hankyoreh

The bullets and shells, shown here, found alongside the remains of victims of the Bodo League massacre came from M1 rifles — the basic weapon used by military police at the time. While the shells had rusted or degraded after decades underground, many had retained their shape. (Kim Bong-gyu/The Hankyoreh)

“We will clear away 60 years of darkness and lay you to rest in a brighter place.”

“May such a tragedy never happen again, and may you rest in peace.”

The banners dangling from the branches near the massacre site swayed gently in the wind. A sign raised by an association of family members of civilian victims in Jinju read, “This is the site where civilians [including National Guidance League members] in Yongsan Village were massacred by the military’s counterintelligence corps and police during the Korean War. The remains of the massacre victims were given a mass burial.”

This was the scene at the exhumation of remains from a second massacre site at Yongsan Ridge (1999 Jinju Road). It was Feb. 26, 2017, in the Maengseok township of Jinju in South Gyeongsang Province, and the chill winter winds had yet to subside.

According to the bereaved family members’ association, there are a total of 27 massacre and burial sites from the Korean War in the Jinju area.

In the early morning hours, members of a joint investigation team exhuming the remains of civilian massacre victims during the Korean War began digging into soil that had turned slushy after freezing and thawing. Warm sunshine was beating down on the massacre site, a ravine near the top of a hill.

According to witnesses, the remains began turning up as they dug deeper into the ground. Team members bent over or pressed their knees and bellies against the ground as they used paint brushes and bamboo picks to carefully scrape the dirt away from the remains. It was hard to tell whether the things turning up at the brushes’ tips were branches or human bone fragments.

“I was worried about how scary it would be to see people’s remains, but it wasn’t like I feared,” said one volunteer. “After all the time that had passed, the remains of the victims we saw just looked like tree branches.”

Also turned up were eyeglasses in relatively good condition. What was the owner looking at in the moments before being struck down by bullets?

To one side was a belt buckle that had been tinged green with rust. The leather had disappeared without a trace, but the metal buckle clearly showed the Chinese character “高,” meaning “high.” Was the victim a high school student? Or was it an older person who had been wearing a younger brother’s or son’s belt?

The items emerging from the ground included many plastic buttons, which don’t naturally degrade. Numerous combs, toothbrushes, and medicine bottles were also found. These may have been the personal effects brought along by victims who had no idea they were being taken to their deaths.

The bullets and cartridges found around the remains belonged to the M1 rifles that were mainly used by regular and military police at the time. Occasionally, there was a bullet that appeared to be from the 45-caliber pistols used by commanders. The bullets were rusted from over six decades underground, but their shape was clearly preserved.

Some of the team members were sifting carefully through dirt that had been piled up outside of the massacre site. Bits of bone and teeth could be seen on top of the mesh.

Outside the lines marking where the remains were being exhumed, some family members of victims were staring intently at the site — as if not to miss a single movement of the team members’ picks and brushes.

When the team members briefly stopped digging, some of the observing family members would stare off in different directions and silently weep. A few looked up at the sky and puffed on cigarettes; others squatted down and stared motionless at the massacre site with handkerchiefs held up to their eyes.

Jeong Yeon-jo, one of the posthumous children born to victims in 1950, talked about his father, who died after being taken away by police. It wasn’t until Jeong experienced failing the civil service examination multiple times that he learned about his father from his grandmother and mother.

“My father died unjustly as a Bodo League member,” he explained, referring to the National Guidance League. “That was when I found out about him having been [killed because of] guilt by association.”

After giving up on his attempts to pass the examination, Jeong decided to go to Libya to make money working on a construction project there. But that door ended up closing on him, due to the fact that Libya had a North Korean Embassy. Worrying about other potential roadblocks along the way, he decided not to tell his own children about their grandfather, he said.

The remains exhumed from the first massacre site in 2014 were being kept at a temporary mortuary at the site’s entrance.

As I opened the door and entered the mortuary — which was built with two container boxes placed side to side — I immediately saw a human skill that was caved in on its right side.

Most of the remains lined the shelves in around 300 yellow plastic containers slightly larger than a ramen bowl. Since the victims had been in close proximity when they were killed, it was difficult to distinguish one person’s remains from another’s; many of the victims’ bones were mixed with those of others.

Who was responsible for this tragedy?

In the second half of 2009, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission published a 320-page report on the National Guidance League massacres, known also as the Bodo League massacres.

Based on accounts from police and family members, the only information that could be ascertained about the perpetrators of the massacre was that there was involvement by the police, the military, the counterintelligence corps affiliated with the Army headquarters’ intelligence division, the US military, and right-wing groups.

Despite the large numbers of people who were brutally killed, the identities of their killers remain unknown 70 years later.

Protector and perpetrator. In the eyes of these victims, on which side did the state lie?

By Kim Bong-gyu, senior staff photographer

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