Korea International War Crimes Tribunal, June 23, 2001, New York
Indictment for Offenses Committed by the
Government of the United States of America
Against the People of Korea, 1945-2001.I. INTRODUCTION
The government of the United States of America, acting with the full knowledge, under the authority and at the direction of the Presidents of the United States and its principal officials, officers and agents charged with conducting foreign relations, military affairs, and foreign intelligence operations, identified as the accused, has since September 1945 continuously engaged in a course of conduct intended to deny sovereignty and independence to the people of Korea, to unnaturally divide them against their will, to destroy in major part the population, its social cohesion, economic productivity, health and culture and deprive Koreans of the recognized rights of all humanity in order to dominate and control the political, social, economic and cultural life of Koreans, subvert the laws and governments of Korea and corrupt its culture and use Korea for its own geopolitical ambitions and economic profit. The direct cost in lives of Koreans may exceed ten million, with many millions physically and emotionally injured. The criminal intervention of the United States and its occupying military forces has been the dominant fact in the life of every Korean for the past fifty-five years.
II. THE ACCUSED
The accused are every President of the United States beginning with Harry S. Truman in the early months of his presidency to George W. Bush, every Secretary of State from James F. Byrnes to Colin Powell, every Secretary of the Army from Henry L. Stinson, every Secretary of the Navy from James V. Forrestal, every Secretary of Defense from James V. Forrestal appointed secretary of Defense after creation of the department in July 1947 to Donald Rumsfeld, all the military service Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force within the Department of Defense, all civilian U.S. foreign intelligence and military agency heads who participated in implementing U.S. policies toward Korea after September 1945 including every Director of the CIA from Hoyt Vandenberg after creation of the agency in June 1946, every Director of the National Security Agency, and every National Security Advisor to the President since the creation of those offices, all of whom participated in the unlawful policies of the U.S. government against Korea; all Chiefs of Staff from George C. Marshall in November 1945, all Chiefs of Staff for the military services, regional commanders of U.S. armed forces with units in Korea, or designated to patrol adjacent seas, or air space, and all commanders of units which participated in war crimes, or other crimes described in this indictment. Many individuals committed offenses while serving in the same, or different capacities at different times. It is recognized that President George W. Bush and the principal officials, officers and agents of his administration have not had sufficient time to effectively address and change U.S. policy and conduct toward Korea while serving in their present capacities. Their total conduct can only be judged at a later time.
III. THE BASIC CHARTERS, LAWS AND FUNDAMENTAL
RIGHTS VIOLATEDThe acts of the United States government and its agents violated the most fundamental charters, covenants, treaties and principles of international law, the laws of the United States, the laws of Korea and the laws of other nations forced to provide bases, support and military personnel for United States actions against Korea.
A. Even before the Charter of the United Nations came in to force on October 24, 1945, the U.S. was violating its commitment under the Charter to end the scourge of war and the provisions of Article 2, Clause 4, Chapter VI, Pacific Settlement of Disputes and Chapter VII, Action With Respect To Threats To The Peace, Breaches Of The Peace And Acts Of Aggression, all approved by U.S. representatives months before in San Francisco.
B. With the U.S. actively drafting the terms of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal at the time, the U.S. planned and began a policy of committing within Korea in September of 1945, Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity which the Charter prohibits. Those crimes are defined in the Charter:
Principle VI
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
a. Crimes against peace:
i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of
aggression or a war in violation of international
treaties, agreements of assurances;ii.Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the
accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
b. War crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment, or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
c. Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
C. The U.S. has committed flagrant and frequent violations of:
1) The Hague Regulations of 1907 and particularly Articles 23 (a) and (e), 27, 46, 47, 52, 55 and 56.
2) The Geneva Protocol of 1925.
3) The Convention Relative to Treatment of Prisoners of War of 1929 and 1949 (Geneva).
4) The Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War of 1949 (Geneva).
5) Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions-1977 and particularly Articles 48, 51, 52 and 54.1 Starvation of Civilians as a Method of Warfare is Prohibited, and Article 55 Protection of the Natural Environment.
D. The U.S. Government has continuously violated customary international law as it existed in 1945 and has developed since.
E. The U.S. government has violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 over several lengthy periods of time by killing Koreans and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Korean population in major part.
F. The U.S. government has committed flagrant and frequent violations of the rights of the Korean people protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights of 1966 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966.
G. The US government has violated the UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty (Non Intervention Declaration) 1965 UNGA Res 2131 throughout its invasion and occupation of southern Korea. It has violated the UN Resolution on Aggression, 1997 UNGA Res 3314, and the Pact of Paris 1928, Art I and II by its continuing armed threats and harassment of the DPRK and occupation of the ROK.
H. In addition, the U.S. government as part of its policy and acts against the people of Korea has violated the laws of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Republic of Korea (ROK), the Peoples Republic of China, Japan, the nations which sent troops to Korea during 1950-1953, or provided material support, the United States of America and others.
IV. The Crimes and Unlawful Acts Charged
A. U.S. Crimes against the people of Korea are best examined when divided into three chronological periods.
1. First is the period between September 8, 1945 when U.S. troops landed at Inchon to June 25, 1950 when major continuous warfare between the US supported ROK and the DPRK broke out. Offenses in this period are primarily crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. The most harmful political offense was the artificial division of Korea at the 38th parallel and hermetic sealing of the north, which has almost completely separated families, friends, organizations, communications, trade and commerce, with disastrous social, economic and cultural consequences against the will of the vast majority of the Korean people who until that time were the most homogenous people on earth racially, culturally, ethnically and linguistically. The division of Korea directly caused the repression, war and violence that followed. Most divided families have not seen or talked with each other in 55 years. Offenses committed involved the systematic murder of masses of people in towns and villages thought to be communist, socialist or sympathetic to the people of northern Korean or the DPRK. There were widespread assassinations in cities and towns of individuals or groups considered leftist, including peasant and labor leaders, writers, editors, professors and intellectuals. There were large-scale arrests, torture, murders and deaths among several hundred thousand prisoners held in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions. Thousands of political prisoners died in prison, many hundreds spent thirty to forty years, or more, in prison. There were systematic cross demilitarized zone (DMZ) raids, shelling and assaults by aircraft and helicopters. This conduct was actively caused, supported and condoned by U.S. military and intelligence participation, training and direction. Several hundred thousand Koreans died as a result of these crimes.
2. Second is the period from June 1950 until the end of major armed hostilities at the Armistice of July 27, 1953. Offenses in this period are characterized by war crimes. On the ground, U.S. forces and ROK forces with U.S. encouragement and training attacked and killed civilians in all parts of Korea. The recent public disclosure of deliberate attacks on civilians in the first days of the war at a place called No Gun-ri, illustrate the nature of many attacks from the ground and the air. Cities, towns, and villages were devastated by artillery, aerial bombardment and fire which destroyed most buildings and dwellings in large communities of northern Korea. The use of illegal weapons and biological and chemical warfare caused conditions calculated to destroy a major part of the population. Excessive and illegal force was used against northern Korea combatants and prisoners by U.S. forces.
It is estimated that 3,000,000 Korean civilians in the north and 500,000 in the south died from war related causes. The northern Koreans are estimated to have suffered 640,000 battle deaths and 400,000 non-combat deaths from disease and other causes directly attributed to the war. The southern Korean military is estimated to have had 70,000 battle deaths. The total estimated Korean civilian death toll related to the three-year war is 3,500,000 and Korean military deaths related to the war is 1,110,000 for a total of 4,610,000 Korean deaths according to the Encyclopedia Britannica 1967 edition, Vol. 13, p.475.
3. The third period is from July 1953 until the present. The U.S. crimes during this period are primarily crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. U.S. forces and surrogate southern Koreans carried out thousands of skirmishes and raids against northern Korea's territory and shipping, and extreme repression in southern Korea symbolized by the Kwangju massacre of May 18, 1980. Thousands of deaths were caused by U.S. encouraged, supported and condoned violence by ROK military and police personnel. Economic interference by the U.S. and a devastating blockade calculated to create conditions to destroy a major part of the northern Korean population, radically reduce available food, medicines, health care and medical capacities causing widespread malnutrition, weakening of the population, increasing susceptibility to diseases, illnesses and epidemics. Chronic food shortages, hunger and periodic famine contribute to a reduced life expectancy of more than six years in the 1990's. Among children under 5 years of age the death rate increased from 27 per 1,000 live births to 48 per 1,000, or 77%, and among infants from 14 to 22.5 per 1,000 live births or 60%. The percentage of the population with safe drinking water has dropped 30% in recent years. Vaccination coverage for diseases like polio and measles fell 40% between 1990 and 1997. Dysentery, iodine deficiency and vitamin deficiency are among many serious health problems for children. Per capita income in the north dropped from $991 U.S. per year in 1991 to $457 U.S. in 1999. All these figures were reported by A.P. on May 15, 2001. Over this period of 48 years, unlawful U.S. policies and actions have caused many hundreds of thousands of deaths in Korea leaving it to be one of the most isolated and impoverished nations, as a result of external forces on earth.
B. Criminal and other unlawful acts of the United States Government include the following;
1. The United States government acted to divide Korea, its families, friends, society, trade and commerce and isolate and completely seal off the northern part from the southern part. Its purpose was to demonize northern Korea, create fear and hostility toward it in order to justify maintaining a large, dangerous, technologically advanced military presence on the Korean peninsula with nuclear capacity in order to dominate southern Korea, exhaust and impoverish northern Korea and confront the People's Republic of China, Japan and the U.S.S.R. with a major U.S. military force in easy striking distance of their territory.
2. The U.S. government has occupied southern Korea since 1945 and with major forces since 1950, demeaning and limiting its sovereignty, denying it independence, exploiting its economy, corrupting its culture and depriving it of reunification with Koreans in the north.
3. The U.S. created and supported a police state in southern Korea using it to eliminate nationalist patriots, peasants seeking land reform, communists, socialists and all elements sympathetic to Korean people in the DPRK, killing hundreds of thousands, and used its southern bases and surrogate Korean military to harass, antagonize and demonize northern Koreans and force them to make exhaustive military expenditures after withdrawal of troops from the USSR in 1948, though far less than ROK and U.S. military expenditures for military preparedness and activity in Korea.
4. The US government has acted at all times to provoke tension and threats between the ROK and the DPRK, opposing and disrupting any plans for peaceful reunification, or to achieve peace and stability in the region, seeking to strengthen the ROK and weaken the DPRK until it could force unification with the ROK, with the north stripped and purged of communist, socialist, and leftist elements, and subservient to the US political and economic interests with Koreans of the north, too weak and debilitated to resist absorption of its people, resources, economy and the eradication of its values, economic system and accomplishments.
5. The US trained, directed and supported the ROK in systematic murder, imprisonment, torture, surveillance, harassment and pervasive violations of human rights of the society generally and the destruction of organizations believed to be communist, socialist or sympathetic to the DPRK or the PRC, or who sought peaceful reunification on a basis of equality, or wanted the removal of all US military elements in Korea and the region.
6. The US destroyed the peace keeping role of the United Nations by causing it to violate the UN Charter to authorize a criminal military assault with token participation of sixteen countries that had no quarrel with the DPRK, yet violated their own laws and the UN Charter to support US aggression and justify U.S. war crimes.
7. US military forces targeted and deliberately destroyed facilities essential to civilian life and economic production throughout northern Korea virtually leveling all major cities and towns with artillery, aerial bombardment and fire.
8. US military forces made civilians and civilian facilities the direct object of attack, killing hundreds of thousands of defenseless children, women and men, destroying civilian housing, commercial and business structures, schools, hospitals, churches, historical and cultural sites, markets, food storage and production facilities, water and electric power systems, communications and transportation facilities throughout northern Korea.
9. The US military indiscriminately bombed and attacked civilian facilities killing and injuring a defenseless population and destroying its essential facilities to destroy them in major part.
10. The US used prohibited weapons capable of mass and indiscriminate destruction including bacteriological, chemical and germ warfare, napalm and other incendiary bombs and devices to kill Koreans and destroy property.
11. The US military used excessive force against Korean soldiers including incapacitated, wounded, unarmed, defenseless troops and military prisoners.
12. US military forces committed innumerable war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity, against all the people of Korea that have been documented and described in part in a major detailed page indictment prepared by independent attorneys in the north and south of Korea for presentation with this indictment entitled North - South Joint Indictment on US War Crimes in Korea which is incorporated in this indictment for all purposes
13. The US waged war on the environment throughout northern Korea damaging all life, even deer, elk and other wild animals.
14. The US committed a range and magnitude of violent acts against northern Koreans calculated to destroy them in major part that was genocidal by intention, under law, and in effect.
15. The US government forced the imposition of severe economic sanctions on Korea, enforced by blockade and the coercion of other nations and states that were calculated to and did in fact impoverish and debilitate the people of northern Korea damaging the people, the economy, depriving them of essential medicines, medical supplies, safe drinking water, food and other necessities, destroying their lives in major part, committing a genocidal crime against humanity.
16. The United States government, by imposing sanctions, a blockade, economic coercion on other nations and parties, undermined the health and endurance of the people of northern Korea, used the deprivation of food as a weapon, forcing hunger, malnutrition and starvation that took hundreds of thousands of lives.
17. The United States government for 55 years has systematically manipulated, controlled, directed, misinformed and restricted press and media coverage to obtain consistent support for its military intervention, occupation and crimes against the people of Korea, including support for genocidal sanctions, to demonize and isolate the DPRK and northern Koreans, justify military occupation and repressive government in the south, destroy the Korean people in major part and obtain US geopolitical and economic goals in the region.
18. The US government has violated the Constitution of the United States, the delegation of powers over war and the military, the Bill of Rights, the UN Charter, international law and the laws of the ROK, DPRK, PRC, Japan and many others, in its lawless determination to exercise its will over the Korean peninsula, its people, resources and strategic position.
19. The United States government after 55 years, continues to this day to maintain a powerful US military force in Korea backed by nuclear weapons in violation of all law and against the will of the people of Korea and to present the reunification of the Korean people unnaturally by US force for more than half a century.
The Sentence to be Imposed on the Government of the
United States to Acknowledge its Crimes, Do Justice to
Its Victims and Prevent Further Crimes1. The United States government must immediately withdraw all its military personnel, arms and equipment from Korea, the surrounding seas, airspace and the region.
2. The United States government must cease all interference with the desire and efforts of the Korean people to reunify as they choose.
3. The United States government must provide emergency funds to the people of northern Korea through the DPRK, sufficient to feed them, and care for their sick, to be allocated as the people of northern Korea determine in their sole discretion for as long as such funds are needed.
4. The United States government must provide reparations to all of Korea for the purposes of rehabilitation of health care, education, housing and human services, and reconstruction and repair of utilities, transportation, communications, government buildings, and infrastructure, in proportion to the need and damage inflicted by violence and economic warfare to be allocated and administered as the people of Korea choose.
5. The United States government must make full disclosure of the truth from all its records and the memories of its former and present personnel of all crimes and wrongful acts it has committed, and caused against the people of Korea since September 8, 1945.
6. The United States government must clearly and openly demonstrate that it will honor the sovereignty, independence and human rights of the people of Korea and all other peoples, prevent US economic power from coercing, or exploiting other peoples, demilitarize and withdraw its armed forces, arms and supplies from around the world, agree to and enforce complete destruction of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, never again intervene in another country with military force and honor all provisions of the Charter of the United Nations as an equal among nations while seeking to strengthen its capacity to end the scourge of war.
Ramsey Clark
June 16, 2001
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