hankyoreh

Date of birth: Jan. 15, 1930

Date of the massacre: Jan. 19, 1968 (solar calendar)

Description of the massacre: “Are you VC [Viet Cong]?” That was what the Korean soldier who’d suddenly showed up at the village that morning asked each individual, before shooting them, one after another. I was 38 years old at the time, a pregnant woman, and my baby was nearly due. The Korean soldiers walked over me where I was lying on the ground, but they didn’t kill me. When all of the chaos was over, my mother Nguyễn Thị Túc (51 years old at the time), my younger sister Nguyễn Thị Mỹ (6 years old), and my three nieces/nephews, Lê Hùng, Lê Thị Hòe (8) and Lê Thị Phi (6), were no longer breathing. My daughter Nguyễn Thị Huệ (6) was still alive. My granddaughter had been saved by my mother, who wrapped her body around the girl. I stayed on the ground, pretending to be dead, out of fear that I’d be shot if I got up too quickly. It wasn’t until that evening that the surviving villagers found me. Since my husband had left the village to join the guerillas, he was away when the massacre occurred. The villagers took the bodies of the dead to Bồ Bồ military outpost (I can’t remember if it was manned by the US army or the South Vietnamese army) to protest, but they were never even given an answer. What made those pointless deaths even more painful was that there was no one to hear our grievance. Three days later, I fled to Đà Nẵng with my paternal aunt and my daughter, giving birth to my son a few days after that.

What I want from Korea: My death is approaching. Before I die, I want to get an apology from the Korean government. I would also like the Korean government to work on making a policy for those who lost loved ones in the massacres, like me.