Lính Đại Hàn, thảm sát 1968 và nỗi đau Cuộc chiến Việt Nam

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On Feb. 12, 1968, a South Korean marine (thủy quân lục chiến, lính thủy đánh bộ) unit killed scores of people in Phong Nhi and Phong Nhut, villages in central Vietnam. Now, survivors (người còn sống) of the massacres (vụ thảm sát) are seeking compensation (đền bù) from Seoul in the first lawsuit of its kind being tried in a South Korean court.

Rumors (tin đồn) have long persisted that South Korean troops fighting alongside U.S. troops committed mass killings of Vietnamese civilians (người dân thường). But under the past military dictatorship (độc tài quân sự), discussions of the topic had been taboo (điều cấm kị).

Even though South Korea maintains that it has found no evidence of civilian killings in its wartime records, some South Korean lawmakers and civic groups are pushing for a special law to investigate (điều tra) the allegations (cáo buộc).

They have pointed to declassified (giải mật) American military records (hồ sơ quân sự) from after the rampage, in which U.S. investigators concluded that "there was some probability that a war crime was committed."

Testimony: Nguyen Thi Thanh, 61, was wounded in the massacre and lost five relatives, including her mother, sister and brother. "But the South Korean government has never once visited our village and never once asked us what happened."