hankyoreh

Year of birth: 1956

Date of massacre: Jan. 18, 1968 (solar calendar)

Description of massacre: I’m the only survivor of the La Thọ massacre, in which 43 people were killed. I was 11 years old at the time. We started hearing the boom of artillery on the morning of the massacre. My father, who was 33 years old at the time, and the rest of the male adults all fled from the village because of a rumor that Korean troops were on their way. About nine people, including my family members, were gathered at a neighbor’s house when the Korean soldiers fired on us with a grenade launcher. When I came to my senses, my ear had been hurt a little, but I was able to move. Looking around, I saw that my younger sister Thái Thị Mừng (7 years old) and my younger brother Thái Bá Cười (4) were dead. My mother was still breathing, but she was screaming and her bleeding wouldn’t stop. I dragged my bloody mother with me down to the air raid shelter. My mother moaned in agony until she eventually breathed her last.

On the afternoon of the next day, I encountered my father by chance on the road. We embraced each other and wept. Two days later, there was another massacre by Korean troops in the nearby village of Thủy Bồ. Since the Korean troops had burned out house down, we weren’t able to stay in the village. My father and I went to Đà Nẵng. No matter how hard my father worked at various odd jobs, we had to live on the road, in abject poverty. I wasn’t able to go to school either.

(Koh Gyeong-tae, author of February 12, 1968, met Thai Vui in Vietnam on Feb. 19, 2017. “The La Thọ massacre occurred on Jan. 18, 1968, even earlier than the massacres in the villages of Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất. Previously, there had only been rumors about the La Thọ massacre; this is the first time it’s been confirmed through the testimony of a survivor,” Koh wrote in the article “43 people died in the La Tho Massacre, and I was the only survivor” in the Apr. 8, 2017 issue of the Hankyoreh.)

What I want from Korea: The people who were outside of the village don’t know how their families died since there weren’t any survivors except for me. That makes it hard to investigate the massacre, and there’s no list of the dead or a memorial to their spirits. I’d like the Korean government to create a record of the history of this massacre and to support the construction of a memorial to honor the victims.