Seoulscapade

Picasso’s Massacre in Korea, one of his most political works, is based on a massacre that occurred near a place called No Gun Ri, a small town south of the city of Daejeon, in July of 1950.

I’d heard about this still controversial incident before coming to Korea, when I caught part of a documentary on massacres committed by the US military during the Korean War. After I arrived here I heard more about it—there was even rumour of a movie. Then I bought a book on the subject, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Bridge at No Gun Ri. It suddenly struck me while reading this that I might as well just go there and have a look for myself. So I did, and more turned up on the trip than I would have thought possible.

It took a bit of searching to find out where exactly No Gun Ri was and how to get there. It’s just a small village.

(Update: a new site dedicated to the No Gun Ri incident is now here. The less comprehensive English version is here and has information on where No Gun Ri is.)

Eventually, I got everything organized and headed out to Daejeon one long weekend with Sunah (my girlfriend at the time). We stayed at a hotel in Daejeon, and on one of the days we took a bus trip to visit Beopjusa Temple—site of a huge 33 metre bronze Buddha and setting for Bruce Lee’s unfinished last film Game of Death.

On the next day, we took a short train trip to No Gun Ri and the massacre site. Coincidentally, the time we went was just before the anniversary of the incident. As the story goes, people were forced out of their villages by US troops and onto railway tracks. They were making their way along these railway tracks when they were subject to a US air force bombing and strafing attack.

Many were killed then and there while others scattered. Many sought refuge in the large railway underpass or trestle near the village of No Gun Ri. However, they were shot at by US soldiers over a period of three days. There were only a handful of survivors.

You can still see the bullet holes on the walls. I expected more but many were plastered over by a post-war right-wing government after the war. It’s possible to see in the pictures the different wall colorings that reveal the whole sections that were plastered. At some sections, wire fences have been erected to prevent vandalism, and chalk circles highlight the bullet holes.

It was perhaps because of this repressive regime that details of the massacre were not well known. The book I mention on the incident didn’t come out until the year 2001. Some survivors are still around, their scars backing up their stories. Each year now there is a commemoration at the No Gun Ri site. The sign across the arch in the picture above is giving notice of the one due in a few days.

Some people also sought refuge in a drain hole, picture below, a quiet place with trickling water and a little pond. It’s up the track from the underpass, closer to where the villagers were first attacked. Getting to this required us to do a bit of hiking along narrow paths on a forested hillside beside the train track. The paths were established but obviously not well used. It was along one of these paths that, incredibly, I uncovered a shell casing.

I had pondered whether there might be military objects lying around, but reason told me that the place must have been scoured over many times in the past, by curiosity seekers, by investigators, perhaps with metal detectors, and by local hikers. Everything surely would have been picked up or unearthed. Even so, I still kept and eye out, and suddenly there it was, beside a track, a shell casing. I was somewhat elated, as you could imagine.

What comes to mind, however, is that if it was so easy to find after all of these years, and after so many people had been through the area, maybe there are a lot more lying around. This said a lot to me about the amount of lead that must have been expended in the area.

During our time there, a trickle of site seers stopped by, more than I would have thought. As is often the case, I was the only foreigner around, and the locals seemed glad that a foreigner was acknowledging the site of a war crime. In fact, I don’t remember seeing any other foreigners on the whole trip.

Although we didn’t have the time, I had wanted to visit the Naktong River where the US military had blown up the Waegwan Bridge while it was still packed with refugees. (It was not the first time this kind of thing had been done.) There’s a new bridge there now with a plaque nearby. After No Gun Ri, we took the train back to Daejeon, passing over the trestle we’d just visited, and from Daejeon, we headed straight back to Seoul.