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38 Stan. J. Int'l L. 153 (2002)
No Gun Ri: A Cover-Up Exposed A Commentary

handle is hein.journals/stanit38 and id is 161 raw text is: No Gun Ri: A Cover-Up Exposed A Commentaryt MARTHA MENDOZA* In the fall of 1999, a team of Associated Press investigative reporters broke the news that U.S. troops had massacred a large group of South Korean civilians early in the Korean War. The reports, expanded into a book published last fall, The Bridge at No Gun Ri, brought to light a story that had been suppressed for five decades, confirming South Korean allegations that the U.S. military had sought to dismiss. It made headlines around the world. The story was told through the eyes of the survivors: on the U.S. side, the green recruits of the good time U.S. occupation army in Japan, made up of teenagers who viewed unarmed farmers as enemies and generals who had never led men into battle; on the Korean side, peasant families forced to flee their ancestral villages and caught between the invading North Koreans and the U.S. Army. The narrative looks at Korean and U.S. victims, at the ordinary lives and high-level decisions that led to the fatal encounter, at the terror of the three-day slaughter, and at the memories and ghosts that forever haunt the survivors. But the story of No Gun Ri also raises disturbing questions that have sadly followed many other twentieth century international conflicts: Why were these outrages not more widely known at the time? And why does the U.S. government continue to want to bury them? As in many twentieth century conflicts, Washington portrayed the Korean War as a defense against a global communist monolith threatening U.S. independence. In the Cold War climate, suggestions of U.S. wrongdoing were treated as potentially subversive, even traitorous. The Korean War is often referred to as The Forgotten War-a war that the U.S. people never really noticed. This didn't happen by accident. The Army censored news reports. The Defense Department chastised Hollywood's attempts to depict the brutality. Congress, in investigating Korean War crimes, focused solely on North Korean atrocities and ignored the sour topic of wrongdoing committed by their own troops. In 1951, or in 1950, if you raised your voice and said what we're doing and using napalm against people is t This Article is a commentary by one of the Reporters who broke the No Gun Ri cover-up; none of the statements have been verified by the Stanford Journal of International Law. * Associated Press National Investigative Reporter; Member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist team that broke a series of stories describing U.S. troops killing civilians during the early days of the Korean War; Knight Fellow, Stanford University. 153 38 STAN. J. INT'L L. 153 (2002)

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