South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report [EN]

Summary
https://www.usip.org/publications/2012/04/truth-commission-south-korea-2005

Full Report
https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/ROL/South_Korea_2005_reportEnglish.pdf

Conclusions

• The Commission received 11,174 cases based on petitions from individuals. The body confirmed 8,468 cases (76%), rejected 1,729, and sent another 957 cases to other instances or closed them because of insufficient information.
  
• The Commission found that during the Korean War, several mass killings of civilians were committed not only by the North Korean military, but also by South Korean and U.S. Armed Forces.
  
• The Commission attributed 82% of all petitions regarding wartime massacres to state agents (the police, the armed forces, or groups associated with the state) [ROK and US/UN] and only 18% to "enemies of the state" [KPA and PVA, as well as Communist uprisings in the South].
  
• The Commission found that Anti-Japanese independence movements during colonial times were conducted at home and abroad.
  
• A large part of the petitions received by the Commission pertained to reports of civilians killed during the Korean War. Massacres by groups opposing the Republic of Korea were widespread. The Commission estimated that the data on 8,000 civilians killed during the Korean War represented only 5% of the actual number.
  
• Serious infringements of human rights occurred throughout the period covered by the Commission's mandate.

"However it may discomfit American sensibilities, the record shows that Communist atrocities constituted about one sixth of the total number of cases, and tended to me more discriminating - eight landlords shot here, fourteen policemen shot there."
- US historian Bruce Cumings

"To attempt to win [in Korea] ... is not only to court final failure but also to force upon our men in the field acts and attitudes of the utmost savagery ... the blotting out of villages where the enemy may be hiding; the shooting and shelling of refugees who may include North Koreans."
- John Osborne, Life correspondent, Aug 21, 1950