Posted on 05/18/2008 3:30:22 PM PDT by decimon
My oh my. And you know this "Fact" how? Because some guy at AP says so? Hmm. I'm sure from AP we got the whole story at last didn't we.
Ping to some interesting Freeper comments about the Korean investigations of 1950’s era atrocities.
This forum has the most incredible collection of deliberately ignorant know-nothings on the face of this planet. Truths are ugly things. But you face them squarely, analyze them, think about what you would have done, should have done, could have done, so that next time something like this comes up you can do better.
Rhee was not, it turns out, the greatest examplar of the democratic spirit on the planet. Maybe that was a good thing. Resources were stretched to the limit, and there were not a lot of good choices. That is certain. Primary responsiblity rests on the North Koreans for the invasion in the first place. But that does not mean that the facts and the history and the memory should be buried with the people.
“But that does not mean that the facts and the history and the memory should be buried with the people. “
The South Koreans know about this stuff. The whole purpose of this story is to attack the US. Perhaps we are supposed to think that if we remember this story there won’t be any more mass killings in the future?
Analysis based on fact, what happens, and what actually happened, is the key to conservatives moving out of the political desert they have marched themselves in to. Think hard about the environment as it exists, understand and grow wise from mistakes and successes in the past, and then plot your path forward.
This burrying heads in sand, everything is going wrong because the leftwing media is out to get us all, is very ugle defeatism. No one will like us for it. I don't like us for it.
‘Think hard about the environment as it exists, understand and grow wise from mistakes and successes in the past, and then plot your path forward.”
Uh so you are being invaded by communists. The communists are killing everyone they can catch. You think a history lesson will actually be considered when you are trying to survive?
“This burrying heads in sand, everything is going wrong because the leftwing media is out to get us all, is very ugle defeatism. “
Burying our head in the sand? How are we doing that?? The people concerned know about it. The only people who didn’t are those looking for more ammunition to hurt us.
>When your village is being invaded, when you suddenly have to abandon your town, what are you supposed to do with your prisoners? Questions like this have to be understood in the context of warfare and fighting for very survival against unprovoked aggression.<
From the sound of your argument, you would have preferred the Germans slaughter the remaining US soldiers and Jews in their prison camps.
I assume this makes you feel strong and manly. Go for it if that’s what your ego requires.
>This was not genocide. It is the North Koreans who have committed and are committing genocide, against their own people.<
Care to rewrite this?
No, I'm raising the question of "What would the Polish people have done with their German prisoners as the Nazis were invading?"
I assume this makes you feel strong and manly. Go for it if that’s what your ego requires.
I'm quite the pacifist/non-interventionist, you won't see me quoting Wilson or one of the Roosevelts when I'm talking foreign policy. I don't condone violence but I understand that when your life is immediately threatened, thinking goes from ideals to tactics very quickly. I'm also incredibly biased on Korea because I've heard so many stories from eye-witness sources in my own family, people who were forced to leave everything behind and flee for their very lives.
Yeah its horrible, yeah they shouldn't have done this. Were it not for the aggressors waging their own ideological cleansing, they wouldn't have been forced to choose between wholesale massacre and sending the convicts with the evacuating women and children. My only problem is with the way this article is presented, they sort of left the cause of the whole situation out or assumed it was understood. There's no mention of what the alternative choices would have been, and there's too much emphasis placed on America's role when America had no control over the situation or significant presence.
If they haven't yet pulled all their people out it may already be entirely too late for them.
That the North Koreans commited atrocities such as this is well known and incontrovertible. All you have here are people who know where they buried the bodies now telling you that the virtually non-existent South Korean military and government did the killing.
The fact is the North invaded by surprise and over-ran the country so thoroughly that only the small sector South of the Pusan Perimeter was still in UN (and South Korean) hands.
The North Koreans controlled the entire area where these bodies are now being pointed to. They are the killers. They have collaborators to this day to lie for them.
This is an old Commie trick ~ accuse the victims of their own deaths.
Some part of this was depicted in the movie ‘Tae Guk Gi’ about 2 brothers conscripted into the South Korean Army. The elder brother’s fiancee is arrested and executed because she once attended a communist party meeting because they were handing out bread.
Granted, I think the movie’s story is fiction, but it has some basis in fact.
This may or may not be a fact. There is certainly still room for doubt, considering the source. In any case this sort of thing would be far from unprecedented in a civil war at a time of mass warfare. One reason why the increasing likelihood of one in this country is so disturbing. (See my homepage)
Both were pikers compared to what the Japanese did to Koreans during the 50 years of Japanese occupation. The Japanese were outright evil. The Communists and Rhee's ROK just wanted power. The Japanese did it for fun.
They found 400 corpses and don’t know who killed them?
More than 50,000 Americans died over there killed by North Korea and China.
I am beginning to really be amazed at how prejudiced my fellow FReepers are to the ugly parts of history. I have no idea if this is because you are feeling guilty for the men who are dying in Iraq or if you are all South Koreans. I know that ugly things happen during wars but to run from it is cowardice. Fight it and keep fighting it to make sure that it never happens with our men. I remember the slaughter in My Lai. I had just come home from Nam when it happened. I was ashamed but I never tried denying that Americans did it.
This bullshit about AP is nonsense. There is hundreds of articles posted on FR by AP reporters that nobody says anything about. The same with World Net and Newsweek. I’m not too happy with half the crap the NY Times spews out everyday but I don’t attack the newspaper because they are probably the most quoted source on FR.
THE UNDISCLOSED LETTER
The text of a declassified letter sent by American Ambassador John J. Muccio to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk in 1950 advising that the U.S. military in South Korea had adopted a policy of shooting refugees approaching its lines:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-13-korea-refugees_N.htm
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