South Korea's defensc minister on Friday insisted the country's soldiers didn't commit any massacres during the Vietnam War and indicated the government will appeal a ruling that ordered compensation for a Vietnamese woman who lost several relatives to a shooting rampage blamed on South Korean marines in 1968.
South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup speaks during a plenary session of the National Assembly's defense committee in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 17, 2023. South Korea’s top military official on Friday insisted the country’s soldiers didn’t commit any massacres during the Vietnam War and indicated the government will appeal a ruling that ordered compensation for a Vietnamese woman who lost several relatives to a shooting rampage blamed on South Korean marines in 1968.
The court ordered the government to pay 30 million won to 62-year-old Nguyen Thi Thanh, who survived a gunshot wound but lost five family members -- including her mother and two siblings -- after South Korean marines swept through her village of Phong Nhi in central Vietnam on Feb. 12, 1968. While some activists claim South Korean troops were responsible for the massacres of possibly thousands of civilians during the Vietnam War, those atrocities haven't meaningfully impacted relations with Vietnam, whose growing economy is heavily dependent on South Korean investment.
Lee repeated those government arguments during Friday's parliamentary session, saying that the situation at the time was "very complicated." Lee claimed that a U.S. military investigation into the incident found that South Korean troops did not commit civilian massacres in the villages, although the actual U.S. documents submitted as evidence in Thanh's case show that no definite conclusion was reached in the face of South Korean denials.
Han Kiho, a lawmaker in the ruling conservative party who chairs the National Assembly's national defense committee, came to Lee's support, urging the government to appeal the ruling in Thanh's case, which he claimed was based on weak evidence.
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