No Gun Ri Massacre: U.S. Troops Kill Civilians in Korea

The shooting stopped on July 29th when the 7th Cavalry Regiment simply moved on. Four days. Between 250 and 300 South Korean refugees, mostly women and children, lay dead under a railroad bridge at No Gun Ri, killed by American soldiers who'd been warned about North Korean infiltrators disguised as civilians. The Army denied it happened for fifty years. In January 2001, Clinton apologized after AP reporters found survivors and veterans who'd kept silent for decades. The massacre began on July 26, 1950, when the 7th Cavalry Regiment, the same unit that fought at Little Bighorn, received orders to prevent refugees from crossing their defensive lines. Commanders feared North Korean soldiers were hiding among the civilians streaming south. Instead of screening them, troops opened fire on hundreds of people sheltering under a concrete railroad overpass near the village of No Gun Ri. Veterans later told investigators they received direct orders to shoot. Some described firing into groups of women carrying infants. The survivors hid among the dead for four days, drinking water mixed with blood. South Korean survivors filed claims in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s, all rejected. It took a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP investigation in 1999 to break the silence, interviewing both Korean survivors and American veterans who confirmed the killings. The Pentagon's own review acknowledged civilian deaths but denied that a deliberate massacre order existed. No one was ever prosecuted for the killings at No Gun Ri.