ATROCITIES IN KOREA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27514, 7 October 1950, Page 7

ATROCITIES IN KOREA

Grim Trail Of Killings

Marks Red Retreat

ANTI-COMMUNIST VICTIMS Associated Press—New Zealand Press Association—Copyright Rec. 11 p.m. SEOUL, Oct. (J. The bodies of 25,000 South Korean men, women and children, murdered for being anti-Communist, have been found in South Kore» in the wake of the routed North Korean invasion army. The total il an officially estimated minimum, and American officers say it may run much higher as each day brings new disclosures of enemy atrocities against the South Koreans. When they had time, the North Koreans covered the evidence of their atrocities with earth. When they were hurried they left many ' bodies of their victims sprawled in open ditches or in exposed mounds. Mass graves, large and small, are being found daily jn South Korean communities along the bloody enemy retreat trail. Some have not yet been opened by American officers investigating the killings.

Partial figures of large - scale slaughters definitely counted show this toll:-

The chief South Korean victims of the enemy were city and village officials, policemen, civilians denounced as anti-Communists, and civilians who refused to conform to the Communist theories.

Seoul area: 10,000, possibly more. Taejon: Between 5000 and 6000. Wonju: Between 1000 and 2000. Yosu: 200. Chongju: 2400. Suchon and Yangpyong: 700. Mokpo: 500. American investigating officers said they expect to find “ betwen 450 and 500 in every fair-sized town" they check. At Changhung, near Kunsan, enemy soldiers armed with bamboo spears last Monday impaled 82 men. women and children. Other enemy troops swooped down on Changju, about 20 miles north of Taejon, on September 26 and burned to death 150 civilians and 18 captured American soldiers. The slaughter took place an hour after an Allied task force had rolled through Chongju without knowing that the 18 captured Americans were there.

A report charging the North Korean authorities with atrocities against thousands of civilians and prisoners of war has been received at Lake Success from the United Nations Commission in a despatch cabled from Fusan. It condemned the North Korean authorities’ “ complete disregard ” of civilised standards of behaviour in spite of their assurances that they would observe the principles of the Geneva Convention. The report said: “These atrocities involve, in some cases, brutal beating and mutilation of persons prior to their being murdered. The commission’s observers in the city of Taejon alone viewed more than 800 bodies, many of which had been badly mutilated. Other bodies were being exhumed at the time the scenes of tbt atrocities were inspected.”