Headline July 21, 2019/ '' 'HORRORS KOREAN-WAR HAUNTS' ''

'' 'HORRORS KOREAN-WAR HAUNTS' ''

IT IS WITH PROFOUND SADNESS - that The World Students Society stands up to watch Dr Park Sun-joo, excavate Korean history.

THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY rises in silence, as a mark of respect for those, thousands and thousands of Koreans, so brutally killed

Dr Paark Sun-joo, a Seoul native, was a history major and an aspiring journalist at Yonsei University in Seoul when he fell in love with archaeology while interning in a museum.

But he had little inkling that he would become involved with Korean war remains when he returned  home in 1989 with a doctorate in human osteology from the University of California at Berkeley and  began teaching at Chingbuk National University......................

ON A LUSH HILLSIDE torn open by an excavator, Park Sun-joo  and volunteers combed through the soil with trowels and brushes, looking for villagers, including children, who were-

Who were bludgeoned and buried, some still alive and moaning, by their own neighbors in 1950 at the onset of Korean War.

Mr. Park, a physical anthropologist by training, has excavated ancient human bones all his adult life to study the origins of the Korean people.

But by recovering more recent human remains this and other towns in recent years, he is cracking open one of the most tragic chapters of modern Korean history - and becoming a lightning rod for criticism from conservative nationalist groups.

''Colleagues ask why I do this work, which is not exactly my academic specialty, paleoanthropology,'' said Mr. Park, 71, in an interview.

''But I cannot ignore the reality, the still-living agonies of the victims families, the old men and women who come out to our excavation site every day and watch us hoping that they will finally be able to take home the remains of their loved ones.

The stories the old villagers tell Mr. Park resonates with him.

His father was running a transportation company in Seoul when the war broke out. The police came and tortured him, demanding the whereabouts of his brother, a publishing company official who was accused of being a Communist sympathiser.

Mr. Park's uncle eluded the police, but his father never recovered from the injuries inflicted on him and died a broken man, sick and jobless. His mother was forced to toil in a shoe factory to support her six children.

''The people killed in these sites are of my father's age,'' Mr. Park said. ''While digging up their bones, I think the same thing might as well have happened to my own family.''

As Mr. Park learned during his work, the Korean War killings were done not just by troops, but also by the police and rival villagers.

When North Korean invaders swept down into the south, the South Korean police executed thousands of political prisoners and people suspected of sympathizing with North Korea to prevent them from joining the North's side.

Then, as rival armies swept up and and down the Korean Peninsula in the early months of the war, towns changed hands and more blood baths followed.

North Korean supporters slaughtered the relatives of the South Korean police and soldiers with  spears and pitchforks. When the South Korean police came back, they and right-wing villagers who had lost their relatives quickly ferreted out and executed those they accused of being Communist collaborators and their family members.

Today, many victims remain buried where they were executed and and dumped nearly seven decades ago.

''There is still a leftist-rightist tension at the bottom of our society, with the red stigma not yet removed and many people deeply uncomfortable with any attempt to excavate the past,'' Mr. Park said.

''One way of healing the wounds that still still divide our society is to recover the the remains and return them to their families. 

The Horror and Serving of this tragic publishing, continues. The World Students Society thanks author and researcher Choe Sang-Hun.

With respectful dedication to Dr. Park Sun-joo , Chungbuk National University,  the Leaders of North and South Korea, Students, Professors and Teachers, and then the world.

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''' Horrors Of History '''

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SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless