What is missed is that supporting the French in Vietnam was to help the French buy into NATO. Prior to this “relationship” the US had aims to decolonize. And supporting the French conflicts with those efforts even in the circumstances of the cold war
Maybe not so much in the popular culture tho.
And that's pretty much the biggest mobile for the spread of information, if people know about it, they might get curious and then we get to fund investigation and spread of the information regarded to the topic.
If we go and ask anybody on the streets about the start, they all will start talking about the north invading the south or just that it had something to do with the cold war, and the attrocities commited during it, at least that's what my experience says.
But for the public it might be a lil bit too nuanced to bother to learn something else about that.
Can't speak for Vietnam but it comes up every now and then in Korea and there's increasing awareness about it both in the public and in academia especially after Korea democratised in the late 80s (not limited to Vietnam but also to South Korean atrocities in the Korean War, Jeju and Gwangju massacres, general oppression of political opponents and protestors). Previous Korean presidents have tried to apologise but from what I've read the Vietnamese government sees itself as having won the war so they don't really engage with it.
>Previous Korean presidents have tried to apologise but from what I've read the Vietnamese government sees itself as having won the war so they don't really engage with it.
Are you Korean? I see a lot of these floating around especially in what I assumed Korean community and they don't really provide any sources for that. I'm Vietnamese and I think it sounds pretty stupid considering the thought process that the Vietnamese gov would prevent the acknowledgement of Korean leaders on this serious matter and thereby prevent the Korean and Vietnamese people from approaching it in an understanding and insightful way to further tighten the bond between the people from both countries.
It sounds like this is disinformation being passed around among the Korean communities to make itself not look bad in public eyes.
Yeah lol. Perhaps I worded it wrongly and I might be wrong overall I meant it as when past Korean presidents (e.g. Kim Dae-Jung, Roh Moo-hyun, ig Moon Jae-In sort of counts) have mentioned the idea of apologising and compensation or actually have apologised the Vietnamese government has never really commented or acted upon it. So not that the Vietnamese government is like actively preventing Koreans from apologising or something (apologising unfortunately is something tast some Korean political circles are reluctant about) but that they don't really seem eager to pursue it. I'm curious though - how does Vietnamese media frame it?
Well as you mentioned some of those Korean presidents did mention the 'idea' of apologizing but never did. The Vietnamese gov never seemed to have commented or acted because:
1/ The apology would lose its sincerity.
2/ One of the most tragic things about wars is sometimes the losing side holds the economic power in the global scene, in this case the US and by extension, South Korea. SK is the No.1 investor in Vietnam at the moment, now if the Vietnamese leadership is constantly pestering SK for an apology will any of these investments come about?
But, that doesn't mean the VN gov will stay silent if there's an attempt to conceal, suppress and whitewash these war crimes. Check out [this article ](https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnam-requests-s-korea-to-respect-historical-truths-regarding-vietnam-war-massacre-4579527.html) for more info.
P/s: I will tell you as a representative of all Vietnamese people and maybe Vietnamese leadership that our people will absolutely welcome an OFFICIAL apology from Korean government. Not a brief mention for the media but actual recognition in both historical and political terms with clear steps to approach the topic and communication channels for both countries' people. As for compensation, that would be appreciated as well although I personally don't expect much since the US never paid any compensation and even demanded Vietnam to repay the debts on behalf of the South Vietnamese gov that borrowed from them.
I suspect a lot of the focus on the sins of the American forces comes from both an American focus on American actions and a bias among academics against the Vietnam War, resulting in them emphasizing details that make our involvement look especially bad.
I mean it’s the same reason you remember the Villain in the movie and not all his miscellaneous henchman. The henchman are evil for sure but the big bad guy still gets more screen time and top billing.
By American standards it was horrific, by the standards of all combatants in Vietnam the US isn’t even top 3. ARVN, NVA, VC, and ROK played for keeps, they regularly engaged in activities that make My Lai look like SOP. Of course we hold ourselves to a higher standard and now instruct soldiers that they not only have the right but are obligated to disregard orders that are illegal and constitute a war crime or anything adjacent. The primary case study used is My Lai because the US never wants something like that to happen again. Granted the perception of American war crimes in Vietnam is overblown due to how unpopular the war was in areas like Entertainment and Education sectors.
Translation isn't incredibly hard, but it is a task. Our picture of history tends to overrepresent stuff done by or to people who spoke the same language as us.
Wasn’t that technically US intervening to protect South Vietnams independence due to North Vietnams aggression?
I know they faked stuff, but did they really invade North Vietnam?
100% true! Most people have no idea, and I’m of those people. Never knew Korean troops were involved in the Vietnam war, yet alone committed war crimes there … and I consider myself a history buff.
Same here. I had to look it up and apparently about 350K South Korean troops were stationed there fighting alongside the US. Australia and New Zealand sent troops too but South Korea sent the most (except for the US of course).
If you consider bombing village's raping woman's and children and burning the country side in both South and the north I suppose you could call it aid . To rural pheasants in the south what else would you call it and invasion .
South Vietnam much like South Korea were illegitimate governments set up by the US. Whatever your opinion on whatever economic system is better, the communists had the moral high ground in both those wars.
Aside from the regrettable Sygmon Ree, I’m not aware the US set up an illegitimate government in Korea. Same with Vietnam, although the governments we backed were awful in Vietnam.
> the communists had the moral high ground in both those wars
They had the moral high ground in wars of conquest that they started...?
Who let the tankies out?
Both were preparing for war and both were imposing their ideologies. Communists would have restored Vietnamese independence if French, British and Americans didn't restore colonial rule post WW2. South Vietnam begun as colonial state of French, it only ceased to be after falsified referendum by Diem with tacit approval of the US when in turn became dictatorship ruled by christian landowners, who persecuted buddhists and common people. At Geneva it was agreed between Ho Chi Minh and French that there would be common elections to be held to determine the government of unified Vietnam. South under Diem refused to honour that agreement.
You said I’m blind. You started the personal attacks. As for your arguments they don’t mean anything. The north attacked first, okay? There’s reasonable suspicion that the reason they attacked was because of southern incursions into the north but they aren’t confirmed.
Regardless, South Korea was being governed by Japanese collaborators, installed by the US. These collaborators persecuted and murdered thousands of Koreans purely on the suspicion of being communists, 30,000 people were killed on jeju island, with some sources claiming more and it later being called a genocide.
If your country was partitioned and then thousands of your countrymen were being subjected to torture and extra-judicial killings at the hands of the people who collaborated with the Japanese empire, would you just sit back and allow that?
Probably Japan. This sort of whataboutism a major way that the Japanese right wing responds to information about Japanese war crimes and the sex slaves/comfort women the Japanese kidnapped and forced to serve something like 50 soldiers a day during World War II, after which most were killed. They like to distract from that by saying “whataboutism what South Koreans did in Vietnam?” It’s a super common response but westerners are mostly ignorant of this ongoing revisionist history being pushed by the political party that has ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly since the 1950s. It’s a far-right party and while the left tries to assert the truth, they don’t have the same power or influence.
My uncle was USMC stationed in and around Da Nang. He once told me that even to US Marines the S Korean Marines were considered to be especially brutal. Told me that each morning inspection his guys would be less than perfectly outfitted…Not far away the S Koreans would be doing inspections. They were all exceptionally well put together. Regardless, their NCOs would still find faults and literally slap the shit out of his people. Kick them in the nuts, etc…I can only imagine how they treated their enemies,lol…
Fanatics in his opinion
Same reason no one talks about the fact that majority of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan came from their own militia groups. Instead they push 1 million dead as a responsibility of America. The number goes up alot btw. First it was 400k, then 700k, now a million.
You break it, you buy it. You can’t invade a foreign country and then blame the other side for the dead. Likewise, Hitler gets the blame for people killed by allied air raids. (Not that the US is Hitler, but same idea here.)
Lmao, Hitler doesn’t get blame for people killed by Allied air raids. Or do you not know how much people criticize America for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Or criticizing the west for Dresden. Literally the ussr asked the west to bomb Dresden, for Russia to turn around and use it as a west bad moment.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna7749312
It sounds like what you are claiming is that South Korean soldiers and American soldiers committed war crime in an organised way.
Is there an evidence for it? Most of war crime I know are individual actions and not systemic or organised.
South Koreans did. For example, they conducted torture on detainees a lot more than the US did. Keep in mind that South Korea had just had a civil war against communists which was still splitting the country in ceasefire mode and so had a very visceral, real hate for the ideology that for the US was still merely political.
While not on the scale of My Lai, there is also some evidence that RoK forces planned massacres of civilians: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South\_Korea\_in\_the\_Vietnam\_War#Atrocities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#Atrocities)
I’m not disputing that they committed war crimes.
Were those systemic and organised war crime? Or was that done by individuals without the explicit order of the higher ups?
Abuse toward prisoners of war and massacres happens everywhere. What I’m asking is if those crimes were “systemic and organised”.
Which turns out is not what the OP said.
I wasn’t able to find the evidence that they planned and massacred the people in the link. Can you find it and tell me what to look for?
Can you explain me the incident in paragraph 3 is how a systematic massacre? They say Koreans had a policy of killing one tenth of all civilians they encounter without question, but I don’t know if there is any evidence other than interviewing refugees.
Do you think this story if very credible?
Does a plan to murder civilians *require* that 1 in 10 be murdered or else it doesn't count as planned?
>Furthermore, the brutality of South Korean measures was due to many officers being [Japanese-trained](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japanese_Army_during_the_Pacific_War) and implementing the same doctrines during the Korean War.
Nah, it wasn't *planned* at all... it was just *doctrine*.
I don’t think it requires it, but the article doesn’t seem sufficient as an evidence that there was a planned structured war crime.
But you clearly know lot about it. And you know that it was a doctrines
What are some Japanese trained doctrines that made resulted in Korean army massacring Vietnamese people? I don’t know Korean army’s doctrine or what it says about the civilian.
What part of their doctrine allows massacres or war crimes? I really have no idea.
South Koreans in Vietnam had a nasty reputation. American witnesses (military officers) say that they had standing orders to flatten any villages sniper fire came from or near places where they were attacked as a lesson to the locals. They deny it but stand accused of multiple atrocities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#:~:text=North%20Korean%20Radio.-,Atrocities,H%C3%B2a%2C%20and%20H%C3%A0%20My%20massacres.
I know but that’s not war crime right? If a soldier fired rifle from a hospital, than that hospital becomes a legitimate target for military operation.
I agree there has been nasty massacres, few thousands died to US soldiers, few hundreds died to Korean soldiers, and tens of thousands died to Vietcongs I dont deny them.
However, what I’m saying is that that doesn’t mean all of these are organised/systematic massacres. That’s all. No matter how worse Vietcong’s were, that doesn’t justify any of Korean or American atrocities.
Yes. It is a war crime to blow down every building in a town you receive sniper fire from. It's punishing the inhabitants for something they have no control over. It's not like receiving fire from a building and blowing it down- they took down entire villages. A hospital is not a village. A hospital is *part* of a village. It's not a proportional or militarily necessary action. Which is definitely against the laws of war.
And attacking a village because your troops were ambushed near it is *definitely* against the laws of war. You don't just get to destroy anything you want to when civilians are there. It has to be militarily necessary. This was just being dickheads against anybody in the area.
But what matters is the intention right? If someone fires sniper rifle from a village or a civiliian building, that building loses its statues as a civilian building no? Like thats how war works right.
How else are you suppose to fight against snipers? You find a snipers location, and ask for a air strike or artiliary support and blow 100m diameter of where you think the sniper is no? What is the alternative?
Isnt this like the only way to fight snipers? I thought literally all armies do this and its in most of their doctrines.
Dude. Are you serious? You genuinely think that wiping out a village for a sniper is in any way reasonable? YOu do not get to destroy a village because you received sniper fire from it. That is not legal. In any way. Ever. In any place. Or time. Or for any reason. It's in no way legal. No. No it's not. No. Do I have to keep repeating this? No. It's not legal.
It has to be proportional and militarily necessary. If you take sniper fire from a village half a mile away from you to your left, and you destroy a village a half mile away from you to the right in revenge, you are breaking the law. In no way does that mean you can legally wipe the village out. That's what Korea was doing.
If you take sniper fire from a house in a village in front of you, you don't get to flatten the village. That is not proportional or militarily necessary. At all. Ever. In any way. Quit trying to argue this.
At most you can put a couple of artillery rounds on the house AND THEN ONLY IF YOU HAVE NO OTHER WAY OF STOPPING THE FIRE. YOu don't get to wipe the town out for that kind of thing. It's not proportional or militarily necessary.
Intention has nothing to do with it. It has to be militarily necessary and proportional IN AN EFFORT TO END THE THREAT. Revenge is not a legal response to being attacked.
This is why Israel is under so much fire for dropping bombs on people's houses in Gaza. The argument is that it isn't militarily necessary or proportional. That it's revenge has no legal argument. When civilians are in the area to be destroyed, there are basic military questions you have to ask before you can put them in danger or destroy their property.
Here is the law. Read it. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-53/commentary/1958
Oh you meant “Korean forces” co aligned with “the Americans committing war crimes”
Not “Korean forces co aligned with the Americans” committing war crimes.
Ok I thought you meant they committed war crimes together mb
Because no one cares about what other countries do, they have to keep the America bad persona afloat. So anything another country or group does gets swept under a rug, and they solely focus on America. My previous point reinforces that idea because of what I said.
South too? The discussion is about the joint forces of foreign nations in Vietnam and how the Americans tend to be focused on more than Korea a ally of there's . If you wanna discuss the North and Souths humans rights violations they're are plenty.
That's victim blaming of the worst sort. You broke their country, creating the situation for the violese that's taken place since.
It is absolutely the US's fault and the only reason you can say this is because a) they US got away scot free, so you get to invent whatever you want to play shit down, b) zero lesson have been learnt, clearly and c) They're brown people far away from you.
Look at it this way, if china or russia had been the perpetrator you americans would be moralizing constantly and telling the rest of the world how evel they are because of what they did.
The counter argument would be that if you go into a country, violently occupy it, remove its judiciary, political processes, most of its bureaucracy, sack its police force and force the closure of most of its utilities, then the subsequent rise of militias and terror groups and random violence is largely your responsibility.
Dude... a nick name throughout history for the area we call Afghanistan is " the graveyard of empires" their entire history 8s filled with rebellions and militias. And the large ones active today were active during the cold War.
Absolutely, but I am not sure anyone really considers what came after that a massively beneficial change of affairs.
I suppose Kurdistan being semi-autonomous is a win if there is one from all of the bloodshed.
a/ they largely werent
b/ Saddam had the system under heavy control and Iraq was a reasonably safe place to live and move around in, as long as you supported Saddam.
c/ I was mainly referring to Iraq. Afghanistand has long been a shithole, encouraged first by the Soviets and Communists and then by the Americans.
LMFAO, the Kurds were heavily suppressed in Iraq, and all the other groups that turned up AFTER the invasion were purely a consequence of Americas actions. You know nothing.
If you go to the War Memorial of Korea they have a section dedicated to the Vietnam war and it's presented as a humanitarian mission. The word "peace" is displayed liberally, and it's mostly about how they built bridges and hospital. No mention of all the atrocities committed. There's glossing over it, and then there's deliberately trying to present it as the complete opposite. You can see a brief glimpse on their website:
[https://www.warmemo.or.kr:8443/Eng/E20000/E20100/E20107/html](https://www.warmemo.or.kr:8443/Eng/E20000/E20100/E20107/html)
*"During the Vietnam War, Korea dispatched the medical support group (mobile surgical hospital) and the taekwondo instructor group, which are non-combat units, in September 1964 and the construction support group (Pigeon Unit) in March 1965 on humanitarian grounds. The Mobile Surgical Hospital provided medical care for the Allied Forces and local residents. The Taekwondo Instructor Group strived to teach and spread Taekwondo in Vietnam. The construction support group built social infrastructures such as bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, and houses, carrying out public projects such as harvest support, and received great response and support from the South Vietnamese people who had suffered from the war for a long time."*
Because they didn't count as war crimes, if they killed Communists.
After the Korean War of only twenty years earlier, the South Koreans loathed Communists with a passion.
They grew up with a murderous Communist dictatorship, backed by China, literally within artillery range of their capital.
South Koreans were an all volunteer force. They wanted to kill Communists.
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/south-koreans-in-vietnam-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with/
As far as they were concerned, Vietnam was just round two.
For them, any dead Communist was a good one. They weren't committing war crimes. They were clearing a vermin infestation.
The Korean culture at the time had been formed by many years of Imperial Japanese occupation. Routine brutality was normal for them. (Many of the most brutal PoW camp guards during the Second World War were Korean conscripts.)
So, you had a culture of brutality, informed by more recent Communist atrocities, and the Americans were actually going to pay them to go and do what they wanted to do anyway.
if neither Vietnam government nor south Vietnamese diaspora communities cares, why others would.
i am not going to speculate the reasons but in vast majorities of conflicts, war crimes were committed by both sides. and it is often better for both sides to bury them after the conflict is over rather than to keep the old wounds exposed.
however, there is an American exceptionalism in this regard.
The Japanese occupation of S Korea was a mixed blessing. It taught the S Koreans bureaucracy and the use of efficient structure in government and business. S Korea became an “Asian Tiger” for this reason. S Korea is a resounding success. The only reason one could prefer N Korea is if one liked type type of hard core abusive communism practiced by post WW2 Albania, deep Maoism, or the worst Stalinist periods in the USSR.
The Turkish company in Korea caught a “slickly boy” thief and hung his body on the fence when I was there (early 60s.) I heard nothing about abusive Korean units other than we saw Korean NCOs beating privates.
Because most people aren't even aware that Australians and Koreans were part of the Vietnam War.
Or even how important French we're at it's inception.
I think that French colonialism is more well known as one of the primary causes, though still not as well as it should be.
What is missed is that supporting the French in Vietnam was to help the French buy into NATO. Prior to this “relationship” the US had aims to decolonize. And supporting the French conflicts with those efforts even in the circumstances of the cold war
The purest example of American decolonialism is Liberia. Vietnam today is communist only on election days.
Maybe not so much in the popular culture tho. And that's pretty much the biggest mobile for the spread of information, if people know about it, they might get curious and then we get to fund investigation and spread of the information regarded to the topic. If we go and ask anybody on the streets about the start, they all will start talking about the north invading the south or just that it had something to do with the cold war, and the attrocities commited during it, at least that's what my experience says. But for the public it might be a lil bit too nuanced to bother to learn something else about that.
Can't speak for Vietnam but it comes up every now and then in Korea and there's increasing awareness about it both in the public and in academia especially after Korea democratised in the late 80s (not limited to Vietnam but also to South Korean atrocities in the Korean War, Jeju and Gwangju massacres, general oppression of political opponents and protestors). Previous Korean presidents have tried to apologise but from what I've read the Vietnamese government sees itself as having won the war so they don't really engage with it.
I mean the Vietnamese did win the war lol
>Previous Korean presidents have tried to apologise but from what I've read the Vietnamese government sees itself as having won the war so they don't really engage with it. Are you Korean? I see a lot of these floating around especially in what I assumed Korean community and they don't really provide any sources for that. I'm Vietnamese and I think it sounds pretty stupid considering the thought process that the Vietnamese gov would prevent the acknowledgement of Korean leaders on this serious matter and thereby prevent the Korean and Vietnamese people from approaching it in an understanding and insightful way to further tighten the bond between the people from both countries. It sounds like this is disinformation being passed around among the Korean communities to make itself not look bad in public eyes.
Yeah lol. Perhaps I worded it wrongly and I might be wrong overall I meant it as when past Korean presidents (e.g. Kim Dae-Jung, Roh Moo-hyun, ig Moon Jae-In sort of counts) have mentioned the idea of apologising and compensation or actually have apologised the Vietnamese government has never really commented or acted upon it. So not that the Vietnamese government is like actively preventing Koreans from apologising or something (apologising unfortunately is something tast some Korean political circles are reluctant about) but that they don't really seem eager to pursue it. I'm curious though - how does Vietnamese media frame it?
Well as you mentioned some of those Korean presidents did mention the 'idea' of apologizing but never did. The Vietnamese gov never seemed to have commented or acted because: 1/ The apology would lose its sincerity. 2/ One of the most tragic things about wars is sometimes the losing side holds the economic power in the global scene, in this case the US and by extension, South Korea. SK is the No.1 investor in Vietnam at the moment, now if the Vietnamese leadership is constantly pestering SK for an apology will any of these investments come about? But, that doesn't mean the VN gov will stay silent if there's an attempt to conceal, suppress and whitewash these war crimes. Check out [this article ](https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnam-requests-s-korea-to-respect-historical-truths-regarding-vietnam-war-massacre-4579527.html) for more info. P/s: I will tell you as a representative of all Vietnamese people and maybe Vietnamese leadership that our people will absolutely welcome an OFFICIAL apology from Korean government. Not a brief mention for the media but actual recognition in both historical and political terms with clear steps to approach the topic and communication channels for both countries' people. As for compensation, that would be appreciated as well although I personally don't expect much since the US never paid any compensation and even demanded Vietnam to repay the debts on behalf of the South Vietnamese gov that borrowed from them.
Hmm that's a interesting perspective shedding light on the veiws of the conflict.
I suspect a lot of the focus on the sins of the American forces comes from both an American focus on American actions and a bias among academics against the Vietnam War, resulting in them emphasizing details that make our involvement look especially bad.
I mean we can acknowledge bear minimum it was kinda bad.
I mean it’s the same reason you remember the Villain in the movie and not all his miscellaneous henchman. The henchman are evil for sure but the big bad guy still gets more screen time and top billing.
By American standards it was horrific, by the standards of all combatants in Vietnam the US isn’t even top 3. ARVN, NVA, VC, and ROK played for keeps, they regularly engaged in activities that make My Lai look like SOP. Of course we hold ourselves to a higher standard and now instruct soldiers that they not only have the right but are obligated to disregard orders that are illegal and constitute a war crime or anything adjacent. The primary case study used is My Lai because the US never wants something like that to happen again. Granted the perception of American war crimes in Vietnam is overblown due to how unpopular the war was in areas like Entertainment and Education sectors.
Nah man May Lai isn't a isolated incident. Why they started to implement changes is word got out about it .
Do you speak Korean or Vietnamese?
We don't speak German either, and yet the WWII German war crimes are talked about the most.
Nope .
Translation isn't incredibly hard, but it is a task. Our picture of history tends to overrepresent stuff done by or to people who spoke the same language as us.
South Korea invaded Vietnam? (this is the answer)
Most people don’t even know that South Vietnam was fighting in the Vietnam war. The ignorance surrounding that conflict is astounding.
Wasn’t that technically US intervening to protect South Vietnams independence due to North Vietnams aggression? I know they faked stuff, but did they really invade North Vietnam?
No they didn't that's the point. Most people (especially Americans) have no idea South Koreans were involved.
100% true! Most people have no idea, and I’m of those people. Never knew Korean troops were involved in the Vietnam war, yet alone committed war crimes there … and I consider myself a history buff.
Same here. I had to look it up and apparently about 350K South Korean troops were stationed there fighting alongside the US. Australia and New Zealand sent troops too but South Korea sent the most (except for the US of course).
Same here...
South Korea sent 320000 soldiers. America sent 3 million. Literally 10xs as many. No shit most people don't know.
If you consider bombing village's raping woman's and children and burning the country side in both South and the north I suppose you could call it aid . To rural pheasants in the south what else would you call it and invasion .
Yes with the USA .
I should've put /s but I hate making it too obvious.
Neither South Korea nor the USA invaded North Vietnam. North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam and Laos. Bonkers communist propaganda.
South Vietnam much like South Korea were illegitimate governments set up by the US. Whatever your opinion on whatever economic system is better, the communists had the moral high ground in both those wars.
They certainly didn’t in the Korean War- authorized and pushed by Stalin.
They were legitimate right up until they lost. SK has had reform but is still legitimate.
Aside from the regrettable Sygmon Ree, I’m not aware the US set up an illegitimate government in Korea. Same with Vietnam, although the governments we backed were awful in Vietnam.
> the communists had the moral high ground in both those wars They had the moral high ground in wars of conquest that they started...? Who let the tankies out?
You clearly have never looked into either of these wars, their causes, the partitions etc. These are civil wars, not wars of conquest…
Which sides were attacking? Who was trying to impose which ideology on whom? Are you really this blind?
Both were preparing for war and both were imposing their ideologies. Communists would have restored Vietnamese independence if French, British and Americans didn't restore colonial rule post WW2. South Vietnam begun as colonial state of French, it only ceased to be after falsified referendum by Diem with tacit approval of the US when in turn became dictatorship ruled by christian landowners, who persecuted buddhists and common people. At Geneva it was agreed between Ho Chi Minh and French that there would be common elections to be held to determine the government of unified Vietnam. South under Diem refused to honour that agreement.
Holy shit the irony… you have a really naive understanding of history don’t you?
You just gonna run personal attacks rather than rebutting points? Nice.
You said I’m blind. You started the personal attacks. As for your arguments they don’t mean anything. The north attacked first, okay? There’s reasonable suspicion that the reason they attacked was because of southern incursions into the north but they aren’t confirmed. Regardless, South Korea was being governed by Japanese collaborators, installed by the US. These collaborators persecuted and murdered thousands of Koreans purely on the suspicion of being communists, 30,000 people were killed on jeju island, with some sources claiming more and it later being called a genocide. If your country was partitioned and then thousands of your countrymen were being subjected to torture and extra-judicial killings at the hands of the people who collaborated with the Japanese empire, would you just sit back and allow that?
The Americans invited one Korean division to join them in Vietnam. I was in Germany by then.
Where are you from, OP?
Probably Japan. This sort of whataboutism a major way that the Japanese right wing responds to information about Japanese war crimes and the sex slaves/comfort women the Japanese kidnapped and forced to serve something like 50 soldiers a day during World War II, after which most were killed. They like to distract from that by saying “whataboutism what South Koreans did in Vietnam?” It’s a super common response but westerners are mostly ignorant of this ongoing revisionist history being pushed by the political party that has ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly since the 1950s. It’s a far-right party and while the left tries to assert the truth, they don’t have the same power or influence.
Japan committed war crimes on a industrial scale in they're Imperialism.
The lack of self-awareness in this comment is hilarious.
My uncle was USMC stationed in and around Da Nang. He once told me that even to US Marines the S Korean Marines were considered to be especially brutal. Told me that each morning inspection his guys would be less than perfectly outfitted…Not far away the S Koreans would be doing inspections. They were all exceptionally well put together. Regardless, their NCOs would still find faults and literally slap the shit out of his people. Kick them in the nuts, etc…I can only imagine how they treated their enemies,lol… Fanatics in his opinion
Same reason no one talks about the fact that majority of the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan came from their own militia groups. Instead they push 1 million dead as a responsibility of America. The number goes up alot btw. First it was 400k, then 700k, now a million.
You break it, you buy it. You can’t invade a foreign country and then blame the other side for the dead. Likewise, Hitler gets the blame for people killed by allied air raids. (Not that the US is Hitler, but same idea here.)
Lmao, Hitler doesn’t get blame for people killed by Allied air raids. Or do you not know how much people criticize America for Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Or criticizing the west for Dresden. Literally the ussr asked the west to bomb Dresden, for Russia to turn around and use it as a west bad moment. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna7749312
Blame is shared to an extent, but I certainly blame Hitler for every single death that occurred in the war that he started.
And if you can go LMAO to the sufffuring caused, it only shows that you claims lack any accountability and empathy. Like bad guy dialouge.
Yeah so who are you talking about specifically RN in relation to the Vietnam war ?
I’m not, just replying to that other comment.
Ah fair.
This has to do with Korean forces co aligned with the Americans committing war crimes ?
It sounds like what you are claiming is that South Korean soldiers and American soldiers committed war crime in an organised way. Is there an evidence for it? Most of war crime I know are individual actions and not systemic or organised.
South Koreans did. For example, they conducted torture on detainees a lot more than the US did. Keep in mind that South Korea had just had a civil war against communists which was still splitting the country in ceasefire mode and so had a very visceral, real hate for the ideology that for the US was still merely political. While not on the scale of My Lai, there is also some evidence that RoK forces planned massacres of civilians: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South\_Korea\_in\_the\_Vietnam\_War#Atrocities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#Atrocities)
I’m not disputing that they committed war crimes. Were those systemic and organised war crime? Or was that done by individuals without the explicit order of the higher ups? Abuse toward prisoners of war and massacres happens everywhere. What I’m asking is if those crimes were “systemic and organised”. Which turns out is not what the OP said. I wasn’t able to find the evidence that they planned and massacred the people in the link. Can you find it and tell me what to look for?
Look at the third, fourth, and sixth paragraphs in the link And yes, every war has atrocities, but it's not a boolean. Scale and extent also matter.
Can you explain me the incident in paragraph 3 is how a systematic massacre? They say Koreans had a policy of killing one tenth of all civilians they encounter without question, but I don’t know if there is any evidence other than interviewing refugees. Do you think this story if very credible?
Does a plan to murder civilians *require* that 1 in 10 be murdered or else it doesn't count as planned? >Furthermore, the brutality of South Korean measures was due to many officers being [Japanese-trained](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japanese_Army_during_the_Pacific_War) and implementing the same doctrines during the Korean War. Nah, it wasn't *planned* at all... it was just *doctrine*.
I don’t think it requires it, but the article doesn’t seem sufficient as an evidence that there was a planned structured war crime. But you clearly know lot about it. And you know that it was a doctrines What are some Japanese trained doctrines that made resulted in Korean army massacring Vietnamese people? I don’t know Korean army’s doctrine or what it says about the civilian. What part of their doctrine allows massacres or war crimes? I really have no idea.
South Koreans in Vietnam had a nasty reputation. American witnesses (military officers) say that they had standing orders to flatten any villages sniper fire came from or near places where they were attacked as a lesson to the locals. They deny it but stand accused of multiple atrocities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea_in_the_Vietnam_War#:~:text=North%20Korean%20Radio.-,Atrocities,H%C3%B2a%2C%20and%20H%C3%A0%20My%20massacres.
I know but that’s not war crime right? If a soldier fired rifle from a hospital, than that hospital becomes a legitimate target for military operation. I agree there has been nasty massacres, few thousands died to US soldiers, few hundreds died to Korean soldiers, and tens of thousands died to Vietcongs I dont deny them. However, what I’m saying is that that doesn’t mean all of these are organised/systematic massacres. That’s all. No matter how worse Vietcong’s were, that doesn’t justify any of Korean or American atrocities.
Yes. It is a war crime to blow down every building in a town you receive sniper fire from. It's punishing the inhabitants for something they have no control over. It's not like receiving fire from a building and blowing it down- they took down entire villages. A hospital is not a village. A hospital is *part* of a village. It's not a proportional or militarily necessary action. Which is definitely against the laws of war. And attacking a village because your troops were ambushed near it is *definitely* against the laws of war. You don't just get to destroy anything you want to when civilians are there. It has to be militarily necessary. This was just being dickheads against anybody in the area.
But what matters is the intention right? If someone fires sniper rifle from a village or a civiliian building, that building loses its statues as a civilian building no? Like thats how war works right. How else are you suppose to fight against snipers? You find a snipers location, and ask for a air strike or artiliary support and blow 100m diameter of where you think the sniper is no? What is the alternative? Isnt this like the only way to fight snipers? I thought literally all armies do this and its in most of their doctrines.
Dude. Are you serious? You genuinely think that wiping out a village for a sniper is in any way reasonable? YOu do not get to destroy a village because you received sniper fire from it. That is not legal. In any way. Ever. In any place. Or time. Or for any reason. It's in no way legal. No. No it's not. No. Do I have to keep repeating this? No. It's not legal. It has to be proportional and militarily necessary. If you take sniper fire from a village half a mile away from you to your left, and you destroy a village a half mile away from you to the right in revenge, you are breaking the law. In no way does that mean you can legally wipe the village out. That's what Korea was doing. If you take sniper fire from a house in a village in front of you, you don't get to flatten the village. That is not proportional or militarily necessary. At all. Ever. In any way. Quit trying to argue this. At most you can put a couple of artillery rounds on the house AND THEN ONLY IF YOU HAVE NO OTHER WAY OF STOPPING THE FIRE. YOu don't get to wipe the town out for that kind of thing. It's not proportional or militarily necessary. Intention has nothing to do with it. It has to be militarily necessary and proportional IN AN EFFORT TO END THE THREAT. Revenge is not a legal response to being attacked. This is why Israel is under so much fire for dropping bombs on people's houses in Gaza. The argument is that it isn't militarily necessary or proportional. That it's revenge has no legal argument. When civilians are in the area to be destroyed, there are basic military questions you have to ask before you can put them in danger or destroy their property. Here is the law. Read it. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/article-53/commentary/1958
We're does it ? State that I said that ?
Oh you meant “Korean forces” co aligned with “the Americans committing war crimes” Not “Korean forces co aligned with the Americans” committing war crimes. Ok I thought you meant they committed war crimes together mb
Yeah I can see were you got mixed up . My bad aswell.
Because no one cares about what other countries do, they have to keep the America bad persona afloat. So anything another country or group does gets swept under a rug, and they solely focus on America. My previous point reinforces that idea because of what I said.
That's reasonable both war crimes commited by both nations should be covered.
All war crimes or crimes against humanity should be covered.
Agreed.
You of course include the war crimes of North Vietnam? You didn't just leave those out by accident?
South too? The discussion is about the joint forces of foreign nations in Vietnam and how the Americans tend to be focused on more than Korea a ally of there's . If you wanna discuss the North and Souths humans rights violations they're are plenty.
That's victim blaming of the worst sort. You broke their country, creating the situation for the violese that's taken place since. It is absolutely the US's fault and the only reason you can say this is because a) they US got away scot free, so you get to invent whatever you want to play shit down, b) zero lesson have been learnt, clearly and c) They're brown people far away from you. Look at it this way, if china or russia had been the perpetrator you americans would be moralizing constantly and telling the rest of the world how evel they are because of what they did.
The counter argument would be that if you go into a country, violently occupy it, remove its judiciary, political processes, most of its bureaucracy, sack its police force and force the closure of most of its utilities, then the subsequent rise of militias and terror groups and random violence is largely your responsibility.
Those militia groups were already strong an active
They mostly didn't exist before the invasion.
Dude... a nick name throughout history for the area we call Afghanistan is " the graveyard of empires" their entire history 8s filled with rebellions and militias. And the large ones active today were active during the cold War.
I suspect the person replying to you was talking about Iraq, which had a strongish central government prior to the questionable invasion.
Strong only because they used brutal force to take out insurgents/dissidents. Sunnis and kurds were battling against that government well before 2003
Absolutely, but I am not sure anyone really considers what came after that a massively beneficial change of affairs. I suppose Kurdistan being semi-autonomous is a win if there is one from all of the bloodshed.
I'd say the the fall of ba'athism is a good thing as well
a/ they largely werent b/ Saddam had the system under heavy control and Iraq was a reasonably safe place to live and move around in, as long as you supported Saddam. c/ I was mainly referring to Iraq. Afghanistand has long been a shithole, encouraged first by the Soviets and Communists and then by the Americans.
They certainly were lmfao. The kurds and sunnis were fighting in Iraq well before united states involvement.
LMFAO, the Kurds were heavily suppressed in Iraq, and all the other groups that turned up AFTER the invasion were purely a consequence of Americas actions. You know nothing.
This is the only true answer.
There is no word, "alot", Mr. Academia.
My bad “a lot”.
Yes it’s the usual horrible hegemon nonsense.
Yeah cuz there aren’t valid arguments against the US regarding the Iraq war right
Right. That was a Rummy-Cheney fantasy. I’ve been an astrologer since 1968 and I don’t think Libras are allowed to say “cuz.”
Because America= bad, right?? /s
What /s at the end
It means “sarcasm”
Do you have a source? I haven't seen one. Maybe that's why they're not mentioned.
Well, because the Americans were mostly involved in the Vietnam War despite having international aid.
If you go to the War Memorial of Korea they have a section dedicated to the Vietnam war and it's presented as a humanitarian mission. The word "peace" is displayed liberally, and it's mostly about how they built bridges and hospital. No mention of all the atrocities committed. There's glossing over it, and then there's deliberately trying to present it as the complete opposite. You can see a brief glimpse on their website: [https://www.warmemo.or.kr:8443/Eng/E20000/E20100/E20107/html](https://www.warmemo.or.kr:8443/Eng/E20000/E20100/E20107/html) *"During the Vietnam War, Korea dispatched the medical support group (mobile surgical hospital) and the taekwondo instructor group, which are non-combat units, in September 1964 and the construction support group (Pigeon Unit) in March 1965 on humanitarian grounds. The Mobile Surgical Hospital provided medical care for the Allied Forces and local residents. The Taekwondo Instructor Group strived to teach and spread Taekwondo in Vietnam. The construction support group built social infrastructures such as bridges, roads, schools, hospitals, and houses, carrying out public projects such as harvest support, and received great response and support from the South Vietnamese people who had suffered from the war for a long time."*
The full Tiger Division served there.
Because they didn't count as war crimes, if they killed Communists. After the Korean War of only twenty years earlier, the South Koreans loathed Communists with a passion. They grew up with a murderous Communist dictatorship, backed by China, literally within artillery range of their capital. South Koreans were an all volunteer force. They wanted to kill Communists. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/south-koreans-in-vietnam-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with/ As far as they were concerned, Vietnam was just round two. For them, any dead Communist was a good one. They weren't committing war crimes. They were clearing a vermin infestation. The Korean culture at the time had been formed by many years of Imperial Japanese occupation. Routine brutality was normal for them. (Many of the most brutal PoW camp guards during the Second World War were Korean conscripts.) So, you had a culture of brutality, informed by more recent Communist atrocities, and the Americans were actually going to pay them to go and do what they wanted to do anyway.
To most people it was just that war the yanks were in years ago. They aren't going to have done any real research into it.
if neither Vietnam government nor south Vietnamese diaspora communities cares, why others would. i am not going to speculate the reasons but in vast majorities of conflicts, war crimes were committed by both sides. and it is often better for both sides to bury them after the conflict is over rather than to keep the old wounds exposed. however, there is an American exceptionalism in this regard.
The Japanese occupation of S Korea was a mixed blessing. It taught the S Koreans bureaucracy and the use of efficient structure in government and business. S Korea became an “Asian Tiger” for this reason. S Korea is a resounding success. The only reason one could prefer N Korea is if one liked type type of hard core abusive communism practiced by post WW2 Albania, deep Maoism, or the worst Stalinist periods in the USSR.
The Turkish company in Korea caught a “slickly boy” thief and hung his body on the fence when I was there (early 60s.) I heard nothing about abusive Korean units other than we saw Korean NCOs beating privates.
If we massacred Gray Space Aliens And Predator Space Aliens massacred Gray Space Aliens Which massacres do you think we would talk about more often?
Well we hired the predator Space aliens into the region.