hankyoreh

Date of birth: 1968

Date of massacre: Feb. 12, 1968

Description of massacre: On that day, I was covered in my mother’s blood. It was by the village well. Residents had come to see the bodies of the people killed by the South Korean troops, and they said they saw three-month-old me underneath when they turned my dead mother over. I survived because of my mother, who was embracing me when she was shot. They said that I wasn’t wounded at all, and that I was nursing at my dead mother’s breast. When I was old enough to understand things, I learned that my mother Hà Thị Diên (then 34), my grandfather Lê Đình Dung (64), and my aunt Lê Thị Mĩa (31) were all killed by South Korean soldiers. I also heard horrifying stories about 70 or so villagers being killed with guns and bayonets. My father, older brother, and two older sisters happened to be at a South Vietnamese army checkpoint outside the village and escaped the massacre that day. Four years later, even my father was gone. As war orphans, my siblings I lived a harsh life. Over 50 years have now passed. I suffer from asthma and am often in the hospital. It may be because of all the gunpowder I inhaled the day of the massacre. Or perhaps I spent too long nursing at my mother’s dry breast.

I heard that our village was a “safe village,” where they avoided firing indiscriminately because there were civilians living there, and South Korean soldiers who fought at the time claimed there were only scared small children, mothers and daughters, and senior citizens (ref. “KCIA investigated civilian massacre”, Hankyoreh 21, Vol. 306, May 4, 2000)—so why was my family taken away from me? I can’t remember my mother’s face. But throughout my childhood, I had a dream where my mother was standing by the gate dressed in white, looking at me.

What I want from Korea: Be it volunteer activities or whatever, I think the South Korean government and civic groups should do something to console the survivors and family members and ease their suffering and pain. I see it as the principle of peace shared by the world for victimizers to provide compensation for the acts they have committed.