Vietnamese massacre victims file 2nd petition with S. Korea's truth commission

Victims and bereaved families of the alleged massacres of Vietnamese civilians by the South Korean military during the Vietnam War filed a second petition with South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Thursday seeking a truth investigation.

The Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation visited the TRC headquarters in downtown Seoul earlier in the day and submitted an application for a truth investigation into the alleged massacres in the 1960s on behalf of eight surviving victims and one bereaved family member.

The foundation claimed that the massacres occurred in a village in Quang Nam Province in February 1968 and another in Quang Ngai Province in November 1966, killing 135 and 73 civilians, respectively.

The second application came after the foundation’s first was dismissed in May 2023 by the then second-term TRC, which stated that human rights violations against foreigners committed during the Vietnam War do not fall within its statutory mandate.

The Vietnamese plaintiffs then filed an administrative lawsuit challenging the TRC’s decision, but both the lower court and the appellate court ruled in favor of the commission. The case is now pending before the Supreme Court.

Observers expect the case to enter a new phase, as the current third-term TRC, which officially launched in February this year, has reportedly taken a more forward-looking approach to the need for a truth investigation.

Indeed, the TRC acknowledged the need for a state-level investigation into the alleged massacres of civilians in a supplementary written submission sent to the Supreme Court on July 9. (Yonhap)