Talk:Sinchon Massacre

bombing of bridge

According to a movie on the Korean War (in Color) on YouTube, the bridge was bombed by the South Koreans (and not the UN forces) while thousands of North Koreans were fleeing the advancing Chinese army, towards South Korea. So, ironically and horribly, the people killed were would be South Koreans, rather loyal to the democratic world, and now exploited by the once communists, and this day's plain old tyrants. פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 00:10, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

SK vs. US?

The article itself states Americans perpetrated the massacres, but the infobox says it was by South Koreans. This is obviously contradictory -- how shall we resolve it? GeneralizationsAreBad (talk) 13:22, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Alternatives / Counter-claims?

This article seems to be sorely lacking in exploring opposing accounts. The source of the claims against the US and South Korea is North Korean propaganda, which is notoriously unreliable and biased. There's no real evidence to support the claims, and plenty of claims contradictory the evidence that exists. There are also plenty of easy to locate sources claiming the massacre was perpetrated by the North Korean's themselves, often from rather more reliable sources.

I'm not a scholar of this subject, but the article seems to be skimming the line between "biased" and "obvious propaganda", and should probably be looked at by someone more knowledgeable then myself. LordQwert (talk) 20:08, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

It's also completely lacking in any US government claims or statements. Does the US deny this happening, do they acknowledge it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.244.235.83 (talk) 21:08, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

It's worth noting that the No Gun Ri Massacre, which involved US soldiers firing on a few hundred refugees, was disclosed by military veterans and officially acknowledged by the US government in 1999. The scale and severity of the Sinchon Massacre was allegedly several orders of magnitude greater; if it actually happened as described, chances are slim everyone involved would carry it to their graves. Even in incidents like Exercise Tiger, where servicemen were ordered to keep silent about what happened, someone eventually came forward with the story. The brutal torture and slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians isn't something you can just toss a blanket over and pretend never happened. ~ Eidako (talk) 06:43, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

The No Gun Ri Massacre was committed against South Koreans, i.e. US allies, who have since become well-integrated into the world economy. This in itself could introduce bias to the likelihood of veterans to cooperate with disclosing information, when compared to a massacre only known to the people of a rogue state (and an enemy of the United States at that). There's also always the possibility that the soldiers involved (the hypothetical perpetrators behind the massacre) simply happened to die before they had a chance to testify.

And as a counterexample, consider that there aren't many Japanese testimonies of brutalities related to the "alleged" Nanking massacre. In fact, when contrasting Allied / Chinese testimonies with Japanese ones, it seems that Allied / Chinese sources tend to exaggerate the brutalities or that the Japanese sources tend to downplay them. And generally neither side has any concrete evidence to support their claims (Allied and Chinese sources tend to point to photographs showing destruction and piles of dead bodies, combined with unsubstantiable anecdotes to contextualize them; Japanese sources point to lack of evidence). Yet in the West (and on Wikipedia) the Allied narrative of the Nanking invasion is presented as fact, mostly uncritically (almost unchanged from how it was taught during the pre-WW2 period of anti-Japanese, racially motivated propaganda in the West) probably much like how the narrative of the Sinchon Massacre is taught in North Korea today.

Another analogue is "alleged" Chinese human right violations. These, too, seem to be either systematically exaggerated by Western media outlets or downplayed by Chinese sources. Chinese military or medical personnel have not (yet?) released any testimonies regarding forced sterilizations of Uyghurs, for example; can we take the near-absence of such testimonies to indicate that such forced sterilizations never happened, and that they are, in fact, Western propaganda intended to demonize China, an economic competitor of the US?

That said the "Sinchon Massacre" is an old historical event, and just like with the Nanjing invasion, at this point hardly any concrete proof exists anymore, so either side can claim almost whatever they want about the incident, as long as their narrative sounds realistic. For historical topics Wikipedia tends to represent Western views and downplay the viewpoints of (former) enemies or competitors of the US, especially those in the Far East (WW2 Japan, post-WW2 North Korea, modern-day China) and in that sense the current version of the article seems relatively neutral, given that it gives about equal weight to both the North Korean narrative and opposing narratives. Bavio the Benighted (talk) 23:43, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

1) Even so, it's still very telling that hardly anyone, either US military or journalists and scholars, have come out to support the North Korean side of this, bias or not, and rogue enemy state or not. Especially since a massacre of tens of thousands would be much more difficult to keep one's involvement hidden than a massacre of hundreds like at No Gun Ri, regardless of who was killed and where they were killed. From what I've read, almost every one who has looked into the event has concluded that it was primarily Korean right wing security and even some Communists who conducted the killings instead of the Americans.

2) No, the reason the Allied narrative on Nanking is treated as fact is because it IS fact. There is tons of evidence, from photographs, to mass graves, to a lot of witnesses with extremely credible testimony and even orders and records from the Japanese side, and most scholars, particularly the most sophisticated academics, agree that it happened and that it was pretty much as bad as Allied/Chinese testimonies say it was. Allied/Chinese sources are not exaggerating anything, the Imperial Japanese REALLY WERE that horrifically brutal, even genocidal, not just in Nanking, but towards the Chinese in general, as the Three Alls Policy, Sook Ching, the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign, the Changjiao Massacre, etc. will show. And that's not even getting into their crimes against others across East Asia. So, no, pointing out that the Imperial Japanese were brutal mass murderers is not repeating "pre-war anti-Japanese propaganda", it's repeating the TRUTH. Frankly, that line that actually compares speaking out on the full horrors of Nanking and Japanese war crimes to repeating "anti-Japanese propaganda" is disgusting rubbish and doesn't even deserve a response. But I'll respond anyways by pointing out that the Imperial Japanese were FAR MORE racist than even that pre-war propaganda, and that the only ones repeating racist propaganda now are the ones downplaying and denying Japanese war crimes. Comparing the Sinchon massacre to the Rape of Nanking is a massive and blatant false equivalency.

3) Well, since there are a lot of news sources and journalists that also say China is committing atrocities against Turkic peoples in Xinjiang, in ways that are described as at least borderline genocidal, these are not merely allegations and propaganda. Unlike Sinchon, where there is only one entity saying how the event went while almost all others disagree with that entity, with Xinjiang, there are many entities saying pretty much the same thing. There's a lot more evidence of what the Chinese are doing to Turkics in Xinjiang with a lot more entities corroborating with that evidence than there is for the North Korean side of the Sinchon massacre, which stands alone. Also, the really tired "Western media is demonizing China" line is nothing more than a typical Chinese propaganda talking point.

4) Again, the Sinchon massacre and the Rape of Nanking are NOT comparable. Unlike Sinchon, Nanking actually has tons of concrete proof that is only denied by Japanese nationalists, while the North Korean view of Sinchon only has North Korean propaganda, while almost all others say the massacre went differently. The Nanking massacre happened and, YES, it really was as bad as the Allied side says it was. The evidence is overwhelming. And it's not that Wikipedia represents Western views over US enemies, it's that Wikipedia represents truth and facts from credible sources over the typical lies and distortions from brutal, mass-murdering authoritarians, like WW2 Japan, post-WW2 North Korea and modern-day China, and WW2 Japan was the worst. The reason Wikipedia doesn't represent the viewpoints of WW2 Japan is because the viewpoints of WW2 Japan are garbage and comparable only to Nazi propaganda, and just like Holocaust deniers, should only be treated with disdain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.228.9.173 (talk) 17:24, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

"Allegedly took place"

"The event allegedly took place during the second phase of the Korean War and the retreat of the DPRK government from Hwanghae Province". is the "alleged" here referring to the event, the place, the phase? My reading is that the event is not alleged, it is the perpetrators that is in dispute.Egaoblai (talk) 15:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)