A "truth and reconciliation" commission in South Korea reveals that in the 1950s, government forces killed thousands of innocent people who were swept up in searches for Communist sympathizers, while US authorities ultimately in command looked the other way.
It is painful to find out about these crimes, but their dispassionate revelation aids the "purification of memory" for which Pope John Paul II called so many times: a step in making peace between peoples.
How much do we need such reconciliation within our country?
That during an invasion insufficient care was taken to eliminate Korean Copperheads is a stain on the Republic of Korea. The deaths of innocent is a sad tragedy and there should be a recognition and a remembrance of the error. Where possible, compensation or some other form of atonement should be provided. What exactly those american military personnel present should have done should rightly be included as exercises in our military academies in order to foster better decision making in future. For all I know, we are already doing it.
I don't particularly think it's helpful to compare this slaughter with Katyn. It is its own tragedy, one of many. Let Poland's dead stand on their own and Korea's stand on their own. To do otherwise is to invite nit picking that blurs the humanity of those that were extinguished. I shall not do it here.
It is unremarkable and, frankly, uncontested that in the exigencies of war every side can and usually does make decisions that are not morally correct.
There are differences, though, between the Soviet system and our own, which should be uncontested at this point but, all too often, are. Over time, the S. Korean regime, in part via our influence, increased the political, economic, and moral difference between the two parts of the Korean people, North and South. The Northern side engaged in their own slaughter but they never really stopped.