US Imperialism’s Thrice-cursed Atrocities against Korean People
1) Atrocity of Mass Murder Committed by US Imperialism against the Korean People
From
the first days of their provocation of the Korean war, the US rulers
used all the methods of war, coupling the numerical and technical
superiority with American-style brutality and inhumanity. They had a
delusion that they could frighten the Korean people and easily subdue
them.
Speaking of the tactics to be employed by the US army right
after the outbreak of war by US imperialism, the US war maniac, Dens,
raved: "I am in favour of the use of germ warfare, gas, atomic and
hydrogen bombs. I cannot take a sympathetic attitude towards hospitals,
churches, schools or any group of inhabitants. Charity toward any group
will be nothing more than hypocrisy."*
*Pravda, August 6, 1950.
The
US aggressors, as befitting such brutal nature of fascist hangmen,
committed atrocities of mass slaughter against the Korean people from
the first days of war.
While taking flight to the south in face of
the heroic counteroffensive of the Korean People’s Army, they
perpetrated all sorts of atrocities such as murder, incendiarism,
plunder and destruction everywhere in south Korea.
Even according to
the data confirmed by the initial investigation, the US aggressors
murdered innumerable patriots and other people in large and small towns
and villages of south Korea-1,146 in Suwon, over 2,060 in Chungju, more
than 600 in Kongju and Phyongthaek respectively, over 2,000 in Puyo and
Chongju respectively, 8,644 in Taejon, over 4,000 in Jonju, more than
500 in Ansong, over 400 in Kunsan and Anyang respectively, 158 in
Jochiwon and
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more than 800 in Thongyong, to cite some examples.*
*
"The Report of the Investigation Commission of the Democratic Front for
the Reunification of the Fatherland on the Atrocities Committed by the
US Armed Interventionists and Syngman Rhee Clique," No. 2, September
16, 1950. (Documents on the Atrocities of US Aggressors in Korea,
Pyongyang, p. 38.)
Even according to a UP report, the number of
inhabitants murdered in south Korea by the fleeing US imperialists and
Syngman Rhee puppet clique ran into no less than one million.*
* UP, September 15, 1951.
The
US imperialists and the Syngman Rhee puppet clique thus murdered south
Korean people en masse while fleeing southward, but they could neither
subdue the Korean people nor escape the fate of defeat.
The US
aggressors, who were faced with the danger of being plunged into the sea
off Pusan, made desperate efforts to hold on to the bridgehead of Pusan
at all costs, instead of learning a due lesson from the defeat.
With
a view to saving the 8th Army from imminent annihilation and besieging
reversely the Korean People’s Army’s main force on the Raktong-gang
line, the US imperialists carried out a large-scale landing operation at
Inchon in the middle of September 1950 by mobilizing over 50,000
troops, more than 300 warships and other vessels and over 1,000 planes.
To
cope with the obtaining military and political situations, President
Kim II Sung, the ever-victorious, iron-willed brilliant commander and
gifted military strategist, put forward a new strategic policy for
preparing a new, decisive blow at the enemy and turning the war
situation in our favour, and organized and directed the strategic
retreat of the People’s Army. Thus the Korean war entered its second
stage.
The US aggressors, again burning with the wild ambition of
swallowing the whole of Korea at a gulp, perpetrated atrocities of mass
murder which were beyond human imagination and unprecedented in world
history in those areas which they had managed to occupy with the retreat
of the People’s Army.
President Kim II Sung taught:
"Engels once
called the British army the most brutal army. During World War II. the
German fascist army outdid the British army in its savagery. The
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human brain could not imagine more diabolical and horrible barbarities than those committed by the Hitlerite villains.
"But in Korea, the Yankees surpassed the Hitlerites by far."
In
the Korean war the US imperialists, who had long been trained on
misanthropy and racism, revealed their barbarity and brutality to the
whole world far exceeding those of the preceding imperialists.
"Retake
Seoul! There are girls and women. For three days the city will be
yours. You will have girls and women in Seoul." This is the "special
order" MacArthur, Commander of the "UN Forces", issued in September 1950
to US men and officers making a landing at Inchon.
As seen in this
"special order" of MacArthur, the US imperialists did not hesitate in
the least to throw off their masks of the so-called "civilization" and
"humanism" and reveal their wolfish nature in order to retrieve
themselves from their defeat in the Korean war.
In the wake of
MacArthur. the commander of the 8th Army instigated his mercenary troops
participating in the Korean war to the mass slaughter of the
inhabitants in the areas under their temporary occupation. He said: "The
soldiers of the UN Forces!... Don’t let your hands tremble even when
those who appear before you are children or old people. Kill them! In
doing so you will be saving yourselves from catastrophe and fulfilling
your duty as the soldiers of the UN Forces."
The US murderous
leaders, man haters and racists to the marrow, gave an order for human
slaughter: "The Koreans are different from Americans. So, there should
be no sympathy for them. Be merciless and merciless!" Acting upon this
order, the US aggressors perpetrated genocidal atrocities from the
moment they crossed the 38th parallel in early October 1950 and set
their foot of aggression on the northern half of the Republic.
Everywhere they set foot, not a single day passed without the cursed
reports of their shooting Korean people.
At that time, the murder of Koreans was encouraged among the US soldiers as a "merit" worthy of commendation.
In his diary, Edward Lich, officer of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who fell in the Korean war, wrote:
"On the eve of Christmas our company killed 18 Korean communists.... The divisional commander promised to award a prize...."
This
diary is only a fragmentary record of numerous atrocities which lays
bare as it is the cannibalistic brutality and barbarity committed in
Korea by the
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US aggressors, the ringleader of modern
imperialism, that inherited the brutal traditions of their Yankee
ancestors who from the first days of their birth set up a country of
robbers on a sea of blood shed by the American natives, established a
"special fund" for the skins of the heads of Indians, encouraged their
brutal murder with "prizes" and thus exterminated their race.
From
such a racial point of view and in the Yankee way of doing things, the
US aggressors carried out mass slaughter of Koreans during their
temporary occupation of the areas of the northern half of the Republic.
Massacre
of Korean people was committed, above all, by the US troops and, under
the direction of the US army and the "CIC" (the counterintelligence
corps), by the puppet gendarmerie and various reactionary terrorist
organizations such as the "Peace Maintenance Corps",
"Destroy-Communists Corps", "Police Force", "Skull and Crossbones Unit",
"Young Men’s Association from the Northwest" and "Taehan Young Men’s
Association", which were organized with pro-Japanese and pro-US
elements, liquidated landlords, comprador capitalists, renegades and the
like.
They perpetrated the largest-scale and most brutal slaughter
of people ever known in human history in the temporarily occupied areas
of the northern half of the Republic.
The atrocity of mass murder
committed by the US aggressors in Sinchon County, Hwanghae Province,
affords the most typical example of their innumerable murderous
atrocities in the areas of the northern half of the Republic.
This
massacre in Sinchon County, Hwanghae Province, was committed under the
direct command of Lieut. Harrison, commander of the US occupa-tionist
troops in the county.
The US aggressive army occupied the district of
Sinchon on October 17, 1950. On the first date of their occupation,
Harrison declared: "My orders are the law and he who ever violates them
shall be shot unconditionally." He assembled the overthrown reactionary
landlords, wicked religious men, usurers, scamps and other human scum
and egged them on to murderous atrocities. And an unheard-of atrocious
massacre took place in Sinchon, and the area was soon turned into a
shambles of horrible human slaughter.
On October 18, the following
day of their occupation of Sinchon, the aggressors locked up over 900
people including 300 children and women in the air-raid shelter of the
Sinchon County Party Committee and burned them to death by setting fire
to it after pouring gasoline over them. On the 19th and the 23rd they
buried alive or burned to death as many as 650 people in the trenches
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near
the above-mentioned air-raid shelter. The number of people massacred
during those three times, in the air-raid shelter and the trenches
nearby it, reached more than 1,550.
On October 20, on the order of
Harrison they herded more than 500 inhabitants including over 150 women
and children into the air-raid shelter of the former Sinchon County
Militia Station, blocked its entrance and blew it up with a
pre-installed explosive to murder them all.
When all the air-raid
shelters were filled with the corpses of people, the cutthroats worked
out a new plan for massacre. On October 21, they drove five US army
trucks with a full load of people to the Nambu Reservoir (present Sowon
Reservoir) and threw them into it to be drowned to death. Between the
latter part of October and the end of November they mercilessly murdered
more than 1,600 people in the Nambu Reservoir and the Ryongmun
Reservoir (present Sinchon Reservoir).
Around mid-November, to vent
their anger on the inhabitants after losing a battle in a "punitive"
operation against the Kuwolsan People’s Guerillas, the US aggressors
arrested all the inhabitants of a village at the foot of the mountain
and massacred over 500 people collectively at Minchon-ri on their way to
Sinchon.
The desperation of the aggressors reached its zenith
towards the end of November 1950, when they were compelled to flee from
the northern half of the Republic in the face of the counteroffensive of
the heroic Korean People’s Army.
On December 7, just before they
were driven out of Sinchon, the US imperialists murdered several hundred
women and children in a mass in the powder magazine in Wonam-ri,
Sinchon Sub-County. Harrison, commander of the US troops occupying the
area, appeared in front of the powder magazine.
Looking at the babies
nestling at their mothers’ bosoms, he roared: "It is too happy for the
mothers and babies to be together. Tear the babies off at once and lock
them separately! Let the mothers die in their anxiety about their
babies, and let the babies die while crying for their mothers!"
This
was the order for a human butchery which fully revealed the
cannibalistic nature of the US mercenary troops who had been thoroughly
trained in fascist misanthropy by the US ruling circles and who
rejoiced over manslaughter.
The US mercenary troops, on the order of
Harrison, tore the babies away from the bosoms of their desperately
resisting mothers and locked them up in
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another warehouse. The
hills and air of Sinchon reverberated with the babies’ cries for their
mothers and the screams of the mothers calling their darlings. The US
cutthroats gave gasoline to those innocent babies crying for water to
burn their hearts to death. They starved and froze them to death. They
threw rice straw over the heads of the mothers and children, poured
gasoline over it and set fire to it. Not satisfied with this, they threw
more than 100 hand grenades into the warehouse through the window to
murder the detainees coldbloodedly. As a result, over 910 people
including 400 mothers and 102 children were killed together in the two
warehouses.*
* Immediately after Sinchon County was liberated from
the temporary occupation of US imperialism, the person who took part in
the exhumation of corpses in this "warehouse of death" told about the
horrible scene of that time as follows: "Opening the door of the
warehouse we first saw piles of children’s corpses right behind it,
which evidenced their struggling to get out. There were many bodies of
people who had been frozen, starved or burned to death. Nails of most of
the children were missing and their fingertips were smeared with blood,
a clear evidence of the desperate efforts they had made to get out of
the place to the moment of their lives." (Documents on the Atrocities of
the US Aggressors in Korea. Pyongyang, p. 94.)
The Sinchon Museum
and the graves for 400 mothers and 102 children in Sinchon County,
South Hwanghae Province can today be seen. They show the real facts of
the thrice-cursed atrocities of mass murder committed by the US
aggressors during the war.
In addition to mass murder of innocent
people in Sinchon, the US aggressors killed numerous people
individually. In this case, the methods of murder were so cruel to make
even beasts turn away the sight.
On October 18, 1950, in Wolsan-ri,
Chori Sub-County, Sinchon County, the US mercenaries killed a model
peasant after dragging him round the village with his nose and ears run
through with wire, his hands pierced through with bayonets and the
letter of commendation nailed on his forehead, which he had been awarded
as a model peasant.
These facts are nothing more than extremely
fragmentary examples of the bestial atrocities of murder committed by US
imperialism in Sinchon County.
The number of people murdered
collectively and individually during the temporary occupation of Sinchon
County by the US aggressors reached 35,383 or a quarter of the total
population of the county. Among them, 16,234 were children, old people
and women.
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Eighty-seven per cent of the population of
Mangung-ri, Kunghung Sub-County, Sinchon County, and 68 per cent of the
population of Ryongdang-ri, Onchon Sub-County of the same county, were
murdered mercilessly at the blood-stained hands of the US murderers. In
Ryangjang-ri, Sinchon County, 100 per cent of the male inhabitants were
slaughtered.
All this was the misery caused in a single county with a
population of 142,788 (as of October 10, 1950), and the atrocity was
committed in a little over one month of occupation by the US aggressor
troops.
"I like to shoot straight at the face.... I feel a real sense
of self-confidence when pointing my gun at the wounded looking up at me
.... I come to know I am a matchless crack shot when the skull is
broken to pieces, the eyeballs dropping out of the eyeholes, as a result
of my correct aiming and shooting at the temple...." This is a US
aggressor soldier’s "narrative of experiences" in the Korean war
published in Daily Advocate. To the US cutthroats, human-slaughter was
an amusement and a kind of hunting.
The tragic scene of human
butchery took place not only in Sinchon County but also in all other
places where the US mercenary army had set foot on.
On October 23,
1950, the US aggressor troops came to the Unryul Mine, ran a wire
through the bellies of every ten of over 2,000 workers and their family
members in the mine, threw them into the pits and covered them with ore
to die there. They also murdered more than 300 inhabitants by cutting
their bodies to pieces with a fodder-cutter. In November that year, the
US aggressor troops who had landed on Jang Island in Rimpho Sub-County,
Jongju County, North Phyongan Province, slaughtered all the population
or more than 580 inhabitants of the island. In mid-November, in
Pongmyong-ri, Sangjoyang Sub-County, Hamju County, South Hamgyong
Province, the enemy arrested over 20 family members of Workers’ Party
members, chopped them with an ax and burned their bodies. On November
23, at Haksong Sub-County, Haksong County, North Hamgyong Province, they
dragged 28 people to a mountain, poured gasoline over them and burned
them to death.
The blood-thirsty US aggressors committed such brutal
atrocities of murder in many other large and small towns and villages
under their occupation.
The following table shows part of the
bestial atrocities of murder committed by the US aggressors in the areas
under their temporary occupation.
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STATISTICS ON MURDEROUS ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY
US IMPERIALISM IN SOME AREAS OF THE NORTHERN HALF
OF THE REPUBLIC DURING ITS
TEMPORARY OCCUPATION
Locality Number of the Murdered Locality Number of the Murdered
Pyongyang Over 15,000 Songrim Over 1 ,000
Sinchon 35,383 Sari won Over 950
Anak 19,072 Anju Over 5,000
Unryul Over 13,000 Kangso 1,561
Haeju Over 6,000 Nampho 1,511
Pyoksong 5,998 Kaechon 1,342
Songhwa 5,545 Sunchon Over 1,200
Onchon 5,131 Pake ho n Over 1,400
Thaethan 3,429 Sonchon Over 1,400
Phyongchon 3,040 Jongju Over 800
Yonan 2,450 Chosan Over 900
Jaeryong Over 1,400 Huichon Over 850
Jangyon 1,199 Yangyang Over 25,300
Ragyon 802 Cholwon Over 1,560
Phyongsan Over 5,290 Wonsan 630
Thosan 1,385 Hamju 648
Pongsan 1,293 Tanchon 532
The
US aggressors killed these hundreds of thousands of innocent people by
shooting, hanging, beating, and burying alive. Not only that. They
resorted to the most horrible, brutal methods: they killed people after
dragging them with their noses and ears run through with wire, scooping
out their eyeballs and cutting off nipples, skinning off their heads and
bodies, cutting off their lips and tongues, dismembering their limbs,
cutting their bodies to pieces with saws, burning them to death on heaps
of chopped firewood, boiling them in hot water, crucifying them and
rolling tanks over them. The US homicides had no scruples even of
committing such an atrocity as skinning the heads of patriots and taking
them away as "souvenirs", following the examples of their Yankee
ancestors.
These are the real facts of the so-called "police action"
committed in the Korean war in the name of the "UN Forces" by the US
aggressors who had
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grown fat on the graves of the American
Indians. They are the pride of soldiers of the "civilized country" in
the fifties of the 20th century which advocates "democracy" and
"humanism" and poses as their "defender".
The brutality and cruelty
of the US aggressors gained great notoriety in the world as their
hereditary traditions, and they reached their zenith during the Korean
war.
As the US aggressor troops were taking to flight from their
temporarily occupied areas when the heroic Korean People’s Army went
over to counterof-fensive, Truman was very flurried. On November 30,
1950, he declared: "The use of any kinds of weapons including atomic
bombs on Korea is under consideration." By this atomic blackmail policy
he wanted to retrieve their defeat.
Acting upon the instruction of
their master, the US aggressors in flight threatened many peaceful
inhabitants with the "dropping of atomic bombs". They took them away and
murdered them en masse on the way to commit diabolical atrocities.
On
December 4 and 5, 1950, fleeing from Pyongyang, the US aggressors
forced citizens, by threats, to cross the bridge over the Taedong River.
When the people were in the middle of the bridge, they blew it up to
kill more than 4,000 innocent people in cold blood. According to an
eyewitness of the scene, on December 4 the Taedong River was covered
with a mass of people and its water was dyed with the blood of the
people killed by the explosion. In January 1951 when they were again
driven out of Seoul, the US aggressors took over 30,000 patriots from
Seoul prisons to the south on the pretext of "transfer" and killed more
than 10,000 of them en masse on the way. Besides, they committed
atrocities of mass murder in Yangyang of Kangwon Province and many other
districts.
The brutal atrocities of murder perpetrated by the US
aggressors in the areas under their temporary occupation and at the time
of their southward flight were without precedent, as the Report of the
Commission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers says:
"The evidence of mass murders, individual murders and bestialities
committed by the military forces of the USA against Korean civilians
including women and children is overwhelming both in quantity of the
crimes committed and in the variety of methods employed."*
* "Report
of the Commission of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers
on US Crimes in Korea." (March 31,1952.) (Documents on the Atrocities
of the US Aggres-
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sors in Korea , Pyongyang, p. 369.)
The
report of the Investigation Commission of the International Democratic
Women’s Federation dated May 28, 1951, says: "In the areas under the
temporary occupation of the US and Syngman Rhee troops, hundreds of
thousands of peaceful inhabitants, together with their families, were
tortured, burned to death and buried alive, irrespective of the old and
young. Thousands of other people were dying with cold and hunger in
narrow prisons without any reason, trial and sentence.
"These mass tortures and mass murders...surpass the crimes committed by Hitler Nazis in temporarily occupied Europe."*
*Jbid., p. 357.
During the Korean war the United States also committed dreadful atrocities against the Republic’s POWs.
In
flagrant violation of the international agreement on the POWs, the
United States murdered the Republic’s POWs by medieval methods. It even
slaughtered them, using them as objects of experiment for
bacteriological weapons and chemical warfare, as targets of ball firing
and objects of the efficiency test of arms.
The bestial atrocities
of murder committed by the US army against the Republic’s POWs at the
camps in the islands of Koje, Jeju and Pongam have already been widely
known to the world.
On June 15, 1951, at Compound No. 62 in Koje
Island more than one hundred POWs were killed in cold blood as targets
of the machine-gun ball firing of the US troops, and 80 per cent of the
entire POWs were used as objects for bacteriological weapon tests and
their lives were threatened with various germ-diseases. As the Egyptian
paper Al Jumhuria Vyisuri laid bare, over 1,400 POWs from camps in
different places in south Korea were taken to the Pacific and killed en
masse as objects of A-bomb tests of the United States.
In particular,
in order to break up the armistice negotiations, the US imperialists
tried hard to enforce their nonsensical claim for the so-called
"voluntary repatriation" of POWs which they had fabricated for the
purpose. They perpetrated unprecedented bestial atrocities against the
Republic’s POWs. The murderous atrocities committed by US imperialism
at the camp in Koje Island in February and May 1952 are one of such
examples.*
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*The appeal signed by more than 6,200 of the
Republic’s POWs in the Kojedo Camp on May 23, 1952, reads in part: "On
May 19. 1952, in POW Compound No. 66, the American devils ... falsely
announced that all the POWs willing to return to north Korea should
assemble before their own barracks by 7 p.m. ready to embark.... While
we were getting into line, American soldiers opened fire with machine
guns and flamethrowers and used even tanks, killing 127 of our comrades
and wounding many more. On two successive days. May 20 and 21, in the
four divisions of our camp, more than 1,000 of our comrades were
summoned to the offices of the American military police and the POW Camp
Commandant to be subjected to the so-called ‘voluntary repatriation’
questionings. 422 of our comrades have not returned till now, while more
than 100 returned bleeding all over with fractured arms and dagger
wounds in their breasts, with their backs, wrists and breasts branded
with disgraceful characters.... There is no limit to the brutality of
the American murderers.... They ... have beaten us with iron rods and
leather whips. They have kicked us and set their fierce dogs on us. In
steam chambers they have suffocated our comrades to death. They have
strangled them and quartered them. The cannibals in American military
uniforms are using our patriots barbarously in the bacteriological,
chemical and atomic weapon tests." (Korean Central Yearbook, 1953,
Pyongyang, p. 174.)
As this account of POWs smuggled out of the
Kojedo POW Camp tells, the US troops perpetrated brutal massacre beyond
human imagination: they shot gas shells and machine guns to murder en
masse those empty-handed pris-oners-of-war who refused to obey their
demand to reject the repatriation to the Republic, buried them alive,
burned, starved and froze them to death, or set dogs on them to tear
them to death. They exhausted every means of atrocity against the women
prisoners of war before killing them.
Due to such bestial atrocities
of murder committed by the US imperialists, during the war a large
number of Republic’s POWs were mercilessly slaughtered. Many were
wounded or maimed for life.
No period throughout human history, in
all ages and countries, be it a period of the worse despotic rule or a
period of darkness overridden by fascist • hangmen, and no bloody war of
aggression, has ever seen such a record of barbarities that could
surpass, in brutality and bestiality, the atrocities of murder committed
by the US murderers in the Korean war.
Such was the very showcase of
"democracy" and "humanism" of the United States which poses as a
"civilized nation" of the 20th century and such was part of the
cold-blooded murder committed by the advocates of "peace". In the Korean
war the United States fully revealed to the whole world its true
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colour as a "civilized nation".
The
US imperialists had dreamed of bringing the Korean people to their
knees by means of horrible bestial atrocities, but could never subjugate
the Korean people who were determined to defend the freedom and
happiness of their fatherland at the cost of their lives. On the
contrary, the murderous atrocities they had committed in Korea stirred
up the Korean people’s national resentment and strong feeling of
hostility all the more. The Korean people fought with increasing
persistency in order to avenge the massacre of their parents, brothers
and sisters on the US aggressors, to wreak vengeance upon the enemy a
thousand and one times.
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