Vietnam war survivors push Seoul to compensate for Korean troop atrocities

Victims of massacres at Phong Nhi and Phong Nhut are seeking compensation from Seoul, in the first lawsuit of its kind being tried in South Korea

Discussions of atrocities committed by Korean troops has long been a taboo, but hearings continue for a law pushing for investigations into the allegations

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Nguyen Thi Thanh gives testimony in Seoul in 2018 about the attacks on Phong Nhi hamlet. Photo: Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation

Published: 6:00pm, 30 Aug 2021Updated: 11:09pm, 30 Aug 2021

Nguyen Thi Thanh remembers the gunshots that rang out before she and her family fled their house to take shelter in a nearby hiding hole. It was February 1968, in the thick of the Vietnam war, and she was eight years old.

After a while, South Korean soldiers found them and gestured for the family to come out, threatening to throw a grenade in their direction should they refuse.

“When we got outside, they shot us one after another,” said Thanh, now 61, recalling the episode at Phong Nhi hamlet, some 25km southeast of the central port city of Da Nang.

She lost a sister and a brother on the spot, but survived a gunshot to her waist. Her older brother also recovered from a bullet wound.

“I couldn’t do anything to help my younger brother as blood gushed forth from his bullet-shattered mouth; he was dying and panting,” she told the People’s Tribunal on War Crimes by South Korean Troops during the Vietnam war, held in April 2018 in Seoul.

The non-binding resolution from three judges was that Seoul should compensate the plaintiffs for their losses, launch an investigation into atrocities committed between 1964 and 1973, and correct all forms of public memorials pertaining to South Korean participation in the Vietnam war.

An estimated 68 people were killed in Phong Nhi and nearby Phong Nhut in 1968, when a South Korean marine company swept through the two hamlets after a Korean soldier was wounded by small arms fire.