No Gun Ri is a village in South Korea where U.S. soldiers massacred Korean civilians, mostly women and children, in July 1950. U.S. Army veterans and Korean eyewitnesses estimated hundreds of civilians were killed.

Investigation

The story was reported by the Associated Press in 1999 after reporters learned of the incident. In the investigation that ensued, the Associated Press found numerous (now declassified) documents showing that it was US military policy to shoot at civilian refugees in South Korea at that time, and this was just one of several instances of soldiers complying with those orders. The reporters were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting.

However, the truth of some of the news story was thrown into doubt when the account of Edward Lee Daily, a witness cited by the news story, was shown to be untrue due to the fact that he was not in Nogun-ri at the time of the massacre. [1]

An official investigation by the US Army admitted that civilians might have been killed at Nogun-ri, but that there was no order given to fire upon civillians. The Army reported no evidence of a systematic massacre, and called into question victims' accounts that did not conform to official records. In addition, it was known that North Korean soldiers often wore civilian clothing and infiltrated themselves into the populations of South Korean villages, which would have made any civilian a potential threat. Although some soldiers reported that they were fired upon from positions amongst the refugee population and had acted to defend themselves, thus inadvertantly causing a loss of civilian lives, these reports could not be confirmed more than fifty years after the fact. However, investigations of the site uncovered spent ammunition of both American and Soviet origin, indicating that American soldiers may have come under fire at the time of the massacre. The Republic of Korea government accepted these findings and issued a joint statement with US officials to that effect.[2]

For their part, the advocates of the victims and survivors of Nogun-ri maintain their claim that US soldiers fired wilfully upon civillians who posed no threat, intentionally causing a massacre.

External links

• Offical report by U.S. Army
• Asianweek coverage of the massacre