"Long-overlooked mass killings" by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War will "reopen old wounds," while Seoul's response will, in turn, define demands for compensation from Japan for forced laborers before WWII.
Image: Getty Images/AFP
Advertisement
A Vietnamese woman who was eight years old when "she was severely wounded and saw her mother, a sister, brother, aunt and cousin killed in a massacre by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War" has filed a compensation suit with the South Korean government.
Titan Nguyen, now 60, is being supported by the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, which has filed the suit with the Seoul Central District Court on her behalf. Analysts say the case — the first of its kind — will inevitably reopen old wounds and shine a spotlight on a series of atrocities that were allegedly carried out by South Korean troops fighting alongside the Americans in Vietnam.
In the suit, Nguyen claims she was shot in the stomach by South Korean Marines in the Vietnamese province of Quang Nam on February 12, 1968.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to the National Assembly in Seoul in April 2018, Nguyen said, "I want to ask, why did South Korean troops fire guns and throw grenades at our families, then just women and children? Why did you even set our houses on fire and bulldoze through the dead bodies?"
"Five decades have passed since the killings, but we still do not know why this happened," she added. "I ask this question on behalf of the other victims and their families. Why does the Korean military not recognize this wrongdoing and apologize?"
Troops from the 2nd Marine Division entered the villages of Phong Nhi and Phong Nhat in February 1968 after taking over in the region from US forces. An estimated 79 unarmed villagers were killed in the attacks, with photographs taken by US forces and submitted to a subsequent investigation showing dead children in ditches and a young woman with her breasts cut off.
Similar incidents were reported in five other Vietnamese hamlets over the next two months. Some estimates put the number of civilians killed in massacres at 9,000 individuals. An investigation by South Korean commanders in the field ignored survivors' testimony and evidence provided by US troops and concluded that all the massacres had been carried out by Viet Cong insurgents loyal to the government in North Vietnam.
Lieutenant General Chae Myung-shin, the commander of the 300,000 strong South Korean military in Vietnam, stood by that finding in 2000, when the Korean media raised the issue as the two governments moved to normalize their diplomatic relationship and put the conflict behind them. In the last 20 years, however, the massacres have largely been forgotten again.
The fall of Saigon 40 years ago marked the end of the US' decade-long war in Vietnam, with the North Vietnamese army capturing the South's capital, Saigon. The Southeast Asian country has come a long way since then.
Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0/Steve Jackson
US failure
Panicked, the US embassy's employees in Vietnam tried to reach the roof of the consulate building to get into the last helicopter. They were later moved to US ships waiting off the country's coast. Over a period of time, this famous picture has come to symbolize the US failure in Vietnam.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Van Es
Memories of war
Very close to the site of the former US embassy is now a Vietnam War museum. This popular tourist spot offers a large collection of images by Vietnamese and international photographers.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/Hoang Dinh Nam
The horror of Cu Chi
Also on display in the musuem is a photograph capturing a war scene in Cu Chi, a town 20 kilometers away from Saigon. During the war, the Vietnamese military created a huge underground facility with command centers, hospitals and field kitchens in Cu Chi. Despite years of bombing, the US could never expel the enemy.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
A tourist attraction
Today, thousands of tourists crawl through the Cu Chi tunnels, which have been enlarged for Western tourists. Nevertheless, this attraction is not for claustrophobic people.
Image: picture alliance/Robert Harding World Imagery
Resting in the presidential park
A day after the last US troops left the country, the North Vietnamese soldiers rested in the park of South Vietnam's presidential palace. After decades of war and millions of deaths, it was not only an occasion of independence but also of reunion.
Image: AFP/Getty Images
'Reunification Palace'
Today, a popular destination in Ho Chi Minh city is the site of the "Reunification Palace." The building is now a museum which represents more of the political dimension of the Vietnam War than its military aspects. This, of course, from the perspective of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/Hoang Dinh Nam
My Lai
Years before the fall of Saigon, the US had lost its legitimacy in the eyes of many. The Americans killed some 504 people in a hour-long operation, notoriously known as the 1968 My Lai massacre. Old men, women, children and infants were among the dead. This massacre, however, was not the only one that took place during the war.
Image: Keystone/Getty Images
Monument to the dead
At the former entrance to the village stands a socialist-style memorial to the My Lai victims. Behind the monument lies a ghost town. The cabins have been rebuilt, but they remain uninhabited. On the roads there are footprints symbolizing the dead.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Findeis
Hanoi Hilton
Tran Trong Duyet (shown in the black and white photo) was the warden of the notorious Hoa Lo prison, which was used by the North Vietnamese army to house, torture and interrogate captured troops - mostly American pilots shot down during the war. It was sarcastically known to American prisoners of war as "Hanoi Hilton."
Image: F. Zeller/AFP/Getty Images
From prisoner to US senator
The most famous former prisoner of Hanoi Hilton is US Senator John McCain. He visited the former prison in 2009 and was received cordially by the Vietnamese.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/Hoang Dinh Nam
Seeking legitimacy
The authoritarian Communist Party of Vietnam still seeks legitimacy from the Vietnam War. Old propaganda posters remind people of the Saigon victory in 1975. What is never mentioned is that it was also a civil war.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/Hoang Dinh Nam
Bestselling propaganda
The war posters still sell very well in Vietnam. There are dozens of shops in Hanoi and Saigon that have special items about the war. Most customers are tourists from the West.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/Hoang Dinh Nam
The 'Communist' Café
Around two-thirds of Vietnam's 90 million inhabitants are below the age of 35. They know about the Vietnam War only through literature. Anyone traveling through the country realizes rather quickly that the war now means more to the tourists than to the Vietnamese. And the locals have capitalized on this. The Cong Caphee (Communist Café) in Hanoi attracts tourists with Vietnam War decor.
Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0/Steve Jackson
13 images1 | 13
Sensitive for society
"This is going to be very sensitive," said Stephen Nagy, an associate professor of international relations at Tokyo's International Christian University. "This lawsuit could open Pandora’s box and force South Korea to confront its own turbulent history in Vietnam. It is going to put a lot of very uncomfortable truths about what Korean troops did in Vietnam front and center."
Korean society has tried to "push aside" criticisms of its actions and policies in Vietnam as the work of the military governments that ruled in Seoul at the time, Nagy said, but a court case will make the debate unavoidable — and may very well lead other Vietnamese to file similar compensation suits against Seoul.
It also puts the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in in a difficult position, he suggested. Moon, who was a human rights lawyer before turning to politics, apologized during a state visit to Hanoi in 2017 for the "unfortunate history" between the two countries but made no specific mention of the massacres.
"He was a human rights lawyer previously, so it is very possible that Moon will support this lawsuit," said Rah Jong-yil, who previously served as South Korean ambassador to both Tokyo and London. "And it is equally possible that a successful case in the Korean courts will lead to more similar compensation suits, but it is important that it does go through the appropriate legal processes as this happened a long time ago, and there may be conflicting reports of what happened."
Rah concedes that if Seoul resists court proceedings and disputes any compensation rulings, it will inevitably undermine, both legally and morally, similar cases brought by Korean civilians against the Japanese government and companies that used forced laborers in the early decades of the last century, when the Korean Peninsula was under Japanese rule.
"South Korea needs to practice what it has been preaching against Japan," said Nagy. "Because while this court case is going to reveal a lot of truths that are going to be uncomfortable for Korean society, they cannot afford to be hypocritical if they do want to move forward in the relationship with Japan," he added.
"This could become an opening and opportunity for Tokyo and Seoul to rebuild their diplomatic ties."
1968 Tet Offensive - military disaster, political victory
Half a century ago, North Vietnamese forces launched a surprise offensive against South Vietnam and its ally, the United States. It marked the beginning of the end of Washington's Vietnam adventure.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/UPI
Surprise attacks
The Tet Offensive derives its name from the Vietnamese New Year holiday, during which the attacks occurred. As in the previous years, both sides to the conflict had wanted to declare a pause in fighting during the holidays. But beginning in the early hours of January 31, 1968, North Vietnamese forces attacked almost all major cities and dozens of military installations throughout South Vietnam.
Image: Getty Images/P. Bronstein
Wear and tear without end
The second Indochina war, called the "American War" in Vietnam, had been raging for 13 years before the Tet Offensive. Neither the millions of tons of American bombs nor some 500,000 US soldiers were able to secure a victory for Washington's allies in South Vietnam. The US strategy of killing more enemies than could be replaced did not work out.
Image: picture alliance/akg-images/Fred P. Leonard
Striking at the enemy's heart
Against the advice of some leading generals, the then General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Le Duan, had ordered the offensive to end the stalemate and for a resolution to the conflict. A Viet Cong commando unit even stormed the American Embassy in Saigon, killing five Americans, but failed to penetrate the main building.
Image: picture-allianc/dpa/UPI
A gross misjudgment
Le Duan believed that the offensive would result in a South Vietnamese uprising that could overthrow the hated "puppet regime" of the South and the "American imperialists." But it proved to be a misjudgment as the war-weary populace only watched and waited. The initially rattled South Vietnamese and their American allies, however, eventually remobilized.
Image: picture alliance/AP Images
Military defeat
Within a few days, the offensive was defeated almost everywhere. It's estimated that thousands of Army of North Vietnam and Viet Cong troops were killed and injured during the offensive.
The Communist troops held fast only to the citadel of the central Vietnamese city of Hue. Upon capturing the city, they murdered some 2,800 civilians, accusing them of cooperating with the South Vietnamese regime. The ensuing fight lasted 25 days. From a purely military perspective, the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the Communists.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/UPI
Deadliest offensive of the Vietnam War
The Tet Offensive claimed more than 1,000 American soldiers when it first began. Like all other American war veterans, the names of the fallen are immortalized at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
Image: picture alliance/Photoshot
The picture that shocked the American public
The offensive was widely covered by the American media, bringing home the brutality of the war to the American public. Edward Adams' dramatic photo of police general Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting and killing a Viet Cong officer on an open road in Saigon was testament to that.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/E. Adams
The web of lies disintegrates
Like his predecessors, President Lyndon B. Johnson had kept the Americans largely in the dark about the situation in Vietnam. There was talk of progress, and an end to the war. The Tet Offensive proved to be the opposite. For many Americans, Tet was no longer about victory or defeat, but only about ending the senseless slaughter.
Image: picture alliance/CPA Media/Y. Okamoto
Seven more futile years of war
Johnson did not run for office again, saying Vietnam put paid to that. His successor Richard Nixon intensified the bombing, and developed his policy of "Vietnamization," giving South Vietnamese soldiers increased combat roles. But Nixon could only delay the defeat. The war lasted another seven years before the last Americans retreated from Vietnam in April 1975.
