This chapter discusses massacres that occurred during the Korean War. It notes that civilian massacres before the war are not well researched. The chapter outlines different types of massacres, including those committed by the military/police with official approval, retaliatory operations without top approval, and personal retaliations. It describes the brutal nature of some massacres and compares them to events like the Nanjing Massacre. The chapter also analyzes the structural, social, and ideological backgrounds that contributed to the massacres, including the legacy of Japanese colonial rule and traditional discourses that dehumanized political opponents. It concludes that both North and South Korea blamed each other for relying on foreign powers during their state

1. Unending Korean War
A Social History
Dong-Choon Kim, Jan 2009
Chapter Four - MASSACRE
2015.10.19
Presented by: Burenjargal Bombish

2. Content
 Hidden
 The truth about
 Characteristics
 Political sociology
 Conclusion
Massacres

3. 1. Hidden
 No research on massacre of civilians has been done on how ordinary
Koreans experienced the war
 Civilian massacres before the onset of the Korean War are barely known
 Victims have been killed three times over by
the state:
Actual massacres
Suppression of demands of the truth in 1960
Branding of their families and descendants as
“Reds” – Guilt-by-association

4. 1. Hidden
 Stronger political resistance in Korea to acknowledging the truth about
these massacres than there was in Japan to acknowledging the 1937
Nanjing Massacre
 Concealment of the truth and the lack of academic treatments are major
blocks to the eventual unification of the two Koreas and a peaceful
twenty-first century.
 This made possible later massacres: April 19 Popular Uprising, Kwangju
Citizen’s Uprising, & Vietnam war

5. 2. Truth about
 War time killings ≠ Genocide
 Genocide: The state authority or a
related body’s intentional, one-
sided mass killings, without legal
procedures or trials, of unarmed
civilians who are its political
opponents.

6. 1. Massacres by the
military and police
People’s trial military’s
practice of jurisdiction
2. Retaliatory military
operations
Personal retaliation and
massacres
War
Trials
(legal killing)
Military &
Police Violence Terrorist Activities
Military Operations Executions
official
unofficial
Type of massacres

7. 1. Massacres by the military and police
 Official / Tacit approval of a military leader or top government
authority
 The killings of civilians on Cheju Island
2. Retaliatory military operations
 Without orders and tacit approval of top echelon government
officials or military leadership
 Mass killings driven by an uncontrolled sense of emergency or
revenge in an unplanned situation
Type of massacres

8. 3. People’s trial military’s practice of jurisdiction
 Judicial process dealing with those who have colluded with or helped the
enemy or those who are suspected of being likely to do so, for
protection of the troops
 The police rather than the military are responsible
 By the support of government authorities through legislation: “Special
Measures for Crimes in Emergency Situations”,
 When ruling class feels extremely threatened
4. Personal retaliation and massacres
 Much less official and more personal resentments
 By youth organizations and groups that formed as the front line moved
back and forth during the war against civilians of opposition force
Type of massacres

9. 1. Massacres by the
military and police
People’s trial
military’s practice of
jurisdiction
2. Retaliatory
military operations
Personal retaliation
and massacres
War
Trials
(legal killing)
Military &
Police Violence Terrorist Activities
Military Operations Executions
official
unofficial
Type of massacres
Perpetrators are fully aware that the killings
are “illegal” but do not expect to be punished
Other war

10. 3. Characteristics
Manhunt
 In the absence of modern weapons the massacres took on
unrestrained and ruthless war
 Become more brutal when vengeance was involved.
 The most brutal massacres committed by the military and police
took place on Cheju Island.
 Some methods:
 gibbeting heads,
 beat until half dead,
 burning on defenseless women and children etc

11. 3. Characteristics
Comparative view of Korean War
Massacres
 Over tens of thousands must be killed
nationwide – Greater than Nanjang
massacre: 300.000 and Spanish civil war:
300-400.000
 Both premodern and modern
characteristics
 Cause of the war: political + ideological
massacre but not racism

12. Differ from Similar to:
Nazi holocaust: Executed by a
modernized state authority and
Emotionally neutral methods
Social massacres of the post-Cold
War era in the 1990s
Nazi’s planned killing led by state
authority
Difficult to distinguish who was
the enemy – Civil wars in Spain,
Greece, and Vietnam
U.S. political intention to establish
right wing regime – Massacres in
Taiwan, Greece and Vietnam

13. 4. Political Sociology
Structural background
 Political terrorism, violence and massacres were rare before 1946
 If the military intervention of the U.S. and SU had not occurred, an
independent state would eventually have been established in the wake of
all the political violence and guerilla warfare.
 Massacres become more brutal as the defensive motivation of
“elimination of danger”
 Syngman Rhee gave policemen above sergeant level and soldiers
above second lieutenant level the right to execute “leftist rebels”
 U.S. military orders to “kill everyone suspicious”.

15. Structural background
• Korea’s task of state building
• Confrontation over: Liberal democracy VS People’s democracy
 In North: Anti-feudalist, anti-imperialist revolution
 Pro Soviet inclination
 In South: U.S. Army Military Government was established
 Former pro Japanese political force began to regain the power
 Anti-trusteeship became a “patriotic movement” VS middle-class fear
of revolution changed into “righteous behavior”
 “Cleansing” of leftists in the South
4. Political Sociology

16. Social background
• Rhee advantaged the cruelty in was as means for staying in power
• branded political enemies as Reds
• Proclaimed “Reds should be shot to death” – Politics of massacre
• Was a Machiavellian politician: viewed the general public as objects to
be formed and treated them like material.
4. Political Sociology

17. The Legacy of Japanese Colonial Rule
• Police:
lower-class, oppressive, new ruling class
those who had worked for Japanese imperialists were requited
• Techno-bureaucratic soldiers:
honored military necessity above the lives of civilians
search for medals, promotion, corruption,
join the war only after a short period of time
 Military police
 Special Investigation Section (SIS)
4. Political Sociology

18. The Legacy of Tradition: The Discourse of Treachery and Politics of Dehumanization
4. Political Sociology
Ideologies
anti-capitalism &
anticommunism
Discourses
Nationalism &
national unification
<
Emotional confrontation:
 Nationalists VS Antinationalist
 Family and Non-family
 Nationals and Non-nationals
Massacres:
 Just VS unacceptable
TREACHERY
traitor or
betrayer

19. The Legacy of Tradition: The Discourse of Treachery and Politics of Dehumanization
4. Political Sociology
 Massacres in the war became more
brutal and widespread because
punishment of the rebel forces extended
to their families and relatives.
 Violence in the Korean War was with
deep historical and cultural roots.
 The war massacres took place during the establishment of a state and are a
modern phenomenon.
 “The Reds are politically different race -> Quasi-ethnicism or quasi- racism
(only hatred and physical force: women and children)

20. 4. Conclusion
 Both North and South Korea blamed each
other for being traitorous by drawing on
foreign support in an effort to establish a
state
 Korean War was a war without any cause,
purpose, or ideals
 Mutual destruction or self destruction
 Victims of the war were people unwillingly
divided by the thirty-eight parallel into the
citizens of RoK and DPRK