Here is an article by Yonhap that chronicles a visit to Korea by a group of California college students who during their trip visited the site of the Nogun-ri Tragedy during the Korean War. Here is the background history provided in the article:
More than fifty years ago, the actions of a group of U.S. soldiers in this small village some 230 kilometers southeast of Seoul led to the deaths of hundreds of refugees, who were being escorted from their homes on the pretext of finding a safer hiding place. The troops later sprayed the refugees with bullets while they waited under the village’s cement bridge, with reports claiming hundreds died including scores more in subsequent air raids. The incident took place about a month after the outbreak of the Korean War when the country was in a state of extreme turmoil.
Yonhap of course is pushing the established mythology of the incident prevalent in not only the Korean media but also the US media. Yonhap provides no context in the report such as the fact that North Korean soldiers were often dressed as civilians and regularly ambushed US soldiers especially during the early phases of the war that this incident took place.
Read T.R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War for multiple examples of soldiers being attacked by Korean “civilians.” Plus the situation at the time was extremely desperate. The small contingent of US forces on the peninsula were ill prepared for combat and in full retreat trying to delay the North Korean advance while reinforcements continued to arrive in Pusan. In fact the soldiers from H company 2-7 Cavalry Regiment involved in the shooting were in complete disarray at the point of the shooting. They were on the run in a total state of panic when they found themselves in Nogun-ri.
Present Day Bridge at Nogeun-ri
The time this incident took place was during one of the most critical points of the Korean War. If the US forces failed at this time this whole controversy would be null and void because North Korea would of conquered South Korea. A full context of the situation is appropriate before we just condemn these soldiers as heartless killers of civilians.
These soldiers at the time did kill civilians at Nogeun-ri. Everyone seems to be agreement on this as the joint US-ROK report on the Nogeun-ri incident concludes. The only difference between the US and Korean views is that the US officials believe that about 50+ civilians were killed while the Korean officials believe it to be upwards of 250 people. To determine the actual truth of what happened is extremely difficult as soldiers and civilians allegedly at the scene of the incident have been proven to be liars. Take the case of Edward Daily as an example. He was the lead witness that started the entire controversy and he was proven rather easily to be a phony yet he was put on all the networks at the time to bash the US military over the incident:
Edward Daily, first mentioned as a principal source in a Pulitzer-Prize winning Associated Press story about the killings at No Gun Ri during the Korean War, has now told the AP he couldn’t have been there and probably learned details of the alleged incident from GIs who were present. In the original AP story Daily gave a chillingly graphic account of the incident at No Gun Ri – an incident in which he insisted he had participated, machine gunning hundreds of Korean civilians huddled under a railway underpass. The AP story, quoted him as saying: “On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming.” He added: “The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group. Today,” Daily concluded, “we all share a guilt feeling, something that remains with everyone.”
Nobody bothered checking this guy’s background. A simple background check through the military archives could of found him to be a phony. Yet he was all over the news bashing the army:
As reported in NewsMax two weeks ago, NBC’s Dateline flew Daily to Korea to visit the No Gun Ri site. Daily told Tom Brokaw about receiving the order to fire on the refugees under the railroad trestle. “Just shoot them all,” Daily quoted the order. Brokaw: “You heard that order?” Daily: “Yes, sir.” Brokaw: “Kill them all?” Daily: “Yes, sir.” In February, the Washington Post Magazine put Daily’s picture on the cover and said he “was in charge of the lone machine-gun post” on one side of the railroad culvert. The Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News all published stories citing Daily’s account of No Gun Ri.
How can a major network like NBC and Tom Brokaw along with major publishers make such a huge mistake as believing Daily and putting him on the air and on the cover of magazines like this? Simple background checks exposed this guy as a liar and Robert Bateman the author of the book No Gun Ri, actually informed Charles Hanley, the head AP reporter of the original AP article on Nogun-ri, about the unreliability of Daily and other veteran witnesses the AP quoted and Hanley even concurred that he had his doubts about them but used them anyway in his article.
NBC later retracked their report on Daily but the damage had already been done. Who knows how many people saw the original report and have taken it to be the truth about what happened at Nogun-ri, sliming not only the soldiers of the 7th Cav but all Korean War veterans. Why did the US media jump all over this story like this without doing extensive background checking? It is very similar to the CNN Tailwind scandal that the media jumped on and then CNN had to later retract. The story fit what many in the media wanted to believe, the military is evil.
This instant aversion to the military comes in part to the natural checks and balance of the media of the government and the military. However, many people currently in the US media are from the Vietnam generation and remain suspicious and unsupportive of the draft time military they once knew. They still equate the military with what they remember from Vietnam not realizing how different the all volunteer military of today is. That is why when the military is portrayed in popular culture cliches and stereotypes from Vietnam are used. Many in the US media never miss an opportunity to criticize the military and Nogun-ri was just another example of this.
The Korean media on the other hand is a whole different beast. The objective for many people in the Korean media is pure and simple anti-Americanism. Feel free to comment if you disagree with me but how else do explain the misinformation about Nogun-ri, every little USFK incident turning into front page news, and the constant misinformation about GI crimes and the SOFA agreement. If you disagree with me about the disinformation about GI crimes and the SOFA Agreement you need to check out the USinKorea site that chronicles this issue in great detail.
I’m all open to fair criticism about the US, but the Korean media seems to rely more on mythology and stereotypes than facts. What bothers me so much about the Nogun-ri criticism in particular, by the Korean media it is an 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 this country. 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 start this debate 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.
