Customer Reviews

Korean Atrocity!: Forgotten War Crimes, 1950-1953

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Korean Atrocity!: Forgotten War Crimes 1950-1953 came about when Philip Chinnery, acting in his capacity of Historian for the National Ex-prisoners of War Association was conducting some research at the Public Records Office and came across newly de-classified files on the Korean War. He discovered these files contained investigations into 1,615 atrocities and war crimes perpetrated against troops serving with the United Nations command in Korea. 10,233 of these victims of war crimes by the North Koreans and the Communist Chinese were American. Much of the material is horrific and leave no doubt that had American pursued the conflict to a clear win instead of a truce there would have been an Asian style Nuremberg trial for many North Korean and Chinese soldiers and their superiors. Korean Atrocity! surveys a sampling of these war crimes as they occurred in the first part of the war when the opposing sides fought themselves to a standstill; the treatment of prisoners of war in North Korea and China; and the eventual repatriation of prisoners that left 100 British servicemen and 7,956 American military personnel unaccounted for. The role of the American government regarding these missing men is, itself, a part of the scandal kept from the American public to this very day. Korean Atrocity! is very highly recommended reading for military buffs in general, and students of American military involvement in the Korean War in particular.

When Colin Powell, as secretary of state, was playing kissy-face with the Chinese Communists a few years ago, he did not demand an accounting of the several hundred American prisoners of war who disappeared without a trace in China during the Korean War. For a former chief of staff of the Army to abandon his fellow soldiers in this manner was dishonorable, but Powell is in other respects no different from any other high American official in the last half century.
That China -- and North Korea and the U.S.S.R., too -- violated solemn agreements and failed to return war prisoners has been known since the shooting stopped in 1953.
For some reason, British ex-prisoners have been more active than America's former POWs in Asia about demanding an accounting, apology and compensation for mistreatment by various enemy states, including Japan, China and North Korea.
Not successful, but active.
Philip Chinnery, author of many histories, is part of this movement in the United Kingdom.
The subtitle of his "Korean Atrocity! Forgotten War Crimes 1950-1953" is a little misleading. The atrocities did not stop in 1953.
In every war there are outrages and crimes. But only occasionally does a government organize atrocities as policy. Such crimes are qualitatively and -- according to the Nuremburg Principles -- legally more culpable than freelance war crimes. North Korea, China and the Soviet Union were all guilty of these more heinous crimes in the 1950-53 invasion of Korea.
Almost all the victims were South Koreans. The North Koreans systematically slaughtered anyone who worked for the Republic of Korea government and usually their families as well.
There also was an organized procedure to torture and murder helpless prisoners of war from the moment they surrendered. This kept up in the prison camps, until, as Chinnery writes, the Chinese realized that the war would end someday and there would be a prisoner exchange and they would have to have to prisoners to return.
Pitifully few were still alive by then. Chinnery's relation of how they died is not for the faint of heart.
The GIs in South Korea in 1950 had the bad luck to be commanded by the vainglorious and incompetent Douglas MacArthur, who managed to get his men into more death marches than all other American generals put together.
Chinnery quotes from judicial proceedings made during and after the war, and from personal experiences of survivors. Nothing in the history of human depravity exceeds what some of the United Nations soldiers were put through.
Other evidence, though indirect, is in a way even more chilling. For example, at the end of the Korean War and again at the end of the Vietnam War, the enemies of the United States "returned" prisoners, as demanded by the Geneva Convention and specific agreements. Except in neither case did a single amputee ever return.
In 1992, at Congressional hearings, some of the murders and tortures were briefly publicized, but public and governmental indifference were insufficient to do anything more.
"The men fought as best they could," writes Chinnery, "and when they became prisoners of war their governments turned their backs and abandoned them. That is the greatest atrocity of them all."

Most modern people's knowledge with the Korean War is probably limited to what they see in the television show, "M*A*S*H". Given this, they probably believe that the NKPA and Chinese weren't so bad with prisoners. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book documents the horrendous atrocities dealt out to US and Allied troops during the Korean War from loading up wounded on trucks and sending them over cliffs to using POW's as bayonet dummies. Furthermore it details POW's released after the ceasefire and has evidence that many more POW's were still held in communist custody.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Korean War.

The author has done a wonderful job exposing the brutality of the Chinese and North Korean troops during the Korean War. This is a so-far-little-researched subject that needs to be investigated further as it helps us understand the nature of the same (Chinese/North Korean) regimes we are facing today.

Timely book. And badly needed. Of course, Paul (who wrote the review below) is correct: atrocities were committed by both sides. However, now in South Korea there is a trend to emphasize the crimes of the `UN' side, while the similar deeds of the Communist side are seldom if ever mentioned. The book brings balance. I wonder whether it is going to be translated to Korean. Perhaps, not: the nationalist and increasingly anti-American Left which dominates the Korean politics now, does not want this part of the truth.

It's a Jack Higgins book so you know it's great. Service from Amazon, as always, was great.

I bought this book for my husband. I know he read it and seemed to enjoy it. I know nothing else about this book.

Good information and the general feeling felt during the Korean War, but I found it too bias. War crimes wasn't only on the part of China and North Korean, Americans made war crimes too. Like one incident couple of American troops slaughtered South Korean civillians under a bridge. This author has comfortably forgotten the misdeeds of Americans.

A couple of million Korean people (civilians) were killed during the war mostly by US bombing. What would you call this killing? Those Korean killed are as precious as those American and UN soldiers who perished in Korea to their parents, brothers and friends. Do we expect a similar book dealing with the same issue but from the opposite angle from the author? Or are war crimes always committed by the enemy?