[2017-06-25]









The barbarous crimes committed by the US during the Korean war (1950-1953) are unprecedented in the world history of war.
The Americans slaughtered over 1.23 million and 1.24 million people in the northern and southern parts of Korea respectively during the war.
The brutal massacre perpetrated by US troops in October 1950 in Sinchon County, South Hwanghae Province, is the epitome of their atrocities.
In some 50 days of their occupation, the number of the locals they killed amounted to 35 000 tantamount to a quarter of the county population, and at least 16 200 of them were vulnerable.
Looking at mothers and children confined in the same warehouse, a US army officer said it was too happy for them to be together and ordered his men to separate them from each other so that the mothers could fret themselves to death with worry about their children and vice versa. Finally American troops fed gasoline to hungry children and threw fiery sticks and hand grenades against the mothers.
They gouged out the eyes and cut the limbs of a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and cut off breasts and private parts of a woman for no other reason than that her husband joined the Korean People’s Army.
Surveying the atrocities committed in the northern half of Korea in 1951, the Investigation Commission of the International Democratic Women’s Federation said that “these mass tortures and mass murders … surpass the crimes committed by Hitler Nazis in occupied areas in Europe”.
In May 1952, enraged by the oppression and manslaughter at the POW camp on Koje Island, some Korean POWs detained the camp manager and went on strike. Clark, the then commander of the UN forces, said that “the island should be made as silent as the grave” and made sure that a massive retaliatory operation was staged against the POWs, killing 276 and wounding over 4 000 in four hours.
The US used prisoners as guinea pigs for the test of weapons, especially A-bomb and germ bomb.
Over 1 400 Korean POWs were killed by the US in an atomic bomb test in the Pacific.
The germ warfare waged by the US in the Korean war was also unheard of.
After developing bacterial weapons to kill Asians, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up an official plan for their massive use in combat actions in the autumn of 1950.
According to the plan, US troops spread various germs of infectious diseases including smallpox in the temporarily occupied areas, as well as in the areas between the south of Korea’s middle part along the 38th parallel and the north of Seoul in December 1950.
Ridgway, who stepped into McArthur’s shoes as the commander of the UN forces, ordered Wayland, commander of the US Far East Air Force, to extend the germ warfare, saying “we are interested in killing as many Chinese and Korean people as possible”.
So, the US bombers dropped different kinds of germ bombs on 169 places in the northern half of Korea on 804 occasions between early January and March 1952.
The statute of limitation is inapplicable to war crimes.
The US cannot escape justice for its war crimes.
 
By Han Jong Chol PT