Reference
- Korean War (War Crimes Trials)U.S. State Department official and staunch anticommunist Arthur B. Emmons III initiated the debate over whether to bring war criminals of the Korean conflict...
Memory of Forgotten War Four Deeply Personal Accounts of the Korean War
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
This documentary conveys the human costs of military conflict through deeply personal accounts of the Korean War (1950-53) by four Korean-American survivors. Their stories take audiences through the trajectory of the war, from extensive bombing campaigns, to day-to-day struggle for survival, and separation from family members across the DMZ. Decades later, each person reunites with relatives in North Korea, conveying beyond words the meaning of family loss.
These stories belie the notion that war ends when the guns are silenced and foreshadow the future of countless others displaced by ongoing military conflict today.
Perspectives
The Hijacked War
The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days, but armistice talks occupied more than two of those years, as more than 14,000 Chinese prisoners of war refused to return to Communist China and demanded to go to Nationalist Taiwan, effectively hijacking the negotiations and thwarting the designs of world leaders at a pivotal moment in Cold War history. In The Hijacked War, David Cheng Chang vividly portrays the experiences of Chinese prisoners in the dark, cold, and damp tents of Koje and Cheju Islands in Korea and how their decisions derailed the high politics being conducted in the corridors of power in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. Chang demonstrates how the Truman-Acheson administration's policies of voluntary repatriation and prisoner reindoctrination for psychological warfare purposes--the first overt and the second covert--had unintended consequences. The "success" of the reindoctrination program backfired when anti-Communist Chinese prisoners persuaded and coerced fellow POWs to renounce their homeland. Drawing on newly declassified archival materials from China, Taiwan, and the United States, and interviews with more than 80 surviving Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war, Chang depicts the struggle over prisoner repatriation that dominated the second half of the Korean War, from early 1952 to July 1953, in the prisoners' own words.
The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War
A groundbreaking look at how the interrogation rooms of the Korean War set the stage for a new kind of battle--not over land but over human subjects Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean peninsula. But The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War presents an entirely new narrative, shifting the perspective from the boundaries of the battlefield to inside the interrogation room. Upending conventional notions of what we think of as geographies of military conflict, Monica Kim demonstrates how the Korean War evolved from a fight over territory to one over human interiority and the individual human subject, forging the template for the US wars of intervention that would predominate during the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. Kim looks at how, during the armistice negotiations, the United States and their allies proposed a new kind of interrogation room: one in which POWs could exercise their "free will" and choose which country they would go to after the ceasefire. The global controversy that erupted exposed how interrogation rooms had become a flashpoint for the struggles between the ambitions of empire and the demands for decolonization, as the aim of interrogation was to produce subjects who attested to a nation's right to govern. The complex web of interrogators and prisoners--Japanese-American interrogators, Indian military personnel, Korean POWs and interrogators, and American POWs--that Kim uncovers contradicts the simple story in US popular memory of "brainwashing" during the Korean War. Bringing together a vast range of sources that track two generations of people moving between three continents, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War delves into an essential yet overlooked aspect of modern warfare in the twentieth century.
Extract of Interim historical report, Korea War Crimes Division, cumulative to 30 June 1953
Read a historical report on war crimes during the Korean War.
Kill 'Em All - American War Crimes in Korea
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
The massacre at No Gun Ri during the Korean War ranks as one of the worst atrocities committed by American troops on civilians in the 20th Century. And it went unreported at the time. Now, in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Charles Hanley, and using previously unseen testimony from veterans, survivors and senior members of the American military, this groundbreaking Timewatch investigation exposes the real story behind the massacre and unravels a much wider tale of American brutality and cover-up.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency-Korean War
- Defense POW/MIA Accounting AgencyThe Korean War accounting effort remains a priority for the U.S. government. The Department of Defense (DoD) pursues opportunities to gain access to loss sites within North Korea and South Korea. Additionally, identifications continue to be made from remains that were returned to the U.S. using forensic and DNA technology.
More than 7,500 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War.
Online Resources
- Experiencing War: The Korean War Not ForgottenNestled between the epic cataclysm that was World War II and the roiling controversy that was Vietnam, Korea is too often referred to as the forgotten war. The 5.7 million American men and women who served in that war each have their own memories, whether they were on the battle lines, in the air, or in support of those whose lives were at risk. The war lasted just over three years, but nearly 60 years after the guns fell silent, Americans in uniform still maintain the peace along the 38th Parallel, the border between North and South. Please join our effort to document these and other veterans' stories by sending us your own recollections and memories. Each contribution makes this project all the more priceless. Learn how you can participate in The Veterans History Project.
- Kill 'em All': The American Military in KoreaThe Korean War was a bloody conflict. It left Korea, North and South, with several million dead and the UN forces involved in the fighting with over 100,000 casualties. But despite fighting as intense and as violent as any other conflict since World War Two, Korea has always been history's 'Forgotten War'.
While atrocities conducted both by North and South Korean forces have already been documented, recently a much darker side to the US involvement in the Korean War has begun to emerge. It casts a shadow over the conduct of US forces during the conflict, particularly of officers and generals in command. - Racism, Canadian War Crimes, and the Korean War: Shin Hyun-Chan’s Quest for JusticeScholars and journalists in Korea and the United States have worked hard over the past 15 years to bring to light the mass killings of civilians that occurred during the Korean War. These stories, including that of the strafing of civilians at No Gun Ri, have challenged the hegemonic narrative of the ‘good war’ that has dominated south Korean and US accounts of this tragic past. In the following revised excerpt of a chapter from his new book, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), Canadian historian John Price documents the story of Mr. Shin Hyun-Chan, a survivor of a Canadian war crime committed during the Korean war. In investigating the Shin case the author uncovered numerous other war crimes committed by Canadian forces in Korea, including rape and murder. In almost all cases where the perpetrators faced court-martials, they were found guilty but then exonerated upon return to Canada. Reporters in Korea at the time pointed to racism as endemic and a contributing factor. But the Canadian military, supported by religious leaders, refuted the accusations and buried the stories.
Suffering of U. N. Prisoners
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowIn the last grueling months of the Korean War, American troops are obsessed with the point system that determines who goes home first. U.N. prisoners suffer malnutrition, beatings, brainwashing, and other violence.
They Chose China
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowIt is January 1954. The Korean War is over. Captured UN soldiers held in POW camps are free to return home. Those who refuse repatriation to their homeland are transferred to a neutral zone and given 90 days to reconsider their decision. Among them are 21 American soldiers who decide defiantly to stay in China.
Back in the United States, McCarthyism is at its height. Many Americans believe these young men have been brainwashed by Chinese communists through a new form of thought control. But what really happened? Featuring never-before-seen footage from the Chinese camps as well as interviews with former POWs and their families, They Chose China tells the fascinating stories of these forgotten American dissidents.