International Tribunal Indicts U.S. for Its Crimes During Korean War
An indictment was brought in at the Lima International Tribunal on U.S. Crimes during the Korean War held in Peru on October 16.
The indictment said: The U.S. committed unethical and brutal crimes against the Korean people in the last Korean war in violation of the UN Charter and the publicly recognized norms of international law. Though it was declared guilty in two hearings of the international tribunal, the U.S. has not yet fulfilled its state responsibility and international legal commitment as an assailant. The joint international prosecution team branded this as a double crime against the victims and prosecuted the U.S. for these crimes at the international tribunal.
It indicted as war criminals (the accused) those chiefly responsible for working out the plan for the Korean War, making preparations for it, launching and executing it, those who brutally tortured and killed Koreans, actively following the U.S. war policy, those who ordered to savagely destroy Korean national treasures and those who executed it, successive U.S. presidents and other officials who defended such crimes and wrecked peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and evaded the responsibility under international law, holding responsible posts of the U.S. administration.
The indictment disclosed the criminal acts and nature of the U.S. which wantonly violated the publicly recognized norms and practices in war during the Korean War.
During the three-year long war, the flying corps of the U.S. air force made at least 800,000 sorties and planes of the U.S. marines and navy over 250,000 sorties. About 85 percent of these sorties were to bomb and strafe the peaceful objects. Nearly 600,000 tons of napalm and other bombs were used against civilians.
The brutal indiscriminate air raids of the U.S. forces destroyed at least 8,700 buildings of factories, works and other productive facilities in the industrial domain and damaged 370,000 ha of farmland, reducing the area of 90,000 ha. of cultivated land.
They bombed, and completely bombarded and eopletely destroyed Yongmyong Temple and Pubyok Pavilion in Pyongyang, Puyong Temple in Haeju, Pohyon Temple in Mt. Myohyang, Sokwang Temple in Anbyon and Jangan Temple in Mt. Kumgang and almost all other cultural relics.
During their temporary occupation of many parts of the North, U.S. troops mercilessly massacred 15,000 civilians in Pyongyang, 35,838 in Sinchon, 19,072 in Anak and at least 13,000 in Unryul.
They raped at least 1,000 women in Pyongyang and abused many Korean women in various other parts of the north under their temporary occupation.
They organized the so-called “group of comfort women for Gis” with women aged 15-35 they had forcibly taken from various cities under their temporary occupation.
They took away so many civilians from Sok Islet (Sokdo-ri, Kwail County), Songhwa County, Hwanghae Province, an islet with a population of over 1,700 that it was reduced to an uninhabited islet.
When the U.S. plan to occupy the whole area of the north went bust in December 1950, the U.S. forces command issued an order to take civilians in the U.S.-held area to the South.
The U.S. forces used a variety of germ bombs, germ-dropping parachutes and germ-containing oil boxes. They used at least 20 types of germ weapons.
They dropped more than 15 million napalm bombs on frontal positions of the Korean People’s Army and peaceful cities, farms and fishing villages in the rear.
They gave inhumane treatment to the POWs of the Korean People’s Army in violation of the legal commitment to provide POWs with all sanitary and health conditions.
They brutally killed over 150 POWs desirous of going back to the north in Camp No. 91 on Koje Islet on April 10, 1952. On June 10, they at OWs of Camp No. 76 on the same islet as guinea pigs for testing chemical bombs, killing 227 and seriously wounding 572.
The indictment stressed that all these barbarous acts committed by the U.S. forces during the Korean War were by no means accidental but they were U.S. government-planned and sponsored crimes.
Subject to the convention on not applying the statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humankind (November 26, 1968), this statute is not applicable to the U.S. crimes committed during the Korean War, the indictment concluded.
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