. So what's your point? The same can be said for most wars.
And reference derogatory terms used to describe Asians, do you not think that Koreans and other Asians have derogatory terms for us? I will tell you, they not only have derogatory terms used to describe us, Tom, but ones to describe our Korean wives, our offspring and our fellow countrymen, and they're not very nice either.
Just going on your past "focus on" series, I'm really looking forward to the rest of this one.
You must really love military history, or history, period.
But, you are painting a bashing picture here — then dancing away from it. Jumping to both extremes doesn't land us in the middle. If US soldiers in general despised Koreans and this led to unconscionable slaughter of Korean civilians which is either a war crime or bordering on it, then say it. If that is what you believe is more than likely the truth. Don't jump back from it after laying it out there…
The BBC documentary, from what I gathered, was the AP report on film….
All "lies"?
Problematic journalism with some frequent gross distortions — certainly…
Horseshit.
Watch the Tom Cruise movie – Born of the 4th of July. Certainly not an Oliver Stone pro-war film.
But pay attention to the Cruise character before going to Vietnam.
What Stone and others closer to your tendancy of thought would say is depicted in that character is how brave Amercian males were hoodwinked into believing in all the patriotic gooblygook about saving the world from the Reds and America defending the free world — yada yada yada…
So, even in circles that attack the previous pre-1968 common American thought that they say caused Vietnam and Korea and Guatamala —
they don't say US soldiers on the ground were geopolitical minded people using a smokescreen of humanitarian-ness to do what they really wanted………..
Yeah, I'm a real military history buff too. I guess it all started when I wrote a 10 page report on WW2 for Mrs. Stein's fourth grade class, replete with pictures and charts copied straight out of the World Book.
Just this past May, I had all my students (all ROK Army & Marine Corps. officers) do PowerPoint presentations, in English, on 10 major Korean War battles and campaigns that I selected from the U.S. Army's CMH Web site (actually I got the idea from you).
The results, I have to say over a one month period, was amzing. Everyday, I devoted 30 minutes to having these guys do their presentations on Korean War battles that most of them, save the two ROK infantry colonels in my class, had never heard of.
These ROK junior officers, many of whom were KMA grads, had been led to believe through their education and training that although the U.S. played a significant role in the Korean War, it was actually the ROK Army that fought and won most of the major battles.
Of course, any Korean War historian knows that this is not the case at all, and that most ROK units during the war turned tail and ran at the first sight of the enemy, while the U.S. bore the lion's share of fighting.
When I had my ROKs research and present this material over a period of one month, they, being the reasonable and educated people they are, came to the same conclusion based on the facts. And many even admitted that they had been duped by their own history books in believing otherwise.
What an eye-opening experience for them and me. Keep up the good work and great posts.
I finally found an objective Korean. Pay particular attention to the first sentence of the fifth paragraph:
Professor Han Hong Gu Produces Multimedia Educational Material on Vietnam War
– to be used in teaching that Koreans were also aggressors
Five civic groups including the Cyber NGO Archive of Sungkonghoe University jointly produced and launched on July 2 a 35-minute educational CD-ROM entitled containing a new perspective of the Vietnam War and the fact-finding missions concerning the civilian killings perpetrated by Korean mercenaries.
The Committee on the Truth of the Vietnam War belonging to the Korean House of International Association, the Medical Association for Peace in Vietnam, You and We and a group of young writers who want to understand Vietnam all participated in the production of the CD-ROM. One of them was Professor Han Hong Gu of Sungkonghoe University.
"The CD was produced in an effort to heal past wounds and create a new history of peace by uncovering the truth of civilian killings during the Vietnam War and apologizing for our crimes. By revealing the painful past, we hope to console the Koreans who took part in the Vietnam War in their youth and became both the aggressor and the victim in the process. In this way, we aim to open a new century of peace between our two countries."
Professor Han introduces the CD as "an educational resource that will help not only students but ordinary people realize how meaninglessly violent war really is."
The CD, divided into 4 parts, presents the real story of the Vietnam War and evidence of civilian killings perpetrated by Korean soldiers in the first half. The investigation report by the inspection department of the US Army in Vietnam, released from classified files in 2000, officially confirms the involvement of Korean soldiers in the massacres in three villages that took a total of 95 civilian lives over two years beginning in 1968. The second half of the CD presents the current status of war veterans suffering from the aftermath of defoliants. Theater actress Oh Ji Hye, a fan of Professor Han's literature, gladly agreed to do the narration for the CD.
"It would be inconsistent to angrily condemn the misdeeds of foreign forces such as the Japanese army's enlistment of comfort women and the American soldiers' civilian killings at Nogunri while keeping silent about the massacres we ourselves committed. The time has come for us to teach our students the appalling truth about the Vietnam War in which we were aggressors." In this day and age when we are so obsessed with becoming an advanced country, the professor's words seem to point to the path we should take in becoming a genuinely advanced nation.
For inquiries about the CD-ROM: Sungkonghoe University NGO Archive Tel) 82-2-2610-4741
Shoot! I forgot. Korea's involvement in the Vietnam War was also the fault of the United States. I'll keep looking.
I recommend the report you linked to.
And you can compare it to the AP report to get a shorter version of what the issue is in a nutshell.
The AP and a number of academics took statements by people in the last stages of life here and now and those by people who wouldn't have been in their teens when Nogunri happened, and used them as definative evidence of what happened at a specific place at a specific time.
And, not only did the one GI they used to tied the whole piece together and give it dramatic impact turn out to be easy to verify as a liar. And a good number of the other soldiers quoted in the article said they were angry at how what they said was used to give the impression they had basically committed wonton murder by firing on innocent civilians for no apparent reason other than they were ordered to do so.
But, the AP version of events will not just be the official version for Koreans. It will be the official version taught in American college classes and filter down to any high school and middle school teacher who wants to teach it, and there will be a good many.
WTF? Gyopo, means 'overseas Korean.' Variants of this word, like Jaemigyopo means 'overseass Korean American' and Jaeilgyopo is a Korean Japanese.
These terms DO NOT have "negative connotations", nor do they suggest anything regarding "betrayal."
They were meant to be used only by Koreans, in Korea, to describe other Koreans in Korea who are from another country.
As of late, many foreigners started picking up on this word too, which is actually inappropriate, b/c a foreigner, who's ostensibly been exposed to multidiversity and multi-ethnic groups, shouldn't be surprised by the existence of Korean American, a Korean Canadian, etc.
A Gyopo, to an American, should simply be referred to as another American, or Korean American, so it can be offensive and deragotory if an American uses the term Gyopo to refer to a Korean American, as it can be perceived as racist and discriminatory, in the American sense.
Regardless, whoever posted the aftorementioned drivel about "Gyopos betraying the motherland," — shut up you stupid asswipe. Either learn the language and the culture, or shut the fuck up. Then, you won't have to pull shit out of your ass and make stuff up, which it appears, you have quite a penchant for.
The thing that always puzzled me about how the No-Gun-Ri thing got blown all out of prportion was the way the story was treated ass some sort of "revalation" , as though everyone had kept it all hush, hush…as though it were a closely guarded secret. I was stationed at Casey nearly 20 years ago, and we knew then that things like this had occured. The important difference between then and now is that then we all knew whay it had happened, and so did the Korean people. Nobody liked it, but it was just understood that the North Koreans were the bad guys who caused it to happen, and that we Americans WHO WERE NOT EVEN BORN WHEN THIS STUFF WAS GOING ON were properly penitent. what the hell happened?
[…] http://rokdrop.com/2005/07/26/revisiting-nogun-ri/ […]
[…] their reports and so-called eye witnesses back in 1999.Ă‚Â Please do yourself a favor and go read GI Korea’s excellent series of articles on this subject – he put a lot of effort and research into them, and I found them all excellent […]
[…] those who have not read anything about No Gun-ri before, I highly recommend you read my series of postings on this tragedy that also includes information on the Muccio Letter because I’m going to […]
The term gook came from the Korean word for people. See the definition hanguk, Miguk, ect. Hanguk being Korean people. Just thought I'd make that clear! Now yes we did take it and make it into a slang to use against all asians that Americans have had to deal with since the Korean War.
[…] Revisiting No Gun Ri […]
Sorry Richard, but the term "gook" does not really come from the Korean word for people. It is in fact, the Korean word for "country." Roughly translated: Mi-kuk, or "beautiful country" is Korean for the U.S., Chung-kuk, or "central country" is Korean for China, Han-kuk is Korea, not Korean for the Korean people.
Wrong again "Tom".
1899, U.S. military slang for "Filipino" during the insurrection there, probably from a native word, or imitative of the babbling sound of their language to American ears (cf. barbarian). The term goo-goo eyes "soft, seductive eyes" was in vogue c.1900 and may have contributed to this somehow. Extended over time to "Nicaraguan," "any Pacific Islander" (World War II), "Korean" (1950s), "Vietnamese" and "any Asian" (1960s).
Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001 Douglas Harper
The term "gook" was already in use before the Korean war. However, I am sure the Americans would get a good laugh when a barefoot, toothless Koreans would walk out of his thatched roof hut to the US Soldiers, who towered over them, and started babbeling "Me Gook, Me Gook". I am sure quite of few of those noble warriers would answer, them. "Yes you are a g0ddamn G00K, now get lost!" and then roll over, and bust a gut in laughter.
[…] will be the 58th anniversary of the No Gun Ri incident and I have a special posting prepared for tomorrow that I highly recommend everyone check out. […]
Just when I thought the improving Iraq situation was giving the AP cause to seek out the truth …
I logged out of Hotmail this morning and saw this weblink pop up on MSNBC …
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25999745
Considering MSNBC's gutter level reputation, it does not surprise that the AP would have to rely on this network to get this story going in the US.
A new "expert" has written a book which includes a section on how there is "a lack of accountability for crimes committed by U.S. troops" and the U.S. should apologize for Nogun-ri:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fb20081012…
She also seems to sympathize with the ridiculous North Korean position that Japanese people should not be upset about the abduction of their citizens today because Japan did bad things to Korea before they were born.
Thanks James for the tip.
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Wow…trackbacks from Corean sites. Could this be a new trend?