The Korea Truth Commission’s 7th International Fact-finding Delegation to Investigate U.S. War Crimes Against Civilians During the Korean War [May 17-24, 2002]
Report by Sharon Ayling
Contents:
Delegation
Special Guests
Summary
Presentation to June 23, 2002 Special Public Meeting on KTC Trip
Article: Growing Movement in Korea to expose U.S. War Crimes
Article: A Mountain Gives Up Its Secrets
Article: Kwangju Tribunal: U.S. guilty of crimes against the Korean people
Delegation
Sharon Ayling, International Action Center, New York
Lennox Hinds, Vice-President and Permanent Representative to the United Nations of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Professor of Law, Rutgers University, NJ
George Katsiaficas, Editor of New Political Science and Professor of Humanities, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston
Yoomi Jeong, Deputy Secretary General, Korea Truth Commission
Special Guests
SteveWunroe and Unsie Zuege, Korean Quarterly, St. Paul Minnesota
Summary
From May 17-24, 2002, the KTC International Delegation traveled hundreds of miles all over south Korea. The team investigated 12 massacre sites, gathered testimony from dozens of survivors and family members, and observed structural damage to buildings and tunnels. Three of the sites contained mass graves. The Delegation also observed the May 18 Kwangju Tribunal on the U.S. role in suppressing the 1980 Kwangju People’s Uprising.
Presentation to June 23, 2002 New York Public Meeting on
KTC’s May 2002 International Fact-finding TripI want to welcome everyone here and thank you for attending this special forum today. And I really want to thank the KTC for organizing this important fact-finding mission and for giving me the great privilege of being a part of the international delegation.
For one week in May, our delegation traveled many miles in South Korea visiting sites where civilians were killed during the Korean War.
But before I talk about what we learned, I want to say just a few words about the Korean War.
For Koreans, the Korean War was a continuation of their long struggle for national liberation, a struggle that had been going on for many decades against Japanese colonial rule.
For the United States capitalist government, the Korean War was a war to consolidate its economic hold over Asia and to prevent revolution from spreading on the continent.
In 1945 after World War II, U.S. forces rushed into the southern half of Korea to fill the vacuum left by Japan's surrender. Their task was to prevent the liberation forces in South Korea from succeeding like they had in the north. The U.S. allies were the landlords and merchants who had collaborated with Japanese occupation.
In June 1950, the war broke out. The United States fought the Korean People’s Army and Partisan guerrillas who were resisting U.S. occupation. At the same time, U.S. troops and Korean forces under U.S. command carried out brutal repression of the civilian population. These civilians were the very people the U.S. claimed it was defending during the war—and who they still claim to have been defending to this very day. And today we can still hear the U.S. government make these same claims in their war in Afghanistan, where it has killed at least 4,000 civilians and oversaw the execution of thousands of prisoners of war.
By the time the war ended three years later, 3 million Koreans had been killed. Over a million were civilians.
It was these civilian deaths that our international delegation had come to investigate.
We traveled hundreds of miles all over south Korea. At each of the 12 sites that we visited, we heard survivors recount their painful experiences as if they had happened yesterday. We were also shown structural damage to buildings and tunnels. And we investigated three mass gravesites.
Dozens of witnesses told of being shelled and strafed by U.S. fighter jets, of their homes being burned to the ground, of losing their mothers or fathers, of living with disabling injuries.
I cannot possibly recount all the sad and bitter stories we heard over a week’s time. I can just give you a few examples of what we heard and experienced.
For example, we traveled to a small village near the city of Sacheon in Gyeongsangnam-do province. As we stood on a riverbank surrounded by farmland, Kang Hwa-suk told us what he witnessed on August 2, 1950. Four U.S. fighter jets strafed hundreds of refugees from eight surrounding villages who were gathered along the riverbank. About 130 were killed and another 100 injured. Mr. Kang showed us permanent injuries to his hand and his leg.
That same day, we traveled to the village of Chongtong-ri in the same province, where we were told of that on August 21, 1950, at 5 pm, four U.S. fighter jets, conducted a bombing and strafing campaign over the entire village, killing 53, injuring 40, and burning down 100 houses. Yoon doo-ri, 81 years old, was very angry when she spoke: “Why has it taken 50 years? We want compensation for our suffering! When are we getting it?”
In Ham Ahn County, we went to Won Book Tunnel, were a massacre of civilian refugees was carried out that was very similar to Nogun-ri.
Train tracks were often used by pedestrians because it was the easiest and shortest path through the mountains. The tunnel had been used as an evacuation place since the Japanese occupation. During the war, large columns for people were walking the railway. For a whole day in August 1950, U.S. fighter jets strafed about 300 people with machine guns as they tried to protect themselves inside the tunnel. Almost all were killed or injured. We spoke with Cho Kwung-ri, who survived with his mother. He lost his right arm and left thumb and lives a very hard life as a manual laborer.
Out of 30 massacre sites in that county, the Won Book Tunnel has the most evidence. We were shown how tunnel was patched at least 100 ft into the tunnel to cover up the bullets holes, but many holes are still clearly evident.
We went to a beach on the eastern coast of Korea near the industrial city of Pohang. There we met Choi Pang Il, who told us of the horror he witnessed on Sept. 1, 1950.
About 1,000 refugees had gathered on the beach a few days before. They had come down from the surrounding hills to escape U.S. bombing. They were camped along the shore with about 50 of their cows.
Two large U.S. naval battleships were stationed in the bay, which today is dominated by the world's biggest steel mill.
At about 2 p.m. that day, a big storm with heavy rains hit the encampment. People started running for cover under the trees. That is when the two ships opened up with their heavy guns.
The U.S. Navy bombarded the fleeing crowd for 40 minutes. About one hundred people were killed. Mr. Choi lost his father and a brother in the bombing.
One of the most important sites we investigated was a newly discovered one on the top of a mountain. The mountain is near Kwang Ahm-li, a tiny farming village in southwestern Korea. We were met in the village by Kim Young Sung, who would guide us to the site.
Mr. Kim explained that during the Korean War, a terrible massacre of civilian villagers had occurred on the top of Bulgap Mountain. Mr. Kim knew the mountain well. As a young man before the war, he had joined the partisan guerrillas. When the war broke out, a small band of partisans retreated to the mountain. For nearly a year, they battled the south Korean military and paramilitary forces until they were overwhelmed. One of the few to survive, Mr. Kim was jailed for 36 years as a political prisoner.
A local farmer, Choi Jong Nam, explained that during the war U.S. planes repeatedly bombed the villages in the area. Many homes were burned down, hundreds of people were killed, and the survivors were forced to flee into the mountains.
Before the war, about 120 people had lived in Mr. Choi's village in about 30 houses. By the end of the war, 20 people remained alive and two houses remained standing. Mr Choi lost nine members of his family.
When we had climbed the mountain and reached the site, Mr. Kim told us what happened 51 years ago on February 20, 1951.
On that day, about 1,500 south Korean troops and U.S. military advisors charged up the mountain to seize it from the partisans, who by then were down to 40 fighters. Also on the mountain were nearly 2,000 unarmed civilian refugees. The guerrillas knew they would be forced to withdraw, so they urged the villagers to flee. But most stayed because they feared returning to their bombed-out villages.
When the south Korean troops reached the top of the mountain, they found only civilians. Using a trench that the partisans had dug, the troops lined up the villagers by the hundreds and executed them, filling the trench. Mr. Kim led us to a small indentation running along the forest floor for about 300 feet. With small gardening tools, we began the painful search for human remains. Just below the surface, we found human bones, shreds of old clothing, and shoes.
Because we were the first fact-finding team to investigate this site, we were accompanied by a number of Korean reporters and photographers. The visit received extensive coverage in the south Korean media, which really helped the struggle to expose these atrocities. The Korean Truth Commission will begin a public excavation of the site in September.
I just want to mention here how much it meant for me to meet Mr. Kim Young Sung, and how much I admire him. As I said, he spent 36 years in prison for struggling to defend his people and his country. And when he got out of prison, he kept on struggling to this day.
On this trip, we met many former long-time political prisoners. They were jailed for resisting U.S. occupation or for violating the National Security Law which is still being enforced today. We in this country should look to these ‘people’s heroes’ for inspiration as we confront a more repressive government in Washington just like we do with our own heroic political prisoners, like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier.
There is a particularly ugly aspect of the Korean War that is just now being revealed—that is the mass executions of political prisoners. While the south Korean military was under U.S. military command, before and during the Korean War, hundreds of thousands of communists, socialists and anti-imperialist nationalists were executed.
We visited a few of these sites. One of these mass execution sites was a old Cobalt Mine near the city of Taegu in North Kyengsang Province.
More than 3,500 political prisoners were summarily executed there in July 1950, and their bodies thrown down the mineshaft.
The local jails were emptied of the political detainees, those who believed in land reform and Korean reunification. The prisoners were taken to the top of the vertical mine shaft, eight of them tied together, and shot.
We went into the cave below the mine shaft and could see for ourselves that it was full of human bones
The last piece I want to share is the testimony of Yang Gui-Soon, who we met in the city of Busan. Her story really touched us—especially the women in the delegation. Mrs. Yang lost husband during the war. She wasn’t able to remarry because it wasn’t socially acceptable. Tens of thousands of Korean women like her lost their husbands lived the rest of their lives alone, often struggling to support their children. When her husband was singled out and killed as a subversive, she was 24 years old and had a 5 year old son and a 2 year old daughter.
She said to us: “Now, 50 years later, I have a lot of questions. Why is the south Korean president subservient to the U.S., which has come here and killed so many people? Why did Syngman Rhee take orders from the U.S. to kill so many of his own people? Who ordered the killing? Who decided to do this? Who is responsible? All these years, I felt so sorry for my husband, for his not being able to live his life. But now that I am reaching the end of my life, I am feeling sorry for myself, for my life, for missing all the happiness I should have had with my husband. I feel really angry that this was taken from my husband and me. I am 76 years old. I cannot get back what I have lost. My last wish is that there be a real investigation to find out the truth of this war. I am very disappointed with the politicians in the National Assembly. They only think of themselves. I hope that they stop being so selfish and do something to relieve the suffering.”
The movement in Korea to expose these crimes is growing. A new group, the National Association of Families of Massacre Victims, has been formed and is putting forward its own demands.
Last winter, the ‘grandmothers’ of this movement staged a month-long demonstration in front of the National Assembly in Seoul.
Families are demanding that a law be passed recognizing the 100 massacres that have been identified so far. The bill would require the south Korean government to acknowledge these massacres, recognize the innocence of the victims, and erect memorials at each of the sites.
Getting the bill passed is an uphill battle. The Defense Department doesn’t want this investigation, and officials are very cautious when it comes to criticizing the U.S. government. While the military ended its direct rule in south Korea 15 years ago, it still holds vast power—except for its subservience to the U.S. military.
In addition to passage of this bill, the movement is demanding that the Korean government finance the excavation of these sites and the identification of the remains so that they can be returned to the families for proper burial.
The progressive movement in this country must make our own demands on the U.S. government. We must demand that the U.S. government declassify the thousands of Pentagon documents on the war so that an independent investigation can be done--not a whitewash like the one the Pentagon carried out on the Nogun-ri massacre.
The U.S. government must be made to officially apologize for these crimes, to compensate the victims and their families, and to withdraw its 37,000 troops on 96 bases that still occupy Korea to this day.
This important struggle in Korea to expose U.S. war crimes of a past war is part of the international struggle to expose all U.S. war crimes, from Vietnam, to Chile, to Panama, to Iraq, to today in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Palestine. It is also an important part of the struggle to stop all future wars of U.S. imperialism.
U.S. troops out of Korea!
An international delegation of the Korea Truth Commission recently returned to the United States after spending a week in south Korea.
From May 17 to May 24, the delegation traveled around southern Korea investigating sites where civilians were killed during the Korean War. Out of the 3 million who died from 1950 to 1953, about a million were civilians.
Over the past two years, the KTC has sent seven international delegations to Korea in an effort to uncover the facts about U.S. responsibility in these civilian deaths.
The delegation learned that as the United States fought the northern Korean People’s Army and southern Partisan guerrillas who resisted U.S. occupation, it also carried out brutal repression of the civilian population. These were the people the U.S. claimed it was defending during the war.
At each of the 12 sites that they visited, delegates heard people recount their painful experiences as if they had happened yesterday.
These witnesses told of being shelled and strafed by U.S. fighter jets, of their homes burned to the ground, of losing their mothers or fathers, of living with disabling injuries.
The delegates were also shown structural damage to buildings and tunnels.
On a beach on the eastern coast of Korea near the industrial city of Pohang, 63-year-old Choi Pang Il told the delegates of the horror he witnessed on Sept. 1, 1950.
About 1,000 refugees had gathered on the beach a few days before. They had come down from the surrounding hills to escape the U.S. bombing. They were camped along the shore with about 50 of their cows.
Two large U.S. naval battleships were stationed in the bay, which today is dominated by the world's biggest steel mill.
At about 2 p.m. that day, a big storm with heavy rains hit the encampment. People started running for cover under the trees. That is when the two ships opened up with their heavy guns.
The U.S. Navy bombarded the fleeing crowd for 30 to 40 minutes.
Choi explained that since the investigation of the site had just begun, only 40 of the people who died had been identified so far. One hundred people are believed to have been killed. He lost a younger brother and his father in the bombing.
‘Boldly demanding an apology’
Yoomi Jeong, KTC leader in the United States and organizer of the delegation, spoke with me about her impressions of the trip shortly after we both returned from Korea.
“One of the things that impressed me this time was the newly gained political consciousness of the survivors and families. Previously, people were generally afraid to speak and were not sure who was responsible for their suffering, especially when the killings were carried out by the south Korean military or police.
“Now with the activities of the KTC and the progressive movement, more people are aware of the historical background to their suffering. Now they are more boldly demanding an apology and compensation from the U.S. government,” Jeong said.
“In April, ‘Kill ’Em All,’ the BBC documentary on the U.S. massacre of civilians at Nogun-ri, was shown on Korean national television. It had a big impact on the population's understanding and acceptance of what KTC has been saying--that the U.S. deliberately targeted civilians during the war.
“Now many more are speaking out about their bitter suffering and they are finally finding a sympathetic audience.
“Another change that I noticed is that the mainstream Korean media is giving much more attention to the civilian massacre cases. The delegation received wide local and national media coverage--newspapers, radio and television. Reporters were aware of the issue and seemed genuinely interested in reporting on the people's suffering.”
A growing movement
Workers World asked Jeong how this movement is going. “It is definitely growing,” Jeong replied. “A new group, the National Association of Families of Massacre Victims, has been formed and is putting forward its own demands.
“And last winter, the ‘grandmothers’ of this movement staged a month-long demonstration in front of the National Assembly in Seoul. Every day for a whole month in very cold weather, women in their 70s and 80s picketed the government building demanding recognition of their suffering.”
During the trip, the delegation met with Jeon Kap-Kil, a member of the Korean National Assembly from Kwangju. He is the main sponsor of a bill on the civilian massacres.
Jeon told the delegation that after the Assembly passed a special law acknowledging a massacre on Cheju Island, survivors and families got together and demanded a law be passed recognizing the many other massacres. The bill now covers 100 sites.
The bill would require the south Korean government to acknowledge that these massacres occurred and were carried out by U.S. troops or south Korean troops under U.S. command. It would also recognize the innocence of the victims, and require that memorials be erected and annual commemorations be held at all of the sites.
Jeon said that getting the bill passed is an uphill battle. The Defense Department doesn’t want this investigation, and officials are very cautious when speaking about the U.S. government.
While the military ended its direct rule in south Korea 15 years ago, it still holds vast power—except for its subordinate relationship to the U.S. military command.
“In addition to passage of this bill, the movement is also demanding that the Korean government finance the excavation of these sites and the identification of the remains so that they can be returned to the families for proper burial,” Jeong said.
Workers World asked what people in the United States can do. “We must demand that the U.S. government declassify the thousands of Pentagon and CIA documents on the war so that an independent investigation can be done--not a whitewash like the one the Pentagon carried out on the Nogun-ri massacre.
“And, of course, the movement must demand that the U.S. government officially apologize for these crimes, compensate the victims and their families, and withdraw its troops that have continued to occupy Korea to this day.
“It is more important than ever to expose U.S. conduct during the Korean War in light of Bush's ‘axis of evil’ threats against north Korea that raise the real danger of another war on the Korean Peninsula,” Jeong concluded.
Kwang Ahm-ri,
South Cholla Province
south KoreaMay 20 was a beautiful spring day as a group of international visitors, Korean activists and members of the Korean media gathered in the tiny farming village of Kwang Ahm-ri in southwestern Korea. The group was making final preparations for a hike up a nearby mountain.
Those gathered were somber, for this hike was not for recreation.
The guide, Kim Young Sung, met the delegation in the front yard of a local farmer. Kim explained that in 1951, in the middle of the Korean War, a terrible massacre of civilian villagers had occurred on the top of Bulgap Mountain. The delegation, which was on a national tour of massacre sites organized by the Korea Truth Commission, would be the first investigative team to uncover the remains.
Kim had first-hand knowledge of the mountaintop massacre because he was there. As a young man before the war, he had joined the partisan guerrillas resisting the U.S. military occupation and division of Korea. When the war broke out on June 25, 1950, a small band of partisans retreated to this mountain. For nearly a year, they battled the south Korean military and paramilitary forces until they were overwhelmed. One of the few to survive, Kim was jailed for 36 years as a political prisoner.
Until the revelations two years ago that U.S. officers at Nogun-ri had ordered their soldiers to machine-gun civilians in a train tunnel over a two-day period, no one in south Korea spoke about what happened during the Korean War. An estimated 1 million civilians were killed in south Korea during the war, either directly by U.S. occupation forces or indirectly by south Korean forces under U.S. command.
Only once before--in 1960--did survivors and families of victims publicly reveal the horror that they had witnessed. But the military seized control that same year. Those who had dared speak were severely punished and the evidence they gathered was suppressed.
Now thousands of elderly people are courageously speaking out about their bitter suffering. Over 100 massacre sites have been identified so far.
Encouraged by this growing movement, Kim recently returned to the area to search for anyone who might remember what happened on the mountain so many years ago.
That is how he met Choi Jong Nam, in whose yard the delegation was gathered. Kim introduced Choi to the visitors. Choi explained that during the war U.S. planes repeatedly bombed the villages in this valley. Many homes were burned down, hundreds of people were killed, and the survivors were forced to flee into the mountains.
Before the war, about 120 people had lived in Choi's village in about 30 houses. At the end of the war, 20 people remained alive and two houses remained standing.
It was Kim and Choi who this past January located the massacre site the delegation would be investigating. Nine members of Choi’s family had been killed on the mountain; only he survived. Taking leave of Choi after thanking him and picking up some tools, the delegation started on its journey.
It was a slow climb. Kim led the group up an overgrown path, with many pauses to clear away the brush. The path, which in the past had been used by villagers to visit a small shrine, had fallen into disuse.
After climbing for nearly an hour to the top of the mountain, Kim announced that they had reached their destination and asked everyone to sit on the forest floor. He then continued his story.
During the first months of the war, the guerrillas had engaged small numbers of south Korean troops in combat and were able to repel them. They dug a long defensive trench near the top ridge of the mountain.
On Feb. 20, 1951, about 1,500 south Korean troops and U.S. military advisors charged up the mountain to seize it from the partisans, who by then were down to 40 fighters. Also on the mountain were nearly 2,000 unarmed civilian refugees, including many women with young children. The guerrillas knew they would be forced to withdraw from this overwhelming force, so they urged the villagers to flee. Most did not, because they feared returning to their bombed-out villages.
When the south Korean troops reached the top of the mountain, they found only civilians. Using the partisans’ trench as a mass grave, they lined up the villagers by the hundreds and executed them, filling the trench. They then chased down and executed hundreds more, leaving their bodies scattered over the mountainside.
After the slaughter, some people who had remained in the valley gathered up what bodies they could find and gave them a proper burial. But many remained, including those buried in the trench.
Over the years, local villagers gathering firewood on Bulgap Mountain would chance upon remains. There was always whispered talk of a mass grave. But until Kim, no one who had lived on the mountain at the time of the massacre had taken up a search.
Kim led the delegation to an indentation running along the forest floor about 300 feet long and a foot and a half wide. With small gardening tools, some members of the delegation began the painful search for human remains. It didn't take long. Just below the surface, human bones, shreds of old clothing, and shoes were unearthed. They were carefully placed on a burial sheet.
Though no one was a forensic expert, it seemed apparent that the remains found in one small section of the trench represented many bodies and were being disturbed for the first time.
After a simple ceremony honoring the dead, the remains were wrapped in the cloth and reburied in the same spot. The delegates dried their tears and promised to work hard to expose U.S. responsibility for this terrible crime when they returned home.
Kim explained that on Sept. 8, the Korean Truth Commission would begin a public excavation of the site. Then the delegation began its descent back down the mountain.
The team’s efforts received extensive coverage in the south Korean media.
Kwangju Tribunal
U.S. guilty of crimes against the Korean people
Kwangju, south KoreaOn May 18, after five hours of eyewitness and expert testimony and the presentation of documented evidence, the Kwangju People’s Tribunal found the U.S. government guilty of crimes against the people of Korea.
The guilty verdict was related to U.S. involvement in the murderous suppression of a people’s uprising here 22 years ago.
On May 18, 1980, the people of Kwangju rebelled against a violent assault on students who were protesting the former military regime’s declaration of martial law.
Students and workers joined together. With massive street demonstrations and a quickly formed people’s militia, they battled police and Korean Special Forces troops, managing to seize control of the city for several days.
At least 2,000 people were killed in these battles and when the military brutally retook control of the city on May 27.
The Tribunal found 10 U.S. government officials at the time guilty of complicity in this suppression. They include President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Ambassador to South Korea William Gleysteen, and U.S.-Korean Combined Forces Commander in South Korea John Wickham.
The most damaging evidence of U.S. criminal involvement was Wickham’s decision to release four divisions of south Korean army special forces troops for deployment in Kwangju. This approval was required because the south Korean army is under direct U.S. command.
Recently declassified documents showed that U.S. officials said the decision to release the troops should be kept quiet because it would fuel anti-U.S. sentiment if it became known. The United States also ordered a naval carrier to south Korea from the Philippines.
U.S. soldier tells of alert
Ellen Barfield, a sergeant in the U.S. Army stationed at Camp Humphreys in Korea during the Kwangju events, submitted videotaped testimony. She said that all 40,000 U.S. troops occupying Korea at the time were put on high alert. This meant that all routine was suspended. For two to three days they received riot training instead. This mostly consisted of classroom discussion about what to do when face-to-face with people rebelling in the streets.
She also expressed the hope that the truth about the U.S. role in Kwangju would come out. And she commended the citizens of Kwangju for their efforts.
The Carter cabinet set up a special task force on the Korea crisis, code-naming it “Cherokee.” Messages from this task force to the U.S. Embassy expressed deep fear of a revolutionary situation in Korea like the one that had just shaken the U.S. grip on Iran. They called the Korean student struggle a challenge to law and order.
Publicly, the U.S. government only voiced concern about Korean stability and security, with no expression of concern about the deliberate killing of civilians. Washington also fabricated unspecified “threats” from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north.
The tribunal was held in Province Hall, a government office building that was the scene of many battles during the uprising and where many of the rebels perished in a final stand. A huge banner in the hall read, “Today we are victims, tomorrow we will be winners,” a quote from the head of the citizens’ army who died in Province Hall with 200 of his compatriots.
More than 700 people attended the one-day tribunal, including many long-time political prisoners, participants in the uprising and survivors of the suppression.
The May tribunal here in Kwangju opened with introduction of the judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and jury. The people’s jury was composed of workers, farmers, religious leaders and students from all the regions outside Kwangju.
The lead prosecutor explained that this tribunal was historic for the people of Kwangju because it was the first time that the role of the U.S. government in suppressing the Kwangju uprising was being examined. While two former Korean presidents were found guilty in 1989 of crimes against the citizens of Kwangju, the crimes of the United States have been covered up until now.
Tribunal organizers had to put up a struggle just to hold it. On May 14, the tribunal committee delivered papers to the U.S. Embassy informing the United States that 10 of its former officials were being charged with crimes against peace in relation to the Kwangju suppression, and requesting their appearance before the tribunal.
A few days later, the organizers received a call from the Korean National Security Office informing them that Province Hall could not be used as the venue for the tribunal and warning that the United States could sue for defamation if the defendants were found guilty. Local police also called.
While a struggle won the right to use the hall, organizers were denied the use of a sound system.
Heart-wrenching testimony
Many survivors of the repression came forward to testify about their suffering at the hand of the special-forces troops—including indiscriminate bayoneting of demonstrators, shooting civilians in the head and beating prisoners to death.
A woman testified that soldiers shot her in the back of the head at 7 a.m. in front of her home. There was no combat in the area at the time. She had only gone outside to look for her 7-year-old son.
At the hospital, she was repeatedly interrogated about whether she was a communist. Her family was interrogated as well. When her father asked a soldier why he shot at civilians, he replied that they were told to shoot all Kwangju residents who were out on the street.
A Buddhist monk testified that he witnessed the killing of 200 citizen soldiers holed up inside the Catholic Center. He had organized a medical team during the uprising. He was shot in the back and paralyzed while taking care of injured people in an ambulance.
After hearing closing remarks and deliberating on the evidence, the chief jurist—the Rev. Jung-hyun Moon, a Catholic priest—stepped forward. Moon is a well-known militant against U.S. occupation who was permanently disabled by riot police at an anti-U.S. protest.
He read the verdict: The jury found the 10 U.S. officials guilty on all counts.
The jury verdict also included a list of demands: that the officials and the United States issue official apologies, pay just compensation, and release all relevant documents; that command of Korean troops be transferred from the U.S. government to south Korea, all U.S. troops be withdrawn and the SOFA agreement between U.S. and Korea governing GIs be revised so that Pentagon troops can be held accountable in Korean courts for their criminal behavior.
The next day, a militant crowd of 10,000 youths outside Province Hall cheered this verdict and led a triumphant march throughout the city.
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