TR EMERITUS

Don’t forget South Korea followed the west in invading Vietnam. They did their own massacres there.

The South Korean government, under the regime of Park Chung Hee, took an active role in the Vietnam War. From September 1964 to March 1973, South Korea sent some 350,000 troops to South Vietnam. The South Korean Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force all participated.

Atrocities

Various civilian groups have accused the South Korean military of atrocities, while the Korean Ministry of Defense has denied all such accusations.[50]

Korean forces are alleged to have perpetrated the Binh Tai, Bình An/Tây Vinh, Bình Hòa, and Hà My massacres. Further incidents are alleged to have occurred in the villages of An Linh and Vinh Xuan in Phú Yên Province.[51]

In 1972, Vietnamese-speaking American Friends Service Committee members Diane and Michael Jones looked at where Korean forces operated in Quảng Ngãi and Quảng Nam Provinces and alleged they had conducted 45 massacres, including 13 in which over 20 unarmed civilians were purportedly killed.[52][53] The Phong Nhị and Phong Nhất massacre is confirmed to have taken place within these two provinces.[53] A separate refugee study by RAND employee Terry Rambo, reported in a 1970 New York Times story, conducted interviews in early to mid 1966 in Phu Yen Province which confirmed that widespread atrocities had occurred. These included systemic mass-killings and deliberate policies to massacre civilians, with murders running into the hundreds.[54][55]

Atrocities by Korean forces were covered by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda in the chapter “The 43+ My Lais of South Korean Mercenaries”. —They reported thousands of routine murders of primarily elderly, women, and children civilians as most men in these regions had been conscripted into the Viet Cong or the ARVN. Chomsky has raised allegations that U.S. leadership did not discourage Korean atrocities, but tolerated them.[56] A separate refugee study by RAND employee Terry Rambo, reported in a 1970 New York Times story, conducted interviews in early to mid 1966 in Phu Yen Province which confirmed that widespread atrocities had occurred. These included systemic mass-killings and deliberate policies to massacre civilians, with murders running into the hundreds.[54][55]