War Anniversary | Leader Profiles | Northern View | Southern View | About the War About Korea | Story Archive | Related Sites | Message Board | Latest News

Air Force document indicates U.S. planes strafed civilians in Korean War

June 7, 2000
Web posted at: 1:24 a.m. HKT (1724 GMT)

From Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A U.S. Air Force memo, uncovered in a Pentagon investigation of civilian deaths during the Korean War, seems to indicate that U.S. Army commanders called in airstrikes against groups of civilian refugees because of fears they harbored North Korean troops.

The memo, dated July 25, 1950, and signed by then-Air Force Col. Turner Rogers, has been obtained by CNN.

The memo questions the policy of strafing civilians and recommends against further strikes upon groups of civilians "unless they are definitely known to contain North Korean soldiers or commit hostile acts."

• Overview   • War Anniversary   • Leader Profiles   • Northern View   • Southern View   • Kwangju at 20   • Moscow Connection   • About the War   • About Korea   • Story Archive   • Video Archive   • Related Sites   • Message Board   • Latest News

But the memo does offer evidence that U.S. Air Force planes were ordered to strafe large groups of civilians, who could have been refugees fleeing the fighting.

"It is reported that large groups of civilians, either composed of or controlled by North Korean soldiers, are infiltrating U.S. positions," the memo reads. "The army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions. To date, we have complied with the army request in this respect."

Support for earlier reports

The document would appear to support an Associated Press report of December 29, 1999, that cited declassified military documents as well as Korean and American witnesses as saying American jets attacked groups of Koreans in civilian clothes on suspicion that they harbored enemy infiltrators.

RESOURCES Korean War memo     MESSAGE BOARD North and South Korea

Villagers told the AP that American bombing and strafing killed about 300 South Korean civilians on January 20, 1951, at a cave where they had taken refuge in Youngchoon, 145 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Seoul, South Korea's capital.

Those incidents are separate from others reported by the Associated Press in September and October of 1999 that alleged hundreds of other South Korean refugees were killed by Army troops in mid-1950 as the retreating Americans struggled to defend South Korea against a North Korean invasion.

On May 25, 2000, the Associated Press reported that one of the Korean War veterans who was a key source in corroborating the allegations that hundreds of refugees were gunned down by the U.S. Army at No Gun Ri "now recognizes he could not have been at the scene."

Wartime documents found in government archives by the Associated Press showed that the ex-soldier, Edward L. Daily, 69, was in another unit elsewhere in Korea when 7th Cavalry Regiment companies allegedly fired on the South Korean civilians in late July 1950.

The Associated Press is standing by its story, which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

A Pentagon investigation of the allegations is still under way.

U.S. says North Korea stops work on suspected nuclear site
May 30, 2000
U.S., North Korea to resume talks about returning soldiers' remains
May 29, 2000
PM's resignation latest South Korean scandal
May 19, 2000

Air Force Link - Official Web Site of the U. S. Air Force

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.