Korean Scholars Launch "Truth About the Cheonan" Website

Korean scholars who have been in forefront in analyzing and providing alternative insights into the Cheonan naval ship sinking incident have produced a website called Truth About the Cheonan, which includes links to official governmental reports and findings, as well as alternative viewpoints and questions raised about the official findings. The scholars are experts of diverse academic fields: J.J. Suh of SAIS/Johns Hopkins University (political science), Seunghun Lee of University of Virginia (physics), Sunwon Park of the Brookings Institution (political science), and Pan-seok Yang of University of Manitoba (Geology).

"Atomic bomb survivors in South Korea still feel the wounds"

The Los Angeles Times carried an in-depth look at Korean atomic bomb survivors ("hibakusha" in Japanese) who are seeking compensation from the Japanese government. Unknown mostly to the world, 40,000 Korean civilians (one-quarter of the total victims) perished in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, along with the Japanese. Most of the Koreans were forced laborers sent to Japan by colonial authorities to work in military factories and mines. In the case of the southern Korean town of Hapchun, highlighted in the article (the photo from The L.A. Times shows a survivor with pictures of Hiroshima bombing), 70 % of its population was relocated to Japan, resulting in a disproportionate number of atomic bomb victims, who returned home only to face poverty, prejudice, government neglect and loneliness.

"Ex-Prostitutes Say South Korea and U.S. Enabled Sex Trade Near Bases"

The New York Times featured a story, "Ex-Prostitutes Say South Korea and U.S. Enabled Sex Trade Near Bases,"about Korean prostitution near U.S. military bases in South Korea. [Photo on the left by the International Herald Tribune shows an ex-prostitute, now 80 years old, holding a photo of herself when she was 29.]

Most Korean women became involved in the trade to escape poverty in the postwar 1950s to 1980s, but a coersion by the past authoritarian South Korean governments and a complicity by the U.S. military helped maintain and sustain a thriving sex trade around the bases (called "Camptowns").

The Park Chung Hee government, in essence, encouraged the sex trade around U.S. bases as a mean to earn dollars in its modernization efforts (according to Prof. Katharine Moon of Wellesley College, Camptown prostitution and related businesses on the Korean Peninsula contributed to nearly 25 percent of the Korean GNP during this time) and used it to encourage U.S. troops not to leave Korea, in the same way that it brought the Japanese men en masse to Korea for "sex tourism" during the 70s.

Compounding the problem, now that South Korea has developed an advanced economy with high disposable income, some South Korean men are involved in unscrupulous sex tourisms overseas (mainly to Southeast Asia) and South Korea is engaged in global human trafficking of Korean, Filipino, Southeast Asian, Central Asian, and Russian women, with entailing abuses and violations of human rights.

Children 'Executed' in 1950 South Korean Killings

Followup to "Thousands killed in 1950 by US's Korean ally"

Children 'executed' in 1950 South Korean killings

By Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang (AP) — Government investigators digging into the grim hidden history of mass political executions in South Korea have confirmed that dozens of children were among many thousands shot by their own government early in the Korean War.

The investigative Truth and Reconciliation Commission has thus far verified more than two dozen mass killings of leftists and supposed sympathizers, among at least 100,000 people estimated to have been hastily shot and dumped into makeshift trenches, abandoned mines or the sea after communist North Korea invaded the south in June 1950.

The killings, details of which were buried in classified U.S. files for a half-century, were intended to keep southern leftists from aiding the invaders at a time when the rightist, U.S.-allied government was in danger of being overrun by communist forces.

Family survivors last month met with the U.S. Embassy for the first time, saying afterward they demanded an apology for alleged "direct and indirect" American involvement in the killings. More.

The Case of Kim Soo-im Revealed

The Associated Press has been uncovering hidden history of US involvement in postcolonial Korea, highlighted with the investigations into the No Gun Ri Massacre that earned a Pulitzer for the AP.

Now, the AP covers another revelation from declassified materials in the US National Archives in Maryland: the case of Kim Soo-im (photo), who was executed by the South Korean authorities during the Korean War for espionage charges -- which turns out to be fabrications brought about through torture and covered up by US authorities for their own interests, including their own espionage operation in North Korea.

"Thousands killed in 1950 by US's Korean ally"

Follow-up to KR posting, "Unearthing War’s Horrors Years Later in South Korea"

More revelations (or verifications of what Koreans had suspected) are coming out from the Korean truth commission investigating atrocities committed by South Korean authorities during the Korean War:

"Grave by mass grave, South Korea is unearthing the skeletons and buried truths of a cold-blooded slaughter from early in the Korean War, when this nation's U.S.-backed regime killed untold thousands of leftists and hapless peasants in a summer of terror in 1950.
With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.

The mass executions — intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners — were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century. They were "the most tragic and brutal chapter of the Korean War," said historian Kim Dong-choon, a member of a 2-year-old government commission investigating the killings." See more.

The photograph, taken by the U.S. Army and provided by the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., on May 5, 2008, is one of a series of declassified images depicting the summary execution of South Korean political prisoners by the South Korean military and police at Daejeon, South Korea, over several days in July 1950.

"Spies for Hire"

Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, known to Koreans for his writings that revealed the US's role in the violent 1980 military crackdown in South Korea that triggered the May 18 citizens’ uprising in the city of Kwangju, has written a new book, Spies for Hire.

"In Spies for Hire, investigative reporter Tim Shorrock lifts the
veil off a major story the government doesn't want us to know about -- the massive outsourcing of top secret intelligence activities to private-sector contractors.

Running spy networks overseas. Tracking down terrorists in the Middle East. Interrogating enemy prisoners. Analyzing data from spy satellites and intercepted phone calls. All of these are vital intelligence tasks that traditionally have been performed by government officials accountable to Congress and the American people. But that is no longer the case." See more information. See also his overview article in The NY Post.

"U.S. counterfeiting charges against N. Korea based on shaky evidence"

According to the McClatchy Newspapers, it "has found that the evidence to support Bush's charges against North Korea [counterfeiting of US currency] is uncertain at best and that the claims of the North Korean defectors cited in news accounts are dubious and perhaps bogus." See the article.

So much for the credibility of Bush's charges against North Korea's alleged illicit activities and reliability of testimonies from North Korean defectors. Though the McClatchy papers are the third largest newspaper group in the US, they mainly reach regional and medium size cities. Why have not major city media outlets picked up on this expose? Meanwhile, bloggers have been busy writing about this report.

"Unearthing War’s Horrors Years Later in South Korea"

The New York Times today carried an extensive report with a photo slide show describing the work of the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has unearthed many remains of atrocities committed by South Korean authorities against its own civilians during the Korean War. Until recently, South Korean authorities blamed North Korean troops' atrocities on South Korean civilians during the war (which were mostly committed by South Korean communists bent on vendetta), but have not acknowledged or revealed the extent of mass slaughter of their own citizens, some of which occurred prior to the Korean War, in campaigns to wipe out leftist forces and sympathizers.

Never again -- for this painful history not to repeat itself, the peace and reconciliation process in Korea must contiue to ensure genuine and lasting peace in Korean peninsula.