U.S.,
S. KOREA TO HAVE TALKS
News-Gazette,
Champaign, IL
– October 27, 1999
ARMY TEAM TO HELP IN INVESTIGATION OF KOREAN WAR DEATHS
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Army is sending an investigative
team to South Korea
today to consult with government officials on how to cooperate in investigating
allegations of a Korean War massacre of civilians by U.S.
soldiers.
The
investigators, headed by the Army’s inspector general, Lt. Gen. Michael
Ackerman, plan one day of talks with their South Korean counterparts on Friday
before returning to Washington, defense officials said. Kenneth Bacon, Defense Department spokesman,
said Tuesday the meeting will mark the start of the information-sharing that
the U.S.
promised President Kim Dae-jung.
On Sept. 30,
The Associated Press reported accounts by American veterans and South Korean
villagers that U.S.
soldiers killed up to 400 civilians at Nogun-ri, South
Korea, early in the war. A subsequent AP report said that in addition
to the Nogun-ri incident in late July 1950, the Army a short time later
destroyed two strategic bridges as South Korean refugees streamed across,
killing hundreds of civilians.
The Pentagon
has said it will take a broad look into the matter, although it has not spelled
out the scope, timing and guidelines of its investigation.
Before
publication of the AP accounts, U.S.
officials said previous examinations of military records found no evidence of a
massacre. The earlier inquiries were the
basis for U.S.
and South Korean rejections of requests from victims’ families and survivors
seeking acknowledgement of the killings and compensation.
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