Welcome to BASE21

On the 29th of September, when all of Korea was debating whether to send
Korean troops to East Timor, the Associated Press shocked the world with
its report on the massacre of innocent people at NoGun-Ri. Armed U.S.
troops had gathered local civilians promising that they would be
evacuated, and then proceeded to slaughter them.

However, there have been previous reports in the Korean press calling for
an examination into reports of massacres that occured during the Korean
War before the AP's exclusive report. It wasn't just at NoGun-Ri that
these sorts of massacres had occurred. Besides NoGun-Ri, incessant reports
and petitions from witnesses and relatives of victims have come from Ye-
Chun, Ku-Mi, Dan-Yang, Ik-San asserting the massacre at the hands of U.S.
soldiers. However, the unwavering official U.S. position on the subject
had been that there were no killings of innocent civilians during the 3
years of the Korean War. The Korean government has also shown no concern
for the rights of its people, citing dependency and subordination as its
excuse.

It is well known that the Korean War was the most tragic war of the Cold
War era. It was a civil war that exploded within the historic background
of increasing tensions between the Soviet Union and the U.S., a war that
also left behind numerous war crimes such as the mass killings of innocent
civilians. However a historical view lent to us by a conservative U.S.
paper (Washington Post) states that the No-Geun Li massacre was an
"unfortunate mistake committed by soldiers who had not been trained
properly in the confusion of the Korean War". The spirits of the 4 million
people who had to die in this tragic war must be turning over in their
graves.

The victims and witnesses of the 4.3 Chejudo Massacre (known as the "Red
Hunt"), where the U.S. military administration systematically slaughtered
the residents of the island stated that till now "we could not demand for
the truth because we were afraid that we would be suspected of being
ideologically impure". Such a statement makes us wonder whether the fact
that these people could live on through their "self-censorship" is a
misfortune or a stroke of good luck.

The position that the U.S. has held on wars that it initiates, such as
the Vietnam War and the Korean War, has always been deceptive. The U.S.,
which rationalized its invasion of Yugoslavia on the basis of defending
democracy and human rights, has remained silent on the oppression of Kurds
by the Turkey. This is a prime example of how military powers manipulate
"human rights politics" to their advantage for political and economic
interests. Also, as shown by instances in Columbia and Iraq, military
intervention and schemes for war by military powers have yet to cease. The
president and the governing party presented "our position as a human
rights state" as grounds for sending troops to East Timor.

However, discussions on military intervention seem absurd without the
just evaluation of the No-Geun Li massacre and other atrocities committed
by the U.S. and Korean armed forces, and the eradication of the national
security law, which deprives people of their right to free speech,
expression and the freedom of thought.