No Gun-ri Compensation Money Goes Unused

UPDATE: The Korea Times now has an article up about the current controversy surrounding the memorial and of course they do their best to keep the mythology around the incident alive:

The focal points of the yearlong investigation into the shooting were whether U.S. troops fired on Koreans who were not moving toward U.S. lines and whether North Korean troops disguised as civilians hid themselves in the refugee group.

An estimated 100 to 300 Korean civilians were killed in late July 1950 under a bridge near the town of No Gun Ri, North Chungchong Province, by U.S. troops who believed that communist North Korean troops had infiltrated and blended in with refugees streaming south.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning story was initially reported by the Associated Press in 1999 and later expanded into the book, “The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War.”

First of all it is proven through forensics and witnesses who were there that there were enemy weapons fired from the bridge.  It is unclear if they were North Korean soldiers or not, I believe it is more likely they were South Korean communist guerrillas.  Secondly it has been proven that 100-300 civilians could not have died at No gun-ri for a variety of reasons.  The biggest reason is where did all those bodies go?  Thirdly no mention in the article about how the Pulitzer Prize winning story was based on falsified testimony and evidence from people who were not even at the scene.  To make matters even worse the writer of the article knew before hand that the key witness in his article was probably unreliable, but went ahead and published the story anyway.  There were Pulitzer Prizes to think about, who cares about the facts.

Once again promoting the mythology to slime Korean War veterans is more important than the actual facts.

Read my entire series on No Gun-ri based on facts and draw your own conclusions

 Original Posting: It looks like the money set aside by the US government to establish a memorial and compensate the victims of the No gun-ri tragedy will go unused:

A special U.S. budget to construct a monument commemorating South Korean refugees massacred by American forces during the Korean War will likely evaporate soon amid discord between victims’ groups and the U.S. government, Korean officials said Wednesday.

In 2001, the U.S. drew up a US$4 million budget to formulate a scholarship for South Koreans and build a monument in an apparent apology over the U.S. military’s mass-killing of South Koreans approaching their lines at Nogun-ri, a rural village in central South Korea, in the early weeks of the 1950-53 conflict.

I love the Yonhap’s articles wording of “massacred” and an “apparent” apology.  I don’t consider No Gun-ri a “massacre”, I consider it a tragedy because the soldiers at No Gun-ri did not maliciously decide to kill civilians.  There was a number of factors that led to this tragedy and using a term like a massacre only feeds into the anti-US mythology built around this issue.  The “apparent” apology Yonhap writes about was in fact a real apology that was given by President Bill Clinton himself in addition to the money to build the memorial and establish yearly scholarships for the offspring of victims from not only the No gun-ri tragedy, but all civilian victims of the Korean War.

Like many issues in Korea, it is all about the Benjamins.  The No gun-ri families originally demanded the absurd amount of $400 million dollars in compensation for the incident.  The US government designated $1 million for a memorial and $500,000 per year for scholarships.  Since they didn’t get the amount of money they wanted, they claim the apology from President Clinton wasn’t sincere enough and the compensation money not sufficient though the compensation money would be enough to put all their kids through college.  I guess getting hard cash for you to buy a new Hyundai and a vacation to Guam is more sincere of an apology than agreeing to put your kids through college?

By the way where is the apology and cash settlements from the many more South Korean civilians killed by the North Korean and Chinese armies during the war?

If the US government agreed to a massive payout of hard cash than that would set a precedent of many more claims, some real, some imagined from people looking for a pay day.  The apology, memorial, and scholarship fund open to anyone who can prove they lost a civilian family member during the war in my opinion is a sufficient amount of compensation.  However, I am sure many will continue to demand compensation for what happened an Nogun-ri.  My response to this is that the loss of 32,000+ American lives during the Korean War and 55 years of peace, stability, and remarkable economic growth made possible through the ROK-US alliance is more than enough compensation to South Korea.  There is nothing more valuable to a country than their youth, and America gave the lives of 32,000 of their youths plus the ten of thousands of more wounded to give a country no one even heard of before a chance at a better life free from communism.

What bothers me so much about the Nogun-ri criticism in particular, by the Korean media is the effort to down play the significance of the US military in the Korean War because some people feel the US did not have noble intentions in defending Korea during the war and should not feel a debt of gratitude to the US for saving Korea. Creating a stereotype of these veterans as war criminals is just another way to slowly degrade the Korean public’s image of America.

What is further troubling is that many of these veterans from the war are passing away and cannot defend themselves as this new revisionist history is being created about them. It is a shame and no one seems to be speaking out against it. That is why I found it so important to educate people about Nogun-ri and hopefully restore some honor to the Korean War veterans that have been tarnished by this tragedy by both the US and Korean media.  I just hope that fair minded people will give Korean War veterans a chance to restore the honor they have lost by the unfair reporting, sensationalism, and politicization of this tragedy.

 Note: I highly recommend that everyone not familar with the No Gun-ri tragedy to read my series of postings on the incident to really understand what happened on that day in July 1950.  My postings rely on facts and not the mythology put out by the media and charlatans involved in this incident.  Read the facts and draw your own conclusions.