No Gun Ri

No Gun Ri

The No Gun Ri Massacre occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (and a U.S. air attack) at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri (revised Romanization Nogeun-ri), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul. Estimates of the dead have ranged from dozens to 500. In 2005, a South Korean government report listed 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims' names were not reported. The U.S. Army cites the number of casualties as "unknown."

The massacre allegations were little known outside Korea until the publication of Associated Press (AP) reports in 1999 containing interviews with 7th Cavalry veterans who corroborated Korean survivors' accounts. The AP also uncovered warfront orders to fire on refugees, given out of fear of enemy North Korean infiltration. After years of rejecting claims by survivors, the Pentagon conducted an investigation and, in 2001, acknowledged the killings, but referred to the three-day event as "an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing." The U.S. rejected survivors' demands for an apology and compensation.

South Korean investigators disagreed with Pentagon findings, saying they believed 7th Cavalry troops were ordered to fire on the refugees. The survivors' group called the U.S. report a "whitewash." Additional archival documents later emerged showing U.S. commanders ordering the shooting of refugees during this period, declassified documents found but not disclosed by the Pentagon investigators. Among them was a report by the U.S. ambassador in South Korea in July 1950 that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Despite demands, the U.S. investigation was not reopened.

Prompted by the exposure of No Gun Ri, survivors of similar alleged incidents in 1950–1951 filed reports with the Seoul government. In 2008 an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large-scale civilian killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks.