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Nguyen Thi Thanh of Vietnam is seen on a laptop screen as she speaks to reporters via video call at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. She was shot in 1968 as South Korean soldiers tore through her village in central Vietnam’s Quang Nam province.
Episode 2442 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about how South Korea’s resolve toward alleged atrocities committed by South Korean armed forces during the American Vietnam War is softening. The featured story comes from an article that appeared on Radio Free Asia and was titled: South Korean bishop apologizes for Vietnam War atrocities. It was written by Joshua Lipes and edited by Malcolm Foster.
In episode 2440 of this podcast it was revealed that a court in South Korea awarded $24,000 (US) to Nguyen Thi Thanh. She survived a massacre at the village of Phong Nhi. This was the first admission of the South Koreans to such atrocities committed by its troops in Vietnam.
More than likely, that court ruling motivated a visiting South Korean Catholic bishop to publicly apologize to the people of Vietnam for atrocities committed by his country’s soldiers during the Vietnam War.
According to a report by the Union of Catholic Asian News, Bishop Peter Lee Ki-Heon, who is leading a group of a dozen priests on a friendship visit to the Lang Son Cao Bang Diocese in northern Vietnam, issued an apology for the atrocities “on behalf of the Catholic Church in South Korea.”
This could be an omen for other unnamed governments who could be sued for alleged atrocities committed it troops in the American Vietnam War.
Radio Free Asia is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It’s mission statement reads: Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech protections. All broadcasts are solely in local languages and dialects, which include Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Korean.
Listen to episode 2442 and discover more about how South Korea’s resolve toward alleged atrocities committed by South Korean armed forces during the American Vietnam War is softening.
