hankyoreh

Date of birth: 1949

Date of massacre: Nov. 12, 1969

Description of massacre: The sound of shells dropping hadn’t stopped since the night before. They were being fired by South Korean troops in the direction of a Viet Cong battalion. The next morning, the sounds of shelling stopped. The South Korean soldiers descended on the village soon afterwards. They dragged 74 villagers into a field and massacred them indiscriminately with guns and grenades. I was monitoring the South Koreans’ activities as the leader of a guerrilla unit, and I witnessed the horrific scene from a distance of about 500 meters away. I was 20 at the time.

That night, I went to collect the bodies, which were piled two to three layers deep. A mixture of blood and rainwater came up to my ankle. Seventy-three people had been killed. Only an 11-day-old baby dramatically escaped with its life. That day, the South Korean soldiers killed my mother Phan Thị Ngư (47); my three younger sisters Lê Thị Yên (16), Lê Thị Đi (10), and Lê Thị Lần

(eight); my mother’s older and younger sisters and their three children; my cousin and her three children; my sister-in-law and her two children; and my father’s sister and her two children.

As long as I live, I will never forget the moment I had to watch as my family members were massacred. I still have nightmares about it and wake up in terror. As a guerrilla, I went on the battlefield with feelings of vengeance toward the South Korean soldiers who had killed my family. After the massacre, I collected the bodies of 18 of my family members, all but the baby inside my aunt’s womb. But in 1970, the US military began bulldozing over the village area, and I no longer had any way of finding the location of nine of the graves.

What I want from Korea: Many families lost members to massacres by South Korean troops. The South Korean government needs to compensation in an acceptable way for the pain and loss that the survivors and victims’ family members have had to endure throughout their lives.

What I want from Korea: Years have passed and it’s now part of the past, but the survivors and family members like me continue to suffer the pain and wounds from that day. I hope South Koreans will show the least bit of conscience and work to help heal the wounds of victims in Vietnam.