Massacre at No Gun Ri?: American Military Policy Toward Civilian Refugees during the Korean War

Abstract

Although we often refer to Korea as the forgotten war, news paper headlines in the last ten years have forced Americans to remember a painful chapter of Korean War history. The stories, most recently published in August 2008, have focused on the killing by American troops of hundreds, if not thousands, of South Korean civilians suspected of being North Korean infiltrators and spies. Most notably, an intense controversy has arisen over an alleged massacre of South Korean refugees by mem bers of the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment (ist Cavalry Division, 8th Army) in late July 1950 at a village called No Gun Ri (1). Just as the documents on the My Lai Massacre of 1968 can illuminate the military history of the Vietnam War, a 1950 letter from U.S. Ambassador to South Korea John Muccio to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk for Far Eastern Affairs, on the subject of Korean refugees, as well as the excerpt from an oral history of U.S. soldier Don F. Adams can help teachers and students better understand the history of the Ko rean War Traditionally, the Korean War has been portrayed as a conflict between North and South Korea. Each side was allied with super powers, which fought the first hot of the cold war era. Increas