hankyoreh

Nguyễn Thị Thanh, a survivor of a civilian massacre by Korean troops in Vietnam, wipes away tears as she explains the details of the massacre during a press conference at the National Assembly on April 6, 2015. (Kim Gyoung-ho/The Hankyoreh)

“I believe that many souls helped me,” Nguyễn Thị Thanh said of her journey to victory in the courtroom.

On Feb. 7, a South Korean court recognized for the first time that Korean troops slaughtered Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnamese War 55 years ago.

Nguyễn, herself a survivor of the massacre, said the above to Ku Su-jeong, director of the Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation. The sentiment she shared was that this victory was not hers alone, but a victory for all victims of Korea’s massacres in Vietnam.

Nguyễn was the only one to get her day in court this time around. But is there a way for the Korean government to atone for the acts carried out in its name to all the other victims who were unable to take part in her case?

Nguyễn Thị Thanh, 41 at the time, shows her scars from the massacre in her village to Hankyoreh 21 reporter Koh Kyoung-tae in 2001 during the latter’s reporting here. Ngyuen told Koh, “Because of the man that day who glared at me at the entrance to the cave with a grenade in his hand, every time I see a Korean man, my heart starts racing.” (Koh Kyoung-tae/The Hankyoreh)

After the news of Nguyễn’s victory broke, the Korean media focused on whether additional lawsuits by other victims would follow. In the villages of Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất, where Nguyễn lived, 74 people were slaughtered.

However, civic society organizations advocating for Vietnamese victims believe that it is difficult for individual victims of war crimes to file their lawsuits, and that lawsuits against the state are not the only way to solve this problem.

“There were many pieces of evidence for the Phong Nhị case, which was unusual. In most massacres, villages are usually destroyed completely, and the perpetrators almost always try to erase all traces of genocide,” Ku stated.

Out of all the incidents of the Korean military’s massacres of Vietnamese civilians, the Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất cases were significant in that a large amount of evidence remained.

Nguyễn Thị Thanh and her uncle, Nguyên Đức Choi, a witness to the massacre, visited Korea to explain in detail the lead-up and aftermath of the violence in their village. Ryu Jin-seong, a Korean veteran who was part of the operation at the time, also testified in court.

Civilians’ statements about the massacre and photographs of the scene appear in records compiled by the culture and communications agency in the district of Điện Bàn and in a report prepared by US military inspectors in Vietnam.

“Other cases also have victim statements, but not as many as the Phong Nhị case. This victory is the result of accumulated efforts by civil society over 20 years,” Ku remarked.

Even if the victims of war crimes file individual lawsuits, it remains to be seen whether they will all end victorious. One can only look at ongoing compensation suits such as those waged by victims of Japan’s “comfort women” system of sexual slavery and its wartime forced labor mobilization.

So far, Korea’s courts have failed to stick to a single line on such cases.

In the cases of victims of Japan’s sexual slavery, even though the extent of damage is the same, the courts ruled in favor in only one case in the trial of first instance, while another was dismissed.

The court’s verdict in the forced mobilization suit came under fire because while the Supreme Court had ruled that victims have the right to claim compensation, a lower court had ruled that there was no responsibility to compensate victims due to an expired statute of limitations.

Kang Sung-hyun, a liberal arts professor at Sungkonghoe University, commented, “If additional lawsuits are filed, some victims may fail to prove their case while some may not be able to file lawsuits in the first place. Some deaths will be recognized as massacres while some will not, which might create a hierarchy.”

“The recent ruling should be understood as a message that the Korean and Vietnamese governments should face up to this problem and that we should now move on to a more systematic investigation of the incidents.”

Nguyễn Thị 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)

Activists from civic organizations that have long supported victims of the Vietnam War massacres also advocate that accurate investigations into the incidents carried out at a national level will be the starting points for Korea’s atonement.

Currently, it is difficult to estimate just how many were victimized in civilian massacres by Korean troops during the Vietnam War. At the Jeju Human Rights Academic Conference in 2000, Ku Su-jeong announced figures that put the total number of civilian massacres at around 80 and the total victim count at approximately 9,000.

In the course of 20 years that followed, the Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation sought out victims and the Hankyoreh 21’s on-the-ground reporting contributed to the release of new figures in August 2020 that put the total number of mass killings at 130 cases with the number of victims increasing to 10,000.

Besides the 74 victims in Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất, eyewitness accounts and historical materials indicate that civilian massacres took place in many other communities too, including Hà My (135 victims), Binh Hoa (430), Phuoc My (4), Hoang Chau (22), and Phuoc Lut (4). The Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation believes there are even more victims who have yet to be discovered.

Attorney Lim Jae-sung, one of Nguyễn Thị Thanh’s legal representatives, stressed the state’s obligation to properly investigate the matter. To date, civic groups have been relying on word of mouth to learn about victims, without any kind of systematic, wide-ranging investigation on the state’s part.

“The reason President Roh Moo-hyun was able to apologize for the Jeju April 3 incident was that they’d already made the decision to investigate it during the Kim Dae-jung administration,” Lim explained.

“If the government is to apologize, there needs to be an investigation beforehand. The victims have been raising this issue for nearly two decades. The government can’t go on just ignoring them,” he added.

In the National Assembly, Democratic Party lawmaker Kang Min-jung is preparing to propose a special law on the investigation of civilian victimization by South Korean troops during the Vietnam War. The terms would include an investigation into civilian massacres and the drafting of a general report on them.

A previous bill for a special law was proposed in 2020 by Justice Party lawmaker Kim Jong-dae but ended up being abandoned.

People take part in a memorial for victims of a massacre in the village of Ha My in Vietnam on the 49th anniversary of the atrocity on Feb. 20, 2017. (Koh Kyoung-tae/The Hankyoreh)

There are also avenues for investigating that don’t involve courts or the National Assembly.

In April 2022, five representatives of the village of Hà My — including survivors of a civilian massacre there by South Korean troops, as well as family members of the victims — submitted an investigation request with Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Ten months later, the commission is still “examining” whether to open an investigation. For that to happen, the matter would need to be approved at the commission’s plenary session; so far, it has not even been included on the agenda.

The commission explained that the examination “is taking some time because of the particular nature of the matter.” But sources in and around it speculated that the potential diplomatic and political baggage is a major factor.

Following the court’s ruling on Feb. 7, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the South Korean and Vietnamese governments were “communicating closely on various matters to ensure that our bilateral relationship can develop even further in a future-oriented direction.”

The Ministry of National Defense said only that a decision on whether to appeal would be “based on discussions with the Ministry of Justice.”

“The soldiers who fought were mobilized by the state. Then, after fighting their battles, they end up demonized.

“Instead of forcing individual soldiers into the role of ‘victimizers,’ our society needs to hear about the reasons South Korea fought in that war and the outcome it had, and about the experiences of the 320,000 South Korean soldiers who were mobilized.”

This was the argument of Shim Ah-jeong, a member of the Civil Society Network for the Just Resolution of Vietnam War Issues. When it comes to addressing historical matters, reflection on the community’s part is just as important as political and institutional approaches.

This is why Shim is hard at work trying to create a public forum for going beyond introspection by individual veterans and considering the entirety of South Korea’s experience taking part in the Vietnam War. One of her plans for the near future is to create an association for reading the Nguyễn case’s ruling together with members of the public.

“These [massacres] may sound like ancient history that happened all the way back in the 1960s, but we still live in an era where people talk like it’s nothing about the benefits of this misguided contribution to the war, such as how the ‘money we made fighting in the Vietnam War was what built the Seoul-Busan Expressway,’” she said.

“We need to start rethinking that sort of thing,” she added.

By Shin Da-eun, Hankyoreh 21 staff reporter

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