SOUTH KOREA-VIETNAM The Korean Church apologizes for military atrocities in the Vietnam War

The gesture of Monsignor Peter Lee Ki-Heon, president of the Reconciliation Commission, during a visit to the Vietnamese diocese of Lang Son-Cao Bang. 350,000 Korean soldiers were deployed with the US troops. A Seoul court recently awarded compensation to a Vietnamese woman injured during a 1968 raid that caused 70 civilian casualties.

Lang Son ( / Agencies) – A Korean bishop visiting a diocese in northern Vietnam asked for forgiveness for the atrocities committed by his country’s military during the conflict of the 1960s and 1970s. Mgr Peter Lee Ki-Heon, Bishop of Uijeongbu and former military ordinary in South Korea from 1999 to 2010, made the gesture during a visit to the Lang Son-Cao Bang church together with twelve priests from his diocese.

The delegation was received these days by the local prelate, Monsignor Joseph Chau Ngoc Tri, together with numerous priests and catechists. The meeting was organized by the Vietnamese priest Fr. Joseph Nguyen Van Doan, who takes care of the pastoral care of Vietnamese immigrants in the diocese of Uijeongbu.

Bishop Lee – who was born in Pyongyang and is 75 years old – is the president of the Special Commission for Reconciliation of the Korean Bishops’ Conference and explained that he was speaking on behalf of the entire Church in South Korea. He also recounted how a former comrade of his who had fought against communist militias in Vietnam, once back home abandoned his vocation to religious life because he felt guilty for the atrocities that had been committed. Bishop Lee stated that both South Korea and Vietnam are lands of martyrs.

Between 1964 and 1973, some 350,000 South Korean soldiers fought alongside US troops in Vietnam. And just in the last few days – on February 7 – a court in Seoul handed down a historic verdict recognizing the responsibility of the Korean government in a massacre committed by its soldiers in the Vietnam War.

The incident in question concerns the massacre of 70 civilians on February 12, 1968 in the Vietnamese town of Phong Nhi, Quang Nam province. The judges ruled that Nguyen Thi Thanh, a woman who was injured in the raid while she was still a girl, is entitled to compensation of 30 million won (about 22,000 euros) with interest. Thanh, who is now 62 and also lost his mother in the massacre, had filed a lawsuit against the South Korean government in 2020. The State Prosecutor’s Office had argued at trial that it was not possible to prove that the perpetrators of the massacre were troops. korean. However, the court heard Vietnamese witnesses and journalists and rejected this argument in its verdict.

In the photo: image of the meeting with the Korean delegation published on its website by the Vietnamese diocese of Lang Son-Cao Bang.