Pablo Picasso - Massacre in Korea
“In 2008 the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation commission found 1,222 instances of mass killings, with at least 215 of these involving U.S. troops or airplanes massacring unarmed civilians. At Cheongwon in central Korea, up to 7,000 people were slaughtered.”
The U.S. committed an uncountable amount of acts designated as “war crimes”, including widespread use of chemical and biological weapons such as the plague, and intentionally destroying hydroelectric dams that provided drinking water for 75% of the population. In total around 5 million Koreans lost their lives.
Remember No Gun Ri, Jeju, Yeosun, and the countless other instances of mass extermination by the U.S.Reblogging this because most of my followers probably don’t know about this and this is important regardless of whether or not you’re Korean. SERIOUSLY, READ THIS. This is important if you’re an American (well, in my opinion, it’s important even if you’re not) and if you want to better understand why, aside from the obvious, the U.S. and North Korea don’t get along and why the DPRK hates the U.S so much.
I’m going to condense this into bullets and put the main points in bold because I know that if this is super long, you guys are definitely going all TL;DR and scroll past this post. Anyway, if you have any questions, feel free to ask and I’ll try to answer to the best of my limited knowledge:
- The U.S., not Korea, was completely responsible for splitting Korea into two, which everyone in Korea wanted to avoid. This happened in 1945 at the end of WWII with the surrender of Japan (not with the 1953 Korean War armistice which basically just reaffirmed things that were already in place).
- Yes, armistice, not treaty. Even though it’s been 63 years since the start of the war (and 60 since the armistice), the war has never officially ended. The two Koreas are technically still at war. This explains the South’s mandatory military service required of all their male citizens and why, if the North declares war, it’s a continuation of an existing war rather than a completely new one.
- The U.S. is also partially at fault for the Korean War happening. After WWII, they put those who were in power during colonial rule back into influential positions in the South, pissing off a lot of people in the North for a lot of reasons, namely that many of these people were Japanese sympathizers or collaborators. Basically, they put the old Japanese machinery back into place and if you know anything of the Japanese occupation of Korea, you’ll know why they were angry. It’s also why the North didn’t see the South’s government as legitimate. Yeah, somehow the U.S. thought it was a great idea to put people who supported their enemies during the war in power again.
- The American strategy during the Korean War was to wipe out all life in tactical locality. They carpet-bombed the North with bombs and napalm with next to no concern for civilian casualties.
- According to U.S. Air Force estimates, “the scale of urban destruction quite exceeded that in Germany and Japan.” Yes, you read correctly. Feel free to go “WTH?” especially considering how tiny North Korea is (46,541 sq. miles). It’s about the same size as Pennsylvania (46,055 sq. miles). Compare that to Germany (137,800 sq. miles) and Japan (145,925 sq. miles).
- More bombs were dropped in Korea by the U.S. than had been dropped in the entire Pacific theater in World War II. Also a huge WTH if you guys know how bad the war was in the Pacific.
- By 1953, at least 50% of 18 out of North Korea’s 22 major cities were obliterated.
- Nearly 10% of the Korean population died during the war, the majority from the North.
- The aerial bombardment of North Korea inflicted the greatest loss of civilian life in the Korean War by far.
So basically, the U.S. never talks about this. I never learned ANY of this growing up. All I learned from high school was that the North started the Korean War (only partially true; they did invade, but things had been going on before 1950 due to American actions and conflicts originating from the colonial era) and that the U.S. and South Korea (democracy! Good!) went against North Korea and China (Communism! Bad!). I was shocked when I learned all this last semester and basically, it makes it a lot easier to understand the deep seated hatred North Korea holds towards the United States today. I’m not saying the North wasn’t aggressive during the war; they were as were the South, but it’s kind of strange how while it was the U.S. that wreaked the most devastation during the war, the North is seen as the ultimate aggressor.
Like do you guys understand? The U.S. committed war crimes and NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THIS AND THIS IS SO IMPORTANT IN UNDERSTANDING WHY NORTH KOREA ACTS THE WAY IT DOES RIGHT NOW (not including the events that happen from 1953 and on with the collapse of the USSR, the 1990s famine, and basically just how the U.S. dealt and interacted with the DPRK in the second half of the 20th century).
Anyway, sorry this is disgustingly long, but I just think it’s really important for people to learn and know. :/
Thank you for adding that information. This information should be required reading for all humans.
read this.
that explains why North Korea acts so erratically to our eyes…
Plus there are a lot of aspects of which the US has fucked over Korea as a whole which span from BEFORE the Korean war. I’ve written about it in this post before but I’ll just organize a few other things not included here.
- The US agreed to sign the Taft-Katsura Agreement in which the US agrees to Japanese control of Korea, which was done without the agreement or even inclusion of Korean people, as long as Japan did not disturb with their control of the Philippines. This means that the US allowed Japan to colonize Korea, which would later lead to various atrocities committed by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea.
- Thus, after the Japanese rule, when the US army, under the ruse of protecting Korean from communism under the ideals of the domino theory come into Korea and temporarily declare Korea to be under their military rule for 3 years, who do they find in power? Japanese sympathizers. They allow the Japanese sympathizers to maintain power under the name of fighting communism despite the fact that the Korean people called for purges of Pro-Japanese sympathizers like Noh Duksool who hunted that Independence Fighters and tortured activists calling for independence from Japanese rule. Noh Duksool went from a pro-Japanese sympathizer to a anti-Communist hero under the US Military rule.
- Once the US left and set up a puppet government in the form of Rhee’s administration, the Korean people voted in anti-Japanese sympathizer senators who called for a committee for the punishment of anti-Korean sentiments, which arrested 480 pro-Japanese sympathizers. The US government, via Rhee’s administration, believed that the arrest of so many of their “anti-Communist fighters” would lead to the Communists of North Korea to invade, and thus had Rhee order the police to attack the committee, had the senators serving on the committee arrested, and thus lead to the Pro-Japanese sympathizer purges as a failure.
- These are the people who know form a large part of the leaders of Korean business, politics, military, and police by helping the Japanese commit atrocities and then being allowed to flourish due to US imperialism, anti-Communist sentiments, and manipulation of a puppet government.
- On another level, the US, in planning to strategically “throw away” the Korean peninsula, did not allow the South Korean government to actually maintain a large army, which would later cause for the North Korean army, which was largely supported by Stalin, to be able to take over Seoul with no problem, but the US blocking of the creation and maintaining a larger South Korean army allowed for the North to make a quicker and more brutal push before the US finally turned around from their strategically “throwing away” the Korean peninsula and got involved. This means that the US not only artificially manipulated the situation so that the initial North Korean push lead to the most civilian deaths possible, they also reentered the war later, artificially prolonging the war and waiting till the North Korean soliders had went as far down as Busan meaning that the US army had to sweep south and then proceed north, causing, again, the most civilian deaths possible in said situation.
Imperialism. It’s a scary thing.
Kill ‘Em All, BBC Documentary on U.S. War Crimes in Korea
“During the years of the Korean war, soldiers from the UN-army started to adopt children. The UN-army contained most of the countries which would adopt the majority of the Korean children: Australia, Canada, Luxembourg, United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Witnesses describe the Korean War as something close to genocide. The UN-soldiers killed tens of thousands of Koreans on both sides indiscriminately[…] it is important to bear in mind that almost all of the first Korean adoptees were products of unequal relations between UN-soldiers and Korean women.” — Tobias Hübinette
