A delegation from the Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation has recently visited Vietnam as part of the foundation’s activities to commemorate Vietnamese victims killed by Korean mercenaries during wartime.

On Wednesday, thirty-two members of the foundation held an exchange with Vietnamese veteran painters including Bui Quang Anh and Phan Oanh, and local Agent Orange victims at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.

Roh Hwa Wook, a founding member of the foundation, said the organization was set up to heal the war’s wounds and allow Korean people the opportunity to work reverse the devastation caused by Korean massacres in Vietnam during wartime.

“Many people feel hurt, but there are still those who have no idea the massacres happened, so the most important purpose of the foundation is to remind Korean people of that,” he added.

Roh said that among the founding members of the foundation, Doctor Song Pill Kyung has visited Vietnam for 21 times for charity work on people’s healthcare.

A total of 320,000 South Korean troops were sent to Vietnam during the war years of 1965 to 1973, according to Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh.

Only the deaths of 55,000 Vietnamese and Korean soldiers were reported, raising questions and controversy, with allegations of over 9,000 deaths in Vietnamese civilian massacres going unnoticed since September 1999, when the current affairs weekly Hankyoreh 21 first printed an interview with victims from five central Vietnamese provinces where South Korean troops operated.

A Hankyoreh 21 investigation and figures from the 1980s from the Vietnamese side’s war crime investigation commission calculated the number of civilians killed by the Korean Tiger division in Binh Dinh Province’s Tay Vinh Village at 1,004 between January and February 1966.

Another 357 were murdered by the Blue Dragon division in Quang Nam Province’s Dien Ban Village between January and February 1968, according to the same statistics.

Painter Ko Gyong Il, who spent most of his time at Wednesday’s exchange sketching portraits of the Vietnamese veterans and dioxin victims, said he had come to Vietnam twice to do charity work in the central region.

This time he was back because he heard the delegation would visit the Republic of Korea army massacre sites from the American war in Vietnam.

“I remembered in 1978, when I was a student, the pro-democracy movement in South Korea was very strong,” Ko said. “We knew about Vietnam but people taught us that the country failed and was going to disappear from the world’s map.”

“But now when I come here, I see that it isn’t like that,” he added. “Vietnam has not only overcome the war, but has built its independence, and people like Bui Quang Anh, Phan Oanh can work in the field of art. Vietnamese people are deliberate and certain. I admire them.”

“We reconcile, and close the past while looking towards the future, but somewhere deep inside us, there are things we can close and others we can’t,” Phan Oanh, who also participates in war reconciliation activities between Vietnam and the U.S., said at the exchange.

“History is not a door,” he added. “Just because we close it doesn’t mean we forget it. The past is only closed when we don’t allow similar things to happen in the future.”

“Establishing the Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation, to me, is very meaningful, and such activities should have been carried out long time ago.”

After visiting the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, the delegation took a trip to the Go Dai temple in the south-central province of Binh Dinh, one of the massacre sites.

Earlier, in the effort of healing the war’s wounds, some Korean activists have established the Korean-Vietnamese Peace Museum to unveil the historical materials about Korean soldiers during the war in Vietnam, as well as organizing charity activities on healthcare in central Vietnam every year, and a student exchange program to increase awareness of the Korean involvement in the war.

In the fall of this year, the Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation will also hold a fundraising exhibition and auction with the participation of Vietnamese artists and veterans Bui Quang Anh and Phan Oanh.

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