hankyoreh

Date of birth: 1953

Date of massacre: Nov. 12, 1969

Description of massacre: As my brother Trần Văn Dân (then 21) and I fled the village, we could hear the endless sound of guns and grenades behind us. The two of us had run away after hearing that the South Korean troops were storming the village. I was 16 at the time. The gunshots stopped, and we returned to the village a few days later to see if our family had survived. My mother Lê Thị Đậu, younger sister Trần Thị Tấn (11), and two younger brothers Trần Văn Tờn (13) and Trần Văn Ngoa (around four) had hidden in an air raid shelter at old Mr. Trà’s house, but were massacred by the South Korean soldiers.

The bodies had decomposed so badly that I could not tell who was who from their faces. The smell was horrible. Bodies were stacked in piles outside the air raid shelter. There were a lot of people dead inside the shelter too, but people had covered it over with dirt. I wasn’t able to collect the bodies of my family members who had held out inside the air raid shelter. I lost my mother and three younger siblings to a massacre of civilians by South Korean troops, and my two surviving siblings and I left our hometown – first to Đà Nẵng, then to Hội An. We were wandering looking for a place where we couldn’t see so much as a shadow of soldiers. I managed to survive from day to day with food from doing odd jobs at other people’s houses. I was always hungry. We returned to the village after the gunfire had stopped completely. We started planting hardy plants like khoai mi (cassava) and farming rice. But the massacre had left the village completely devastated. There was never enough of anything. It was a very difficult time.

What I want from Korea: I am old and sick. I have experienced great hardship economically. What can South Korea do for someone like me as a family member of victim of a civilian massacre by its troops?