Killing "Subversives" in South Korea in the 1950s

Yesterday, while reading the Akron Beacon-Journal (dead-trees edition), I came across a remarkable and horrible story of state-sponsored mass murder in South Korea in 1950, as North Korea was invading the South. In short, while fleeing the invasion, South Korea's army and police emptied prisons as they fled south and executed upwards of 100,000 prisoners, dumping them in mass graves. Allegedly, they did so to prevent "subversives" and "leftists" from joining the invading North and forming a fifth column. Of course, these "subversives" and "leftists" apparently included women, children, and poor peasants who were simply serving time for petty crimes.

The role of U.S. presence at these executions, and failure to denounce the South Korean military's deeds at the time (and beyond), should of course come as no surprise. After all, throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the U.S. would also support brutal regimes that replaced democratically elected leaders who looked too "communist" (and that's just in Latin America). Still, the fact that "overall commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur viewed the executions as a Korean 'internal matter,' even though he controlled South Korea's military" just adds another appalling event to MacArthur's life.

Quite honestly, I'm rather surprised that this isn't getting more attention globally and in the press (a Google news search for "South Korea Mass Graves" only brings up 3 articles). I suppose it's good overall that South Korea is finally confronting this matter with a truth commission, though there's a lot that could be improved upon (including offering the chance for testimonies and prosecutions). It also perhaps would have been better had the government begun studying and chronicling these mass murders a little sooner (the fact that a typhoon unmasked a mass grave may have strengthened the need for the commission isn't exactly a mark of rapid, self-motivated investigations). Still, the fact that South Korea is addressing these murders at all is at least mildly encouraging, and hopefully the atrocities will not be excluded from their national narrative.