ARMED FORCES: Barbarity

The Army’s War Crimes Division last week reminded the U.S. of a fact frequently forgotten after long months of stalemate and truce in Korea: on the records, the Communist enemy which waits behind the truce lines is a barbarous enemy, capable of savagery and sadism which rival any atrocities in the history of modern warfare.

In an interim report based on screenings of enemy prisoners, reports of survivors and field investigations by its own agents, the Army charged the Communists with 29,815 probable war-crime victims. Of these, 6,113 were U.S. soldiers (only 511 bodies recovered), 5,460 were Republic of Korea soldiers (1,004 bodies), and 17,354 were civilians—North and South Korean. Most of the atrocities took place in the summer and autumn of 1950, before the Chinese entered the war and while U.N. forces drove north from Pusan (see NEWS IN PICTURES).

The commission drew a thin line between what are called “acts of omission” and “acts of commission.” Thousands of military prisoners perished in the “acts of omission,” e.g., in the long forced marches which brought privation, starvation and exposure. Other thousands were deliberately slain in the wanton “acts of commission.” Items:

C| Weak and exhausted after nine days jammed in open gondola cars, U.N. prisoners were herded off a prison train, 30 at a time, in Sunchon tunnel on Oct. 20, 1950. Communist soldiers escorted them down the,tracks, told them to hide in an erosion ditch while they waited for food. As soon as the prisoners had relaxed on the ground, the guards opened point-blank fire with burp guns and rifles. U.S. deaths: at least 138.

EUR][ Ten marines from the ist Marine Division were captured by Communists while on patrol near Nakchon Dong, Jan. 29, 1951. Recovered corpses showed that the prisoners had been stripped and bound, bayoneted in back and chest. Later a North Korean officer, captured by U.N. forces, admitted that each prisoner was ordered to sit on the ground and then used by Communist soldiers for bayonet practice.

<| Just before withdrawal from Suchon on Sept. 23, 1950, North Korean Communists piled wood, packing cases and other combustibles around the outside of the crowded Suchon jail, drenched everything with gasoline and lighted the fire, in a case of wanton savagery reminiscent of the Nazis’ rape of Oradour-sur-Glane. Estimated deaths by fire: 280, mostly ROK civilian officials and landowners, if After capturing Taejon in the summer of 1950, the North Korean Home Affairs Department jammed the city prison with suspected anti-Communists—soldiers, officials, business and professional men. Beginning Sept. 23, 1950, several groups, numbering from 100 to 200 each, were taken from the cells each night. The prisoners, hands tied behind their backs, were herded into line beside open trenches and shot. As U.N. forces threatened the city, the Communists resorted to more expedient methods, dumped bodies into makeshift trenches. Others were sealed into caves or jammed down wells (see NEWS IN PICTURES). Estimated casualties: from 5,000 to 7,500, including 42 U.S. soldiers. Said the Army’s report: “For murderous barbarism, the Taejon massacre will be recorded in the annals of history along with the rape of Nanking, the Warsaw ghetto and other similar mass exterminations . . . Those responsible . . . must be brought to judgment before the tribunal of civilized peoples.”