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Declassified U.S. document says: "It is reported that large groups of civilians, either composed of or controlled by North Korean soldiers, are infiltrating U.S. positions. The army has requested we strafe all civilian refugee parties approaching our positions. To date, we have complied with the army request in this respect." The document goes on to recommend establishing a policy revising the practice.When parts of South Korea were under North Korean control, political killings, reportedly into the tens of thousands, took place in the cities and villages. The Communists systematically killed former South Korean government officials and others deemed hostile to the Communists, and such killing was intensified as North Koreans retreated from the South.
South Korean military, police and paramilitary forces, often with U.S. military knowledge and without trial, executed in turn tens of thousands of leftist inmates and alleged Communist sympathizers in the incidents such as the massacre of the political prisoners from the Daejeon Prison and the bloody crackdown on the Cheju Uprising. Gregory Henderson, a U.S. diplomat in Korea at the time, put the total figure at 100,000, and the bodies of those killed were often dumped into mass graves.
Recently, the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission has received reports of more than 7,800 cases of civilian killings in 150 locations across the country where mass killings of civilians took place before and during the war. In the other incidents, South Koreans also blew up several bridges that were crowded with fleeing civilians when they could not clear the bridges before the enemy arrived.
Korean forces on both sides routinely rounded up and forcibly conscripted both males and females in their area of operations; thousands of them never returned home. According to the estimate by R. J. Rummel, a professor at the University of Hawaii, some 400,000 South Korean citizens were conscripted into the North Korean Army. Before the September 1950 liberation of Seoul by the U.S. forces, an estimated 83,000 citizens of the city were taken away by retreating North Korean forces and disappeared, according to the South Korean government; their fate remains unknown. North Korea insists the South Koreans defected voluntarily and were not held against their will.
For a time, American troops were under orders to consider any Korean civilians on the battlefield approaching their position as hostile, and were instructed to "neutralize" them because of fears of infiltration. This led to the indiscriminate killings of hundreds of South Korean civilians by the U.S. military at places such as No Gun Ri, where many defenseless refugees — most of whom were women, children and old men — were shot at by the U.S. Army and may have been strafed by the U.S. Air Force. Recently, the U.S. admitted having a policy of strafing civilians in other places and times.
Crimes against POWs
Prisoners of war were severely mistreated by the North Koreans Various historical accounts reported frequent beatings, starvation, forced labor, summary executions and death marches imposed by the Communist forces on UN prisoners. North Korean forces committed several massacres of captured U.S. troops at places such as Hill 312 and Hill 303 on the Pusan Perimeter, and in and around Daejeon; this occurred particularly during early mopping-up actions. According to the U.S. Congressional report:
"More than 5,000 American prisoners of war died because of Communist war atrocities and more than a thousand who survived were victims of war crimes. Approximately two-thirds of all American prisoners of war in Korea died due to war crimes."
The Communists claimed that they had captured over 70,000 South Korean soldiers overall, but they returned only 8,000 of them. In contrast, 76,000 North Korean POWs were repatriated by South Korea. In addition to some 12,000 deaths in captivity, up to 50,000 South Korean POWs may have been illegally pressed into the North Korea military. According to the South Korean Ministry of Defense there were at least 300 POWs still alive being held captive in North Korea in 2003. Recently, a South Korean soldier escaped from North Korea and returned home in 2003, the then-latest of more than 30 South Korean prisoners who have managed to escape the North since 1994. Pyongyang denies holding any POWs.
Legacy
The Korean War was the first armed confrontation of the Cold War and set the standard for many later conflicts. It created the idea of a limited war, where the two superpowers would fight in another country, forcing the people in that nation to suffer the bulk of the destruction and death involved in a war between such large nations. The superpowers avoided descending into an all-out war with one another, as well as the mutual use of nuclear weapons. It also expanded the Cold War, which to that point had mostly been concerned with Europe. The war eventually led to a strengthening of alliances in the Western bloc and the splitting of Communist China from the Soviet bloc.
The Korean War damaged both Koreas heavily. Although South Korea stagnated economically in the decade following the war, it was later able to modernize and industrialize. In contrast, the North Korean economy recovered quickly after the war and until around 1975 surpassed that of South Korea. However, North Korea's economy eventually slowed. Today, the North Korean economy is virtually nonexistent while the South Korean economy is expanding. The CIA World Factbook estimates North Korea's GDP (PPP) to be $40 billion, which is a mere 3.34% of South Korea's $1.196 trillion GDP (PPP). The North's per capita income is $1,800, which is 7.35% of South Korea's $24,500 per capita income.
A heavily guarded demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the 38th Parallel continues to divide the peninsula today. Anti-Communist and anti-North Korea sentiment still remain in South Korea today, and most South Koreans are against the North Korean government. However, a "Sunshine Policy" is used by the controlling party, the Uri Party. The Uri Party and President Roh, the current South Korean president, have often disagreed with the United States in talks about North Korea. The Grand National Party (GNP), the Uri Party's main opposing party, maintains an anti-North Korea policy today.
The war affected other nations as well. Turkey's participation in the war helped it become a NATO member. The entrance into the war has been criticized inside the country, however.
According to a September 7, 2007 NPR report, President Bush stated that it is his administration's position that a formal peace treaty with North Korea was possible only when the north abandoned its nuclear weapons programs. According to Bush, "We look forward to the day when we can end the Korean War. That will end — will happen when Kim verifiably gets rid of his weapons programs and his weapons." Some have characterized this as a reversal of Mr. Bush's stated policy of regime change with respect to North Korea.
At the second Inter-Korean Summit in October 2007, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il signed a joint declaration calling for international talks towards a peace treaty formally ending the war.
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