A South Korean court of appeal on Friday upheld a lower’s court ruling where the government must compensate a Vietnamese national, whose family was murdered by South Korean marines during the Vietnam War, ₩30 million (US$20,570).
The appellate division of the Seoul Central District Court said the South Korean government must pay the money to Nguyen Thi Thanh, 64, who was said to be a survivor of the mass killing of about 70 people in Phong Nhat – Phong Nhi Village in the central province of Quang Nam in 1968 by South Korean marines, Yonhap reported.
Thanh filed the suit against the South Korean government back in 2020. A Seoul court ruled in her favor in 2023.
While the South Korean government argued that it was immune to the damages suit filed by a Vietnamese due to an agreement signed between Vietnam, South Korea and the U.S., the court in 2023 rejected the argument.
Thanh’s lawyers said her case was the first acknowledgment by an official South Korean body of the mass killings of civilians during the Vietnam War.
Thanh is among the few survivors of the massacres South Korean troops committed across several villages in central Vietnam during the Vietnam War. She was eight when she witnessed the murders of her mother, brother and sister on the morning of Feb. 12, 1968, just a few days after a South Korean jeep was blown up by a landmine, Thanh recalls.
South Korea deployed more than 300,000 troops to Vietnam from 1964 to 1973, second only to the U.S. military force.
Around 9,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed in the South Korean troops’ massacres, which also took place in the nearby provinces of Binh Dinh, Phu Yen and Quang Ngai, according to the Korean – Vietnam Peace Foundation.
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