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Nguyen Thi Anh (left) and Nguyen Thi Thanh (right), victims of massacres of civilians carried out by Korean troops during the Vietnam War, take part in a people’s tribunal on war crimes by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War held at the Oil Tank Culture Park in Seoul’s Mapo District on April 22, 2018. (Park Jong-sik/The Hankyoreh)

A victim of the South Korean military’s massacre of civilians during the Vietnam War won the first trial of a national compensation suit filed against the Korean government. It took 55 years for a court to judge that South Korea should be held legally liable for compensation to the Vietnamese victims of the violence perpetrated by its troops.

On Tuesday, Park Jin-su, the presiding judge in the 68th civil division at the Seoul Central District Court, ruled in favor of plaintiff Nguyen Thi Thanh, 63, in her lawsuit filed against the Korean government.

The court ruled that South Korea must pay the plaintiff close to 30 million won (US$24,000) in compensation and pay for the damages incurred due to the delay of compensation.

The court set the consolation money at 40 million won by considering the extent of the damage and the delay of the compensation but admitted liability only to around 30 million, reflecting the plaintiff’s claim.

Nguyen Thi Thanh, the plaintiff in a case seeking state liability for Korean troops’ massacre of civilians during the Vietnam War, smiles on screen during a press conference by her legal representatives in the case after the ruling was announced on Feb. 7 outside the Seoul Central District Court. (Kim Myoung-jin/The Hankyoreh)

The court acknowledged most of the plaintiff’s claims as true based on testimonies from Vietnam War veterans and militia members as well as evidence submitted by Nguyen and her team.

“We acknowledge the fact that soldiers of the 2nd Marine Infantry Division (known as the Blue Dragon Division) shot the plaintiff’s family during Operation Giant Dragon and forcibly rounded up the plaintiff’s mother with other people before shooting them,” read the ruling from the bench.

“This was clearly an illegal act, which grants the plaintiff the right to claim compensation,” the court ruled. “The defendant’s claim that the statute of limitations has expired constitutes an abuse of rights.”

In February 1968, when Nguyen was 8 years old, she was seriously injured after being shot in her left side by soldiers from the Korean Blue Dragon Division near her home in Dien Ban in Quang Nam Province. While she managed to survive through surgery, she suffers from aftereffects to this day.

Nguyen lost five family members in the massacre, and her brother, who was 14 years old at the time, was also severely injured.

“Only the Korean government’s recognition of the civilian massacre will ease the victims’ suffering. I wish to honor the many victims, including myself,” Nguyen said when she filed her suit against the Korean government in April 2020.

In a phone call after the court’s verdict with her lawyers, Nguyen, who resides in Vietnam, said, “I am grateful to the court for believing everything that I said was true. I would like to thank my lawyers, my Korean friends, and the citizens who have stood by me so far. I feel like I’m on cloud nine.”

Lim Jae-sung, the lawyer who represented Nguyen in her suit, remarked, “Today’s ruling is significant in that a Korean court has confirmed for the first time that illegal activities such as these were carried out during the Vietnam War and that the Korean government should be held legally responsible for them.”

By Choi Min-young, staff reporter

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