Talk:No Gun Ri massacre/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 5

The unilateral page move and where all the past extensive discussions gone?

• note It is copied from Talk:No Gun Ri because I think the discussion should be held here.--Caspian blue 20:37, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm visiting this page in a while but very surprised to see that this article originally about geographical information was merged without "discussion" and past discussions were all gone too. The editor who did this should tell the rationale, or I will restore the original title "No Gun Ri massacre" and the discussion page.--Caspian blue 14:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I opened a page move discussion on 7 December 2008 and went ahead with the move after a week went by without comment. There is no lost "geographical information" on the village. Both articles were always about the Korean War incident. A Google search will reveal that the number of hits for "No Gun Ri" (26,000) vastly outnumber those for "No Gun Ri massacre" (1,310). There was a formal vote and a consensus to move the page from "No Gun Ri event" to "No Gun Ri" on 23:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC). The name was then changed several times without vote or consensus. The article was moved back to "No Gun Ri" on 09:26, 5 April 2007 after a second formal vote. When the page was moved to "No Gun Ri massacre" on 21:35, 4 April 2008, there was no vote or other formalities, only this mysterious note, which talks only about a histmerge. So perhaps a page move was not intended. Kauffner (talk) 18:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

No, do not say such untruth about you action. You unilaterally moved the page just 5 days after your brief note. You did not do it formally in a due course. I wonder why you did not even request the move to WP:RM nor notify the big change to WP:Korea and WP:US. What is your reason for not informing your action to the communities? It looks like you just wanted to carry your POV very quietly. As you see this article is rated as "high" and your unilateral action is totally unacceptable. Moreover, Google hit is not a "reliable source" nor standard for the decision making according to our policy. Of course "No Gun Ri" would be the highest hit number because the massacre was committed in the place. The previous RM discussion had no consensus for moving, and therefore I will restore the original article. You can request a RM on the page, not here.--Caspian blue 18:50, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S Your such "cut-and-paste" move totally erases the edit history of the article.--Caspian blue 19:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

"Full content paste merger" is the approved way to merge articles. If you're worried about the history, you can histmerge. There have been two (2!) consensus votes in favor of putting the page here. If you want to move the article again, proper procedure is to start a page move discussion here and see if you can get consensus for it. Kauffner (talk) 20:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

You have not answered my question. Why didn't you notify the merge to the communities? Did you get the consensus from "your move proposal ". Not that I know of. You are the one who should one a RM and request the history merge since you have not done with such formal course. Now, I'm restoring the original article.--Caspian blue 20:09, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Naming dispute solution through the merger?

Judging by this 2 and half year belated comment to the past, it is clear that Kauffner (talk · contribs) does not want to add any descriptive word to the title. Thus he does not want to draw readers' attention to the character of the mass killing committed by the US military. However, the almost secret merger is a poor method to resolve the naming dispute. The place is not the same as the incident and any article title should be summary of its content. Moreover you hugely reduced the massacred people's toll. How come the number of 400 people become just 35? If you think that the place, No Gun Ri does not meet the notability guideline, you have to discuss. If a consensus is reached, the article of No Gun Ri could be a redirect page to here. However, the place has inhabitants, a school, memorial park and a future planning to build a "museum" dedicated to the massacre. So I don't see why the page should be merged. --Caspian blue 21:34, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I didn't put in the number 35 into the article, but I can tell you where it came from. It's from the book No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident by Robert Bateman. As for the 400 estimate, that's from a North Korean newspaper article. I followed proper procedure when I merged the articles, but you are being quite a bully about this. If you look at the voting from 2006 above, there is a five-to-two majority against using the word "massacre" in the article title. This is the central issue here and the motivation for merger. Wikipedia has plenty of disk space for two articles. A vote on whether "No Gun Ri" should be a redirect misses the point altogether. Kauffner (talk) 05:52, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

No, you did not follow any proper procedure at all. You erased the whole 5 year accumulated history of the article. This article was created on 2005, while the No Gun Ri was created April 2008 for the village itself. Bear the valid criticism since I make you acknowledge your mistake. I'm still wondering why you can't answer to my question at all? If you thought that your merger to the wrong article was accepted by others, why did not you notify the projects and even erase the merger suggestion at the talk? That is a cheating. You see, the move discussion happened "3 years ago" and I see anything that comes from 2008 is only "you". You must forget the fact that "consensus" were never reached, so the page has remained at here. I recommend you read WP:Consensus and WP:Vote. Wikipedia is not one-man show.--Caspian blue 06:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There no suggestion in any guideline that a consensus expires after a certain period of time, after which you are free to move material without consulting others. The rule is "silence implies consent," so if others had an opportunity to reply and did not, a consensus can be assumed, regardless of the number of people who voted. There was a vote and an administrator-determined consensus to move the article to "No Gun Ri" in April 2007. So you are going against a consensus expressed on three separate occasions (16 January 2006, 5 April 2007, and 12 December 2008). If you think too much time has past since the last vote, by all means hold another.

You should look at the revision history before making wild accusations against me. The "accumulated history" you refer to was removed by Jac16888 at 15:38, 23 December 2008. Why do you care about some old talk discussion? It's not really "accumulated history" anyway. It is just a tiny part of the endless discussion that occurs on this page that someone arbitraly decided was worth preserving. Kauffner (talk) 08:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You see what you want to see just like your odd interpretation of policies. Give an evidence that you gained a consensus for your sneaky merging. I don't see any such thing. Before your edit, No Gun Ri was just very short stub with one sentence and you began to edit the article not expanding its geographical information. The article at that time was simply "duplication" of this article. Thus, if the two articles be merged, the expanded contents by you had to be merged to here. You reversed such due course and even removed your own merger proposal. It is clear that you made the disguised merger for your pov pushing, so do not bring more implausible excuse any more. Your merging is not indeed merging but simply "renaming the title" without "effort". I see that you once visited WP:RM and clearly know how to rename article titles. You did not want to draw attention from people for your renaming here. That's why you can not answer to my question: Why did not you inform your action to the project pages to get more comments from editors? Our policy says that consensus can be changed any time and of course can be "expire any time" via "discussion". However you freely interpreted the past discussion to use as a ground for the merging/renaming, and then the archiving the old discussion is meaningless? An article is merged into another, editors generally relocate its discussion to the merged article's talked page. Accumulated edit history is a barometer to show what has happened in the article. If I did not remember its existence, your tactic could be covered up until somebody like me brings up. Since you're depending on the absurd claim "silence is consensus" (you induced the "silent renaming), I don't condoning such "cut and paste renaming" which is against our policy. You have to get a consensus with "plausible rationale.--Caspian blue 15:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Before you couldn't read revision history and now it seems that you can't even read the guidelines that you yourself cite. "Silence implies consent," is an official Wikipedia policy (as well as being a principle of Roman law). If you think it is absurd, by all means take it up on that page. "Full content paste merge" is also an official policy, i.e. there is no requirement to go to WP:RM. But in fact I did go to WP:RM and obtained a consensus for a page move to "No Gun Ri" back in April 2007. Revision history is the "barometer to show what has happened in the article." Old posts preserved on a talk page may or may not be representative of anything. Once again, I am not the one who removed these posts as you can verify for yourself in the revision history. Kauffner (talk) 16:53, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You could neither admit your own fault nor properly interpret the policies. Read WP:Consensus again. "Silence implies consent if there is adequate exposure to the community." You did not do adequate exposure to the community. Such selective half-quoting is not a good way to explain your behavior. Your merging for renaming the title that you don't like is not "merge". Just disruptive cut-and-paste renaming. Read this policy You should never just move a page by cutting all the text out of one page, and pasting it into a new one; old revisions, notes, and attributions are much harder to keep track of if you do that.

The article with much older history is the priory article for merging/renaming. If you can provide your rationale for the renaming, I'm not gonna waste more time on this since you don't see what is your problem is.--Caspian blue 17:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Below is the April 2007 vote, copied from here:—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kauffner (talk • contribs) 2009-03-02T17:21:54 (UTC)

Again, your selective presentation is not amusing. The diff is sufficient since the past discussion is archived. The very next day, another admin reversed the no-consensus-reached decision. That's why this article has the "massacre" in the title.--Caspian blue 18:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You still seem to have a lot of trouble reading the revision history. This article was called "No Gun Ri event" until January 2006. It was then renamed "No Gun Ri." In July 2006, it was renamed "No Gun Ri tragedy." It was moved back to "No Gun Ri" on 09:26, 5 April 2007 following the vote I linked to above. The article stayed there until 21:33, 4 April 2008, i.e. for almost a year. It was then moved to "No Gun Ri massacre" by an admin, but without discussion or explanation. "The very next day" would be 6 April 2007. There is no event recorded for this date. Also, it is not accurate to say "reversed" since the word "massacre" had never been in the title earlier. Kauffner (talk) 13:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I had hard time to catch up the history due to your cut-and-paste move and twice deletion of this talk page. I'm reading through the ast discussions and found your hilarious comments like "The claim that the U.S. killed 400 Koreans at NGR is a joke" "Yet his exposure as a fraud didn't stop the AP from winning the Pulitzer Prize". Those denial comments gave me a no-brainer answer for what was your intention for the sneaky move. Given your strong oppostion to using "massacre", I wonder why you did not protest to the admin who moved the article to include "massacre". The other admin who moved the article to exclude "tragedy" was also not based on the 2007 vote consensus as well. Wiping gout the 1000 edits is not a wise choice to rename the article.--Caspian blue 14:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Why didn't I protest? I was living in China at that time and Wiki is blocked there. (See the pictures on my homepage.) It's nice of you to care, really. You seem to think that I am obsessed with the article's title, but that's not really my number. You keep making nasty and unfounded allegations against me, so I respond. Kauffner (talk) 16:18, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

No more such nasty personal attack, Kauffner. Who cares about you being in China? Wikipedia kindly instructs people in China as to how they can edit English Wikipedia regardless of the firewall controlled by the RPC. Since you're resorting to "Silence is consensus", you also can agree that the move that did not get any opposition was a "consensus". The move was also based on the division by an anon. I also found the log of No Gun Ri incident and first log of the No Gun Ri[1] which suggests that the current article title is not originally named "No Gun Ri". This main article had mush less contents than No Gun Ri event on the same day before the merging at that time. In old days, Wikiedia did not seem to record every "log" and move". Since you have been complaining about the title so far for over one year and half, your comment is not substantiated. Every action has its "consequence" and I guess you would not repeat the same mistake from the valid criticism. If you want to rename an article, take a formal course. That is my piece of advice.--Caspian blue 18:23, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm with Kauffner on this. This was discussed and rejected. The article should be moved back to No Gun Ri.radek (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

You need to clarify your statement. You're saying you agree with the such sneaky cut-and-paste move without notification or just renaming? I've talked about the former so far. Whenever you find something unsatisfiable from an article, you gotta "discuss" every time, especially articles that deal with controversies. Don't forget that fact that people in the oppose side of you existed. That's why the article was not moved until Kauffner made the alleged "merging" as blanking the article.--Caspian blue 19:29, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

1. This has already been discussed on several occasions. On each, consensus was not to use the word "massacre"

2. Given that there's quite a bit of controversy about what really happened and that AP retracted some initial claims it's POV to use the word "massacre" - it means taking sides in the debate. This is in contrast to articles on events where there was very clearly a massacre.

3. The move to "No Gun Ri Massacre" was done without a re-initiation of discussion. "When" article was moved is not important. radek (talk) 18:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Your comments should have back up "sources". Your support for just using the name of the village and the past discussions do not warrant the cut-and-paste move. In last, there is no consensus to use just "No Gun Ri" either. Whenever the move discussion was held, this article had a descriptive title like "incident or "tragedy". People have moved the article to "No Gun Ri Massacre", "No Gun Ri Incident" or ""No Gun Ri Event". The cut-and-paste move was done without taking a full discussion and notification to the involved communities. I merely restored from such disruptive move to the title which wiped out the edit history. So if you want to rename the article, open a RM and get a consensus. --Caspian blue 18:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Where is the archive?

Huh! So the past discussions are all deleted without archiving? What a poor documentation. Kauffner, with the "discovered" past discussion, you admit yourself that your merging is not "merging", but just cut-and-paste renaming of the title that you don't like. I see that you did not gain a consensus from the 2007 discussion, and you're telling me that your such behaviro was justified? I'm gonna archive the old discussion for new comers. --Caspian blue 17:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussion archived. I see that your merger proposal was not held in this talk page. Since the article is the main page to describe the incident, your merger notice to the No Gun Ri and removing it are WP:GAME--Caspian blue 18:22, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The notice is here. Moves and mergers should be based on the current consensus. You are getting bogged down in procedural trivia. Kauffner (talk) 13:53, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

It did not happened in this main article, and the merger notice should have not deleted if you had nothing to hide. You can't blame me for correcting your procedural wrongdoings. Your cut-and-paste move wiped out the whole edit history of almost 1000 edits of the article. That is not "trivial". You're the one getting bogged down in your own implausible excuses.--Caspian blue 14:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I "hide" the notice on top of the two article pages, "No Gun Ri" and "No Gun Ri massacre", which have over 150 times the readership of the corresponding talk pages. Kauffner (talk) 16:13, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

You can explain this "removal of your own merge proposal" as if nothing ever happened. Besides, your expansion of the stub right before the merging based on the "silence consensus" was quite a noble tactic.--Caspian blue 18:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Updates

This article was a bit of a mess; and included a lot of unsourced material & original research. I've been working with Charles Hanley, one of the original AP journalists, on a new article - which I moved into place today. This is much expanded and based on a wider range of sources. The material does still need work to clean it up a bit - mostly to fit in with our encyclopaedic tone (I intend to do that over the coming days - but if anyone else can help, awesome). However, I have checked the original material and the new copy to make sure nothing has been missed - and I think it is all there. If there are any issues, we'd be happy to fix things. --Errant ^(chat!) 15:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The claim that, 'Survivors estimate 400 civilians were killed" is pretty outrageous. This number is from a contemporary news report in Cho Sun In Min Bo, a North Korean newspaper. The survivors are "estimating" only in the sense that they are quoting this source. The aerial photo taken a few days afterward shows no indication of bodies or graves, so there is no independent confirmation that any large number of people were killed. "Not many died in obscure Korean War incident" isn't much of a headline. What made this incident notable to begin with is Ed Daily's sensational account. But he turned out to be a total fraud.

AFAIK, this incident has not received significant public attention since the 2001 army report. So the amount of space this article devotes to more recent news is quite striking. Strafing and Ambassador Muccio get us pretty far afield from the version of this story that excited public interest, with Daily the mad machine gunner cutting down refugees. It also needs to be pointed out in the lede that U.S. soldiers didn't go to some Korean village and start shooting the place up. The refugees were so scared of the communists that they charged into U.S. military lines.

The recent "restore history" obsures the fact that this article was created by an illegal cut-and-paste move from "No Gun Ri", presumably to add commentary to the title. Kauffner (talk) 18:13, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Good catch; I tweaked the lead to reflect the material. Having read up about a million bits of material this week, your characterisation isn't accurate; Daily was certainly a controversial part of the story, having mislead journalists into thinking he was actually there. But he only forms a part of the testimony and accounts that made up the story; and his account only became sensational after the mass of publicity prompted criticism of the AP story. There has been a steady tread of coverage of this issue from 2001 till about 2010 (since then; not as much) so I am not sure what you are saying there?. I can work in the part about lacking independent confirmation; but am away today. I think this article, about the event, is worth separating from No Gun Ri - ideally the content there should be reduced. --Errant ^(chat!) 09:15, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Each time this has been discussed the majority view was not to have the word "massacre" in the title -- and then someone sneaks in and cuts and pastes it back. The advantage of the title "No Gun Ri" is that it avoids the need for any sort of commentary or categorization. Kauffner (talk) 09:37, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge

I won't be one of the first, and probably not the last, person to wonder why there are essentially two articles covering the same material, No Gun Ri and No Gun Ri Massacre. Nevermind the naming. The two articles should be merged unless someone intends to explain the place, No Gun Ri, in some kind of detached manner. Student7 (talk) 13:38, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Well I disagree - this incident happened near No Gun Ri (and so naturally took its name) but the place is sensibly distinct. No Gun Ri should be stubbed as appropriate. --Errant ^(chat!) 13:46, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

No Gun Ri is supposed to be the main article, as you can see here. This article is a POV fork, especially the way it has been rewritten. I'm going to put it up for AfD. Kauffner (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Don't be silly; we can certainly discuss the name of the article but a) it seems logical to have separate location/event articles and b) the massacre seems to be a relevant title. Killings might be better? --Errant ^(chat!) 14:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

163

This article has been rewritten to rely heavily on a report by a group called the "Committee for the Review and Restoration of Honor for the No Gun Ri Victims". Just from the name of this committee, it seems unlikely that the members approached the issue in an open-minded manner. This report is quite obscure. It is not mentioned anywhere on GNews or GBooks. Out of 150,000 GNews stories on No Gun Ri, six mention the committee's list of 163 "dead or missing" -- and none of them explain what it means or how it was arrived it. Yet this number is put on the top of the article as if it was an official casualty estimate. The 2001 U.S. Army report is closest thing to an official estimate. This report says no more than 50 Korean civilians could have been killed. This estimate is not mentioned anywhere in the current version of the article. Kauffner (talk) 12:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Now you may have a point that this report might not be impartial (depending on the exact background of the report authors), but the notion that an US army report might is necessarily less impartial or the only thing close to an official estimate is quite frankly ridiculous. If the government Korea had indeed created an official research committee with well established researchers it would probably be more reliable than any US report on the matter.

I agree however that we should know some more background on that source before using it - however maybe the editor using that has already done it.

Your argument that it is referenced much by others (i.e. 150.000 stories on no gun ri) may not hold much water, since the report was issued in 2009 (in Korean), so only publication on No Gun Ri after 2009 are candidates to reference it to begin with. And even among those a reference might only be expected in high quality investigative journalism or scholarly publications.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:11, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

BTW, the massacre really shouldn't be in the No Gun Ri article since it took place outside the village and is therefore, non-WP:TOPIC. Since the monument will be inside the village, some explanation will have to be made, but it should not be central to an otherwise nn village. Student7 (talk) 13:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

The article should be based mainly on the secondary sources, i.e. the books by Charles Hanley and Robert Bateman. This is a well-documented incident, and shouldn't be necessary to rely on difficult to obtain primary sources, copyright violating You Tube videos, German-language news reports, and Korean-language news reports. The article makes it sound like as if the AP blew lid off the fact that bad stuff happened in the Korean War. You can find plenty of horrifying stories in Fehrenbach or any of the other standard history. The Hangang bridge was blown while refugees poured across, apparently by someone well-connected enough to prevent the issue ever being properly investigated. Kauffner (talk) 16:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with foreign language sources. --Errant ^(chat!) 17:53, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with foreign language as long as they are reliable/reputable publications. If you are wary about their content or correct use you can ask other (uninvolved) editors for help/translation. As far as youtube is concerned, youtube is usually just distribution medium, i.e. if the youtube clip is copy of reliable documentary or newscast, simple cite the original documentation or news clip directly rather h´than the youtube link, which also settles the copyrght issue as well. If the youtube link was not a copy of a reliable publication, then indeed it cannot be used as a source and has no place in this article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:53, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I: I went ahead and removed the 2 youtube links, they didn't really had any sourcing or reference anyway.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:01, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

P.S.: II: The German documentary seems ok as a source, it was broadcasted on the German public TV channel ARD, the documentaries of which are usually reliable (roughly comparable to CNN or PBS documentaries or something like CBS 60 minutes). However any video documentary citation needs to provide the exact time in the video, like you would need to give the page number for a book. You cannot cite a documentary or book by simply providing its title.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

National archives

Several sentences refer to a "national archive." One even links to a general purpose one. I changed one to National Archives and Records Administration which is undoubtedly wrong. But the right name needs to be found and used, even if there is no article on it.

The name I linked to has stuff like the Declaration of Independence, Executive Order number xxx, stuff like that, not minutiae of a transient battle, one of thousands, in 1950. It just isn't set up for that. Some Pentagon archive maybe? Student7 (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Article losing direction

The article starts to lose its direction when it starts bringing in the kitchen sink as far as unproved accusations and innuendos go. There seems to be facts surrounding No Gun Ri. We don't seem to have any facts relating to anything else and it weakens the article IMO. Perhaps the rest should be taken and merged as a higher level article with List of massacres in South Korea.

A whole bunch of fallacies are possible: Argument from repetition - repeat it often enough, it must be true. Argument from silence - no documentation other than the accuser's story, therefore it must be true. Burden of Proof, etc.

There were a bunch of scared American soldiers who were manning the perimeter, shooting their rifles, from a distance, seriously for the first time. There were a bunch of Koreans running south, cause that seemed like a good idea at the time. Everyone was terrified. This was hardly Katyn massacre, full and deliberate killing of someone you had clearly identified and wanted dead.

The article is structured "drip-drip-drip" rather than in any organized way. If it is true, let's forget the media timeline and produce the article as history not "history of NBC about No-Gun-Ri." This is not encyclopedic IMO. That is, 2007 accusations can go first or whatever. The timeline of accusations may not be important to real history. Terribly important to the media, of course! Tends to "fatten" the article to no purpose but to puff up the media.

But let's separate the chaff from the wheat anyway. Let the vague accusations about other places be in another article or delete them. They weaken the claim.

Also, no one seems to question "paying the survivors." I would think that reimbursing the family who can prove they lost family members would make more sense. If someone shoots at me and misses, it would be nice to get money, but it would be nicer if someone shoots and kills my father when I wasn't there, and the perpetrator reimburses me. That would make some sense, at least. Student7 (talk) 21:20, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

The complication is that the 1999 reports are quite a notable event in themselves (a little tired as I have just got back from the Wikimedia UK AGM so just a brief comment :)) --Errant ^(chat!) 21:29, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

It main body of the article should be a summary of Bateman's account, and a summary of Charles Hanley's account. What's up with the graphic of Muccio letter? An ambassador sent a letter on the same day as this incident, and so what? It was "deliberately omitted from the Army's 2001 investigative report." This is conspiracy theory chatter. Kauffner (talk) 02:13, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I have hard time justifying Bateman and Hanley as main sources. Yes, they are important sources, but they are neither particularly neutral nor the most recent.

I agree however that the article recently seems to have taken a unfortunate turn towards relying on primary sources. While the article may offer access to them and use them in very restricted fashion in addition to secondary sources it should stay away from analyzing and interpreting them as this becomes a violation of WP:OR. Moreover primary sources need to be cited properly rather than just providing a links to Wikisource.

In this context the "deliberately omitted from the Army's 2001 investigative report."-line may or may not be conspiracy chatter, but without a good secondary source it definitely is OR and as such has no place in the article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:19, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Pickett's charge, rewritten to match the current article

"According to General Meade, some Confederate forces attempted to attack the Union center at Gettysburg, but were repulsed.(Union press release)

In 1863, General Lee reported that he had nearly penetrated the Union center, had turned the guns around, but were recalled prematurely. They retired in an orderly fashion.(reference Savannah Herald)

In 1868, a soldier in the former Confederate army said that a General Pickett or Pickens had led the charge at Gettysburg. A researcher from the New York Times has found that a cadet by the name of Pickett stood last in his class at West Point. There were several graduates by the name of Pickens but they could not be placed at the scene at that particular time.

In 1871, the Baltimore Sun released a story that said that in the final charge at Gettysburg the South had been massacred (there's word for you!). Their army was lucky that any of them got away."

I think you get the idea. At this point the reader has no idea what went on at Gettysburg or if s/he should be interested. Either this is history and should be rewritten that way, or it is not, and should be retitled "Media timeline of the alleged massacre at No Gun Ri." Student7 (talk) 22:21, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Those are long-forgotten primary sources, so they are hardly analogous. If you type in "No Gun Ri" on Amazon, you get the Bateman book, and you get the Hanley book. The are hundreds of thousands of sources you could use for this article. There must a way to do it that is less arbitrary and one sided than what is being done now. Daily's account was sensational at the time, but here is is minimized. Flint and Hesselman, the AP's other fake witnesses, aren't even mentioned. The "survivors' estimates" and "survivors' accounts" that this article cites so seriously are nonsense. We are talking about people seeking compensation who were children at the time. Kauffner (talk) 10:02, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

yes, sources should be carefully selected and weighted, but simply picking the first entries an amazon book search yields you is hardly a proper approach. Yes, people seeking compensation may have an agenda when describing the events, but so have US army reports and related publications. From the WP perspective you would need to give both perspectives anyway. A single "true" description would only be possible if we had a bunch of reputable scholarly resources which are agreeing on all those details. However to my knowledge we don't have that, so that approach is moot.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:14, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm just off out the door for a weekend away, but to address some of the points:

• I think the later reports stuff does fit here in the broader impact No Gun Ri had; following the story there were a number of other reportings, and these are directly tied back to the No Gun Ri as what caused them to be broached. I agree a broader top-level article would be good, but even with such an articles existence, mention of the wider impact is appropriate here and commensurate with our usual approach
• Stylistically the article prose might be improved to fit closer to the tone of a Wikipedia article; some work of which has been done.
• There is a broad spectrum of sources in this article (Bateman I would be dubious about, his book is very bad from the perspective of an historical account), a lot of which ties back to the South Korean govt. report - which is the broadest and best coverage of the matter. --Errant ^(chat!) 10:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

This view goes directly against our sourcing policies as they are outlined in WP:PRIMARY. Bateman's book is the most widely read secondary source, and it has won various awards. The "No Gun Ri Incident Victim Review Report" is an obscure primary source that no one on the Web seems to know anything about. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, repeatedly cites the "2001 Pentagon report", and doesn't mentioned any other No Gun Ri report.[2] So the South Korean government isn't taking the victims' report anywhere near as seriously as this article does. Kauffner (talk) 02:34, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I fail to see how that brief news article, which does not "repeatedly cite" anything, supports what you claim. At best its use is disingenuous... I disagree with two points; the review is not particularly a primary source - unless we are talking about different things (you're "victims report" note seems to suggest you are referring to a report produced by the victims?). Secondly you seem to be claiming that Bateman's book is a good source; it isn't, he's a hack and a poor historian (at best). I'd treat using his book as a source for anything with very very careful hands. --Errant ^(chat!) 15:31, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually it would be rather helpful if we get some more detailed information on the review/report, ie. who exactly was writing it. Are there any reviews of it? Are the Korean publication or reviews about? My biggest problem with report is that it currently appears rather opaque.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:53, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Now that the site has been excavated archaeology-style with no remains found, the report's estimate of 163 dead or missing seems wildly unrealistic. Kauffner (talk) 16:10, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Why? Are any of the sources claiming the dead were all left on site? Because if that's not the cause there is no reason to expect finding any remains of (corpses) per se, but only other (indirect) archeological evidence of the incident itself (bullets, small personal items, etc...)--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:01, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

After the ariel photos were published, Handley suggested that the bodies didn't appear in them because they were already buried under the bridge. If the excavation didn't find anything, that theory seems unlike. Generally speaking, when you dig up a massacre site, you find bodies. They found them at Cheongwon, and they found them at Gongju. Perhaps this was the tidy massacre. Kauffner (talk) 06:06, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

The disposition of the bodies is a complex story covering decades. Unfortunately, because I'm shortly headed for the airport, I won't be able to deal with it properly for some days. It involves the retrieval of remains by families, of course, but also the digging up of bones back in the 1960s, and other factors cited by the forensics experts after their limited 2007 dig (as noted in Korean media). The 2007 excavation deserves a mention, as do many other elements left out of this article, but it needs to be put in context. --Charles J. Hanley 18:35, 23 May 2012 (UTC)Cjhanley (talk)

I think I agree that spurious sources need to be removed before any rewrite is attempted. Editors must agree on specific entries first. Deleting them wholesale in a major rewrite would be too disruptive IMO.

Having said that, "standing" should be considered. As a Korean citizen I should be able to petition my government. Petitioning another government lacks standing. The Korean government has every right (and maybe a duty) to petition the United States (or United Nations, which was attempting to defend the integrity of South Korea) to redress grievances. Petitions to the US, essentially made to get press coverage should be mostly removed IMO. They fail to deliver new information and are just alleged-victim spam, essentially. And should be summarized briefly for their own government.

Nobody petitions the US Congress. Not even in the US! I can get my congressman to "introduce a bill" but that is about it. "Petitioning" Congress is merely another public relations ploy (spam) that has no place here (or any article BTW!).

"Investigative reporting" which uses unnamed or essentially unknown sources (at this late date), or spurious witnesses, should be removed IMO.

Lastly, a review of the horrors of the war indicate that North Korea was the biggest violator with hundreds of thousands killed, followed rather too closely by the United Nations ally, South Korea, carefully removing the life from suspected Communists in the tens or hundreds of thousands. All quite deliberately and with malice aforethought. No Gun Ri was a stupid "friendly fire" incident that probably went on far too long and resulted from poor leadership, training, and intelligence. Going on at great lengths about it seems WP:UNDUE. And of course, South Korea doesn't want to "investigate" it! 1) There wouldn't BE a South Korea with 55,000 dead US soldiers and 2) South Korea's deliberate massacres were a hundred times worse! Finger pointing would be embarrassing to them and rather begging the issue. Student7 (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Going on at length about "friendly fire accident" (which it wasn't anyhow) is undue in an artice on Korean war, but of course not undue in an article on the incident itself.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:40, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

To respond to kmhkmh’s query regarding the No Gun Ri Incident Victim Review Report: This 446-page book was published in English translation in 2009, having been published in Korean in 2006. It was issued by the ROK government’s Committee for the Review and Restoration of Honor for the No Gun Ri Victims, a body established by the National Assembly’s “Special Act” on No Gun Ri of March 2004, which also authorized medical subsidies and a memorial park. The committee was headed by the then-prime minister, Lee Hae-chan, and included several other government ministers, including then-Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon (current U.N. secretary-general), plus lawyers, a historian, other academics. Its working committee was headed by the governor of Chungcheungbuk-do (the No Gun Ri province) and included other provincial officials and academics. The body also had a medical advisory committee. The prime minister’s preface to the book said the objective was "the review and determination of the victims and their bereaved family members, the review and determination of the family register registration (correction), the calculation and payment of medical subsidies, and holding memorial service project for the victims." In addition to describing the meticulous work done in certifying victims' identities, the highly detailed book also discusses the activities of the survivors over the decades to get a full accounting of the No Gun Ri massacre. The publication of the report in 2006 received coverage in the South Korean media, with a focus on the minimum casualty toll it established. The book is available on Amazon.com and in some U.S. university libraries. I hope that helps clarify. Charles J. Hanley 23:26, 22 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjhanley (talk • contribs)

If that's true it appears to be a perfectly fine source, maybe even the best available, unless there is some convincing concrete criticism/bad reviews of it.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:47, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge there isn't any extant criticism of the report. One stalling point is getting hold of an English copy - I've tried a number of routes but as far as I can make out about the only place it is available in the UK is at the University of Cambridge. I have a friend trying to find out where and how I can access it atm. --Errant ^(chat!) 18:53, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

IMO, this comes closer to Friendly fire (see article) than to collateral damage. The troops thought, or were ordered to think, that they were firing on infiltrators. They appear to have been wrong. Student7 (talk) 12:47, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Did you read the article you linked. Friendly fire isn't applied really applied to civilian but your own forces and is not being used for a knowing intention (of the command) either (="Being ordered to think"). So whatever you want to call it it seems to be anything but "friendly fire".--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:55, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, the term "friendly fire" wasn't used in the media prior to the first Gulf War, as far as I know. There just isn't any word to describe it. When Normandy was being "liberated" in WWII, civilians in St. Lo were bombed, killed, their houses destroyed. Many of the survivors were happy to see the allies nonetheless. Perhaps less grateful in South Korea because their own government wasn't that great. But the civilians were fleeing south, not north!

Retrieving the dead after three days and having none buried at the site, seems "unusual." Particularly if the North Koreans overran the site afterwards.

Did the archaeologists report mention finding bullets and/or other signs of warfare? Is the report online? (I really should have asked if it were in English!  :) Student7 (talk) 17:54, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

If there was, it would be on the commission's site, which is here. They dug up bodies at massacre sites all over South Korea, but found nothing at No Gun Ri.[3][4]

???

Well, they speculate "could have washed away." It was near a tunnel. Of course, you can't bury people in a tunnel with a real floor. With flooding a problem, the bridge had to have a solid foundation or it would have been undermined. I guess they weren't really expecting to do a forensic search. Maybe some ammo might not have washed away. Seems odd since observers had said some were "buried on a hill." Of course, given sufficient time, no one would bury a body in an obvious flood plain. Student7 (talk) 19:37, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

The picture of the bridge does say 1960, so the character of the bridge might have changed since the 1950 incident? But either way, it is not a good idea to build a bridge without a solid foundation, that might be undermined by water. This would mean either good bedding for the bridge and/or cement or other hardened material for the waterflow activity that was anticipated. Some else we may be missing is what the purpose of the bridge was for. Winter melt runoff? Hardly a viaduct in the boonies, right? Did "Route 1" go over it? Why were the migrants under the bridge instead of on the road that goes over the waterway? Does anything say that they were driven there by gunfire? Or were they following the dry watercourse? Student7 (talk) 22:02, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Umm, it's a railway bridge :) --Errant ^(chat!) 09:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

The word "survivor" considered ambiguous

In some places, the word "survivor" means "eyewitness" and is important for that reason. In other places, it means, really, heirs of the people thought to have died in the tunnels, and hoping to have that fact recognized (not necessarily that easy BTW) and to be compensated. If only legalese were involved "survivors" would do just fine. But here the term is ambiguous and sometimes (not always) needs a different word. Student7 (talk) 19:35, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

The insertion of "heirs" is off base. The No Gun Ri refugees consisted of entire families forced by U.S. troops to move south. Some entire families were wiped out. Some families had members who survived, some with wounds, in some cases severe and disabling. The word "survivors" under the No Gun Ri Massacre heading is not at all ambiguous; it very clearly means people who survived the massacre. They long sought an investigation, an apology and compensation for the loss of their parents, their siblings or their children and, in some cases, for the injuries they themselves suffered. This has nothing to do with inheritance. Beyond that, impugning the integrity of people because they have joined in a compensation claim is wrong, since this is the accepted way of civilization and standard under international law, and it's pointless, since what matters is simply getting on with the job of investigating the claim to determine the truth. That was done here. The U.S. Army acknowledged the killings but denied compensation. The survivors called that a whitewash. That's where it stands. Going on about compensation is equally pointless because for more than a decade there has been no pending legal case. The survivors long ago realized the U.S. would not offer compensation, but they continued to press for "restoration of honor" for the victims, through recognition of the wrongdoing by whatever means available, i.e., the memorial park, medical subsidies, a U.S. congressional investigation etc. Charles J. Hanley 14:53, 31 May 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Some general comments

So far the feedback to the rewrite has been interesting, thanks to all the constructive contributions. Last weekend I happened to be in the same city as cjhanley, who I collaborated with over the rewrite, and we met for a coffee and a chat about the article. It was a very constructive conversation; he was able to get across the depth of his insight into this entire topic - and there appears so much of the "story" still not recorded (time will solve that, I hope!). This left me with some thoughts:

• I think that it's important that contributors read/watch the material in depth, as an (evidently) controversial topic it requires a broad appreciation of the subject
• Speculation is not necessarily very helpful. We should stick to the source material where possible.
• Although this is two "events" - the killings & the 2000's coverage/interest - it doesn't make sense to split them. We still have lots of space and the topics are inherently tied together.

Charlie pointed out that coverage of this event is "patchy", in the sense that there is the original breaking reportage, a somewhat-partisan rebuttal, several documentaries, the offical reports and a small, but crucial, piece of work by a historian. No one has picked up the topic and written a broad historical coverage - hopefully that will happen in the future. This hampers us somewhat, but not in an critical way. Some ideas for moving forward:

1. I'd like to restore the "broader picture" section, perhaps with some reworking. As the sources, and Charlie, highlights this incident sparked similar reports of killings during that period and eventually led to the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Committee. It seems important to the topic to note this outcome. I'll try and work on proposing a tweaked version in the near future.
2. Student7, and indeed myself, have noted that the material, in places, reads like a magazine article rather than an encyclopaedia. I did "fix" some of these issues before moving the rewrite into article space. Incremental improvement to the prose would be great to see - I think broadly everything is in place, it just needs a few tweaks.
3. The sections covering the historical event could be expanded or fleshed out - I discussed this with Charlie at the weekend. The section has a lot of quotes (which IIRC he used to ensure that accuracy was maintained, and because they came from later documentaries, to help establish the solidity of the material). I think we can flesh that out with more prose (i.e. keep the quotation and bring in more prose description to hang it off of).

Anyway, those are my thoughts after the weekend. Cheers --Errant ^(chat!) 19:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Disposition of bodies, misconceptions etc.

Lack of background knowledge has produced needless speculation, mistaken suppositions etc. on this page that I hope to clear up. For example, to touch on one minor point, “bullets.” This was not a concern in 2007. The South Korean ballistics team in 1999-2000 found hundreds of bullets and bullet marks embedded or gouged in the bridge’s concrete. All tested bullets were American. Many others were inaccessible, below the level of the raised road built through one underpass in later years.

Another misconception: “the commission,” referring to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Firstly, it did not carry out the 2007 NGR excavation. Secondly, its unearthing of hundreds of skeletons at 1950 mass execution sites was totally expectable. Those mass graves had been dug for that purpose, and political and other factors led to those graves remaining undisturbed for decades. No Gun Ri was a very different situation. Also: Bodies were not “buried” under the bridge.

As for the disposition of the No Gun Ri bodies: In 1998-2000 relatives of the dead (from Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri villages) and the unaffected villagers of No Gun Ri itself (evacuated before the killings) had similar accounts of family survivors retrieving bodies as best they could in the immediate aftermath of the killings, carrying some back to Chu Gok Ri/Im Ke Ri for burial, burying some temporarily in soldiers’ foxholes or other locations for later retrieval, leaving many unclaimed under the bridge, where a thin layer of dirt was thrown over them (some dead came from more distant places). No Gun Ri villagers said their men, fortified by rice wine, later placed those decomposed bodies in two mass graves. They said that in the 1960s the national reforestation program dug up the bones in one area (the trackside hillside) and a farmer plowed up the bones in the other (along the valley floor).

South Korean investigators long ago, in their 2001 report, had cast doubt on the likelihood of finding remains in the bridge area. Here’s some of what they wrote (pages 202-206):

--

Many bodies were damaged beyond identification and villagers could only try to identify the bodies at night for fear they might be killed by aerial strafing if they moved at day time. Those who could identify their relatives temporarily buried them near the killing site and then moved them later to family burial grounds around their villages. Those who tried to search for their relatives in later days had to depend on personal belongings and other signs because bodies were so badly decomposed in the rainy and hot summer weather. The search focused on the remains of grown-ups. Under the traditional Korean custom, the bodies of children and unmarried men and women, even if they were found and identified, were buried without a proper mound and left unattended (because dying before their parents was considered a sin). It is virtually impossible to try to identify their burial locations today. The remains that were left uncollected in the tunnel were thrown in military trenches and covered with a thin layer of dirt. But in the ensuing years, those sites were dug up by families looking for their relatives and many remains were lost. A farmer cultivated the area for 10 years, throwing away bones he found. The remains, thinly buried, were exposed to elements and wild animals. Some temporary graves were lost permanently because there were no descendants of the dead to look after them.

--

In 2009, the families of 28 victims, a portion of those buried in Chu Gok Ri/Im Ke Ri, agreed to move their remains from family plots to a NGR victims cemetery created by Yongdong County near the NGR memorial park.

In its final briefing on Oct. 10, 2007, the excavation team that dug up limited locations by the bridge said it found two pieces of bone believed to belong to a child in a spot where a witness said a child victim was buried. It said the reasons it could not find more remains were that so much time had elapsed since the killings, and remains had been exposed to the elements, railway work, cultivation and erosion by the acidic nature of the soil in the area.

The 2007 excavation, therefore, is something of an ``info-neutral’’ element. It tells us, essentially, nothing, and adds nothing to this article. If it is to be included, it shouldn’t be in the very first paragraph, where it simply leaves the poor reader scratching his head, but instead lower down, where the bodies are discussed, put into context, which would unfortunately add superfluous words to the article.

Regarding some other misconceptions on this page: To speak of “friendly fire,” Normandy, collateral damage etc. is to totally misunderstand the situation. American forces in Korea in July 1950 (and later) were under orders to strafe and shoot noncombatants. Pure and simple. This was so blatantly wrong that the Pentagon of 2001 covered up or misrepresented all the evidence demonstrating the fact. That is not debatable, since it is self-evident even in the relatively simple presentation of this WP article.

In summary, I would strongly second Errant’s advice that “it's important that contributors read/watch the material in depth, as an (evidently) controversial topic it requires a broad appreciation of the subject,” and “Speculation is not necessarily very helpful. We should stick to the source material where possible.”

Tinkering with an article on a serious subject on the basis of uninformed opinion, chauvinistic predilections and dangerous misconceptions cannot possibly be what the Wikipedia community has in mind for a “good” article. My colleagues and I have a great wealth of knowledge about No Gun Ri and will be happy to answer questions any contributor/reader has. I urge all to take advantage of that. Charles J. Hanley 14:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Okay.

What we some of us are trying to do is transition this from a "sensational" Pulitzer Prize winning story to an encyclopedic article. We seem to be making some progress on the discussion page, but not in the article.

I mentioned to Cjhanley in an earlier note, that if the reader comes away with the idea that he should write his congressperson/picket the White House, or something, we have failed in our quest to render this encyclopedic. It is still a "History of media."

Differentiation of "standing" of survivors is unclear - whether they have presented something in order to a group prepared to accept the complaint or whether they are simply complaining to the media (at their behest) to help "feed the beast." The latter may be germane to media jobs, but is not really related to the article content.

What is wrong with trying to precisely place the bridge? I agree with the doctrine of "simplicity" but not sure it must be invoked. While the village of No Gun Ri itself would not have an article were it not for the nearby incident, neither are the two (tiny) villages even stubbed, that "supplied" the victims.

Nor do I quite understand about 2007 evacuation comment about ammo findings. Does clarify lack of bodies which sounds credible. Need cite. I agree it adds complexity to article just when I was hoping to remove it. Student7 (talk) 01:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I plan to add minimal material re the disposition of bodies and will, indeed, cite sources. I agree it will add unwanted, unnecessary complexity, but I’ll do it in the spirit of addressing an element of interest to a contributor.

However, larding in details of the railroad line (giving an incorrect location in the process) is truly overdoing it and irrelevant.

Regarding “ammo”: The question was raised – by you, no? – whether the 2007 dig turned up bullets. As I explain above, the hundreds of bullets and bullet marks were inventoried years earlier, and can be seen today (see the left side of this photo for the markings). The 2007 diggers weren’t looking for them because they didn’t need to.

Your fixation on “standing” baffles me, as both mistaken and, anyway, moot. The article makes abundantly clear that the survivors filed petitions with bodies constituted to deal with such matters. End of story; there’s your “standing.” But besides, who cares whether their allegations came out in a legal filing or on a highway billboard? We’re talking about a mass killing that shocked the world. That gives it all the “standing” it needs.

Finally, as has been explained, No Gun Ri is not Gettysburg, with hundreds of books and generations of historians firmly establishing the narrative. The reliable facts of No Gun Ri have emerged from media reporting. Without the media, you have no Wikipedia article.

Charles J. Hanley 16:29, 1 June 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

What would really shock the real world is having a genuine war without killing non-combatants. "Wars" do not proceed like calling 911.

We have two villages involved which need IMO more than just a stub article (they have nothing now). In those two villages, US soldiers "forced" evacuation over three days? Sounds to me more like soldiers evacuating, giving their recommendation. The military does not or should not suggest that civilians burden highways that the military will be/is using. Lessons learned from WWII in Europe is that civilians on the road can really mess up military ops. The only reason you would want them there is to mess up the oncoming enemy which could backfire if the enemy simply shot there way through or your own lines moved in a different direction.

Seems to suggest that soldiers stayed in these two villages for three days forcing out the civilians which sounds peculiar. And never communicated what they were doing to anyone?

Say 300 casualties over three days. Say ten hours during daylight. 10 per hour. 30 for each 3-hour period? Families? Final evacuees could try to burrow under previous bodies. Original victims would not have that option! With each shooting, soldiers would walk over and "make sure" that everyone was dead.

Villages seems isolated. No electricity? Battery-operated radios? How do they know what is happening? Maybe they still got mail for awhile after the original invasion? Lots of little details missing.

These villages are what? Farming villages? With farmers living outside the village or inside it? If outside it, did the farmers never get invited to evacuate and the evacuees mainly consisted of tiny factions of "middle class" blacksmiths, grocers, etc. that might actually live in the village? Would be mostly in village article, not here, but something is needed for context/credibility. Student7 (talk) 20:40, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

No, U.S. soldiers forced the villagers of Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri (gathered together at the more isolated Im Ke Ri to sit out the fighting) to evacuate all at once on July 25, not over three days. The Americans then set fire to Chu Gok Ri as they left. Map coordinates in unit documents show that elements of the 5th Cavalry Regiment were situated at Chu Gok Ri/Im Ke Ri at that time. Veterans of the 5th Cav testified to DOD investigators in 2000 that they remember evacuating villagers at that time. The killings took place when the villagers encountered the 7th Cav troops several miles down the road. This is sufficiently explained under "Events of 25-29 July 1950." Charles J. Hanley 21:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Emotional wording

Here is one example of a non-encyclopedic entry. "Chung Eun-yong, a former policeman whose two small children were killed and whose wife was badly wounded at No Gun Ri, filed the first of what would eventually be 30 petitions over decades presented by him, and later by a survivors' committee, to the South Korean and U.S. governments for an investigation, an apology and compensation. "It goes beyond comprehension why they attacked and killed them with such cruelty. The U.S. government should take responsibility," Chung wrote in 1960." (footnotes)

This is just great for a media article.

What was his legal status on 1960 in regard to the South Korean government? He was not filing in court, right? What was his legal standing in filing in 1960 with the US government? Note that the Korean government became autonomous in 1948. Did he file in a US Court? Why is this presented in this manner except that some media article does so? This is not objective.

It is fine to identify Chung as the first person to personalize/publicize the incident and to identify victims and himself as a "survivor" by name. The quote is very much out of line. It is clearly emotional and pov. It adds nothing to the article.

The article needs shortening, basically. Student7 (talk) 00:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I reworked it. The quote seems reasonable as part of his initial petition - I brought it out as a quote box though to remove it from the prose. If you have a better excerpt to suggest please do so. Also did some clean up of that section. --Errant ^(chat!) 14:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

No Deaths?

Kauffner now appears to be extending his campaign to the claim that no one was killed at No Gun Ri - I'm not sure how he justifies this claim and would be interested to hear his reasoning. Particularly as the source he uses doesn't say that. In fact it is careful to note the opposite... I also notice he is prepating a Requested Move for this page to get it back at No Gun Ri (see here). He's made some rather unfortunate calculations that will scupper the move when he gets round to proposing it officially; but it seems only fair to point it out to other editors here so they can marshall their own arguments in advance (like Kauffner). --Errant ^(chat!) 09:21, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

To briefly review some of the overwhelming evidence, from every vantage point, of large numbers of dead at No Gun Ri:

• In their many written statements and appeals over the years, the best, closest eyewitnesses, the Korean survivors, estimated at various times 300, more than 300, 400 and up to 500 dead. Dozens of them attested to bodies blanketing the flat areas outside the tunnels, stacked up in the tunnels, and strung out along the railroad tracks.
• No Gun Ri villagers who had been evacuated and returned to the scene spoke of many, many dead. One said that elders decades ago used to cite the number 300.
• U.S. veterans who were there, at a distance of hundreds of yards, had varied ideas. Several spoke of "a hundred" dead (as at My Lai, soldiers seemed to use "100" to mean "many, many"). A couple said "about 100 on the side I could see." Another said, "We smoked their ass off, hundreds of them." Another: "They didn't get out and we fired on them and about 3,000 of them were killed one afternoon," and then later, "Well, easily 300 or 400." At least three testified to Pentagon investigators they'd estimate up to 200 or "close to" 200 were killed. These men were all at some distance and generally were speaking of the tunnel dead. One spoke separately of 75 (and at another time 200) bodies up on the tracks.
• One who got down among the bodies was Homer Garza, a retired command sergeant major, the Army's highest enlisted rank. He led a patrol through one tunnel and said in recent years he saw 200 to 300 people "stacked up" and most may have been dead.
• Mac Hilliard, a regimental clerk, said he recorded in the unit log (now missing from the National Archives) that 300 had been "fired on." His statements made clear he understood this to mean 300 casualties.
• A New York Times correspondent reported on Sept. 29, 1950, (two months after No Gun Ri): "Fear of infiltrators led to the slaughter of hundreds of South Korean civilians, women as well as men, by some United States troops and police of the republic. One high-ranking United States officer condemned as 'panicky' the shooting of many civilians last July by one United States regiment." This almost certainly was No Gun Ri.
• The North Korean reporter for the Chosun In Min Bo newspaper who arrived on the scene immediately after the massacre reported on Aug. 19, 1950, he saw some 400 bodies strewn about.
• The North Korean Chosun News Agency reported on Aug. 12, 1950, that 2,000 civilians had been killed by American troops in No Gun Ri's Yongdong County, including in tunnels. It specified that Chu Gok Ri/Im Ke Ri villagers were victims.
• An internal North Korean military document, dated Aug. 2, 1950, stamped "Secret" and captured by U.S. troops on Aug. 15, said the Americans had killed hundreds of civilians in the area, including those found "in a tunnel near Yongdong."
• When U.S. troops retook the area in mid-September 1950, a Korean agent of U.S. Army counterintelligence, armed with that North Korean document, interrogated villagers about it and was told it was true, that large numbers were killed at the No Gun Ri bridge. That agent, Yul Rhee, so testified to Pentagon investigators in 2000.
• In 1999-2000, the Yongdong County government compiled a list of names of 181 No Gun Ri dead and many more wounded.
• In 2005, as noted in this WP article, a South Korean national government committee, headed by the prime minister, certified the names of 150 No Gun Ri dead, 13 missing and 55 wounded, some of whom later died of their wounds. The vast majority were from the nearby villages of Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri. It said "many" names had not been reported because of the passage of time, because entire families were wiped out, and because many were believed from more distant places (where relatives would not have known the circumstances of their disappearance).

After reviewing the above, any continued suggestion that few or none died at No Gun Ri is to ignore the obvious truth and official findings, and to engage in wishful fantasy (to what end?), and not in historical reality. The limited, unsuccessful excavation of 2007 tells us nothing, as the excavation team itself acknowledged. (See "Disposition of bodies," above, regarding the removal of bodies and disturbance of bones over more than a half-century.) Charles J. Hanley 20:36, 11 June 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

I see no great harm and a lot of credibility for the article (shouldn't be slanted one way), to report that official excavations recorded no bodies. They found slugs, which was telling. There is (are) accounts for the bodies not being there which should precede this report. This is just normal follow-up, I think. "No deaths" could be read into it if it stood alone, but not with all the other material. It's just a routine report IMO. If it were private, it might be ignored. But since the government did it, it probably shouldn't be. Student7 (talk) 17:16, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I do not understand Kauffner's fixation on the word "massacre." By the definition of the word, here on Wiki, ANY deaths that occurred in No Gun Ri fall under the definition and thus massacre should remain in the title. Massacre is not related to the number of deaths but the rationale behind the killings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.161.155.162 (talk) 12:30, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

There were two move discussions that concluded in favor of the title "No Gun Ri". See here and here. Kauffner (talk) 03:21, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

We seem to have a lot of emotion, but I don't see any clear "rationale" for the killings, except a) a general fear, which one side refuses to accept, or b) "following orders." The general American public at the time was quite fearful of another Dunkirk and quite frankly could have cared less about the killing of refugees. An entire Army was as stake. If you were being shot at (and some were), possibly you felt the same. The editors seem to think this was some kind of picnic the United Nations was on and shot refugees out of boredom! Student7 (talk) 00:41, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

The Naktong River bridges

Why are the Naktong bridges in an article that's supposed to be about No Gun Ri? Hobart Gay was considered a hero for blowing up these bridges. One was later renamed the "Bridge of National Defense" and a plaque was put up in his honor. All the standard histories of the Korean War talk about this. Here is Fehrenbach writing in 1963: "Three times, at Gay's order, they repeated the maneuver, without success. Short of shooting them, there was no way to prevent the Koreans from using the bridge. Even telling them it would be blown did no good. Now it was growing dark and the Inmun Gun was closing. As the rear guard recrossed to east for the third time, with the mass of Koreans close behind them, Hobart Gay, his face pale, said, 'Blow it.' He had no other choice. Several hundred Koreans went into the river with the bridge." (pp. 106-107) The North Korean army was a killing machine on the rampage, and scared these refugees out of their minds. Yet in this article, everything U.S. soldiers do is treated as a war crime -- a crime exposed by the AP. I say it's time to move this article to "Items of Korean War Communist propaganda promoted by the Associated Press" and return the old version of this article to its proper place. Kauffner (talk) 17:55, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, seems relevant. It's not like we are covering it in detail; but it rounds out the events. If you think a different wording is more appropriate please do suggest something. The rest of your post is screed and not worth replying to. --Errant ^(chat!) 08:45, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

For the record: The mass killings of hundreds of South Korean refugees in the U.S. demolition of the Waegwan and Tuksong-dong bridges across the Naktong River on Aug. 3, 1950, were in no way reported in the official documents of the Army units involved. Only 11 years later did an Army historian note that Gen. Gay, in unofficial correspondence, had disclosed to him what happened at Waegwan. As for Tuksong-dong, where probably many more were killed, since the entire refugee-packed, 650-foot bridge was pulverized, as opposed to only one span at Waegwan, the full official entry read: “The Tuksong Bridge was blown at 0701 hours. Results, Excellent.” The killings at Tuksong-dong remained unknown to history until the news report of Oct. 13, 1999, which cited Korean survivors and U.S. veterans who were there. That bridge blowing was ordered not by Gay, but by Col. Richard Stephens of the 21st Infantry, who, ironically, later became Army chief of military history. The killing did not stop with the bridge blowing; U.S. infantry and warplanes proceeded to shoot and strafe stranded refugee families that had immediately begun wading across the broad, shallow Naktong. (``The surface was covered with dead people and injured people and cows and bags floating down,’’ one woman recalled.)

Two postscripts:

1) A week before the bridge blowings, Gay referred to the refugees, in writing, as “trash.”

2) The first North Korean army units did not appear across the Naktong until four days after the bridge blowings.

Charles J. Hanley 14:54, 12 July 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Rm material before I read this. There is material now that is peripherally related to No Gun Ri, which I suppose it tolerable for that reason. But this is totally off-WP:TOPIC. There has to be walls around encyclopedia articles. They can't all be duplicates of one another. There could be a higher level article that includes every non-combatant death in the war, I suppose. Student7 (talk) 20:14, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

A crucial factor is being overlooked here. Any mass killing of South Korean refugees by the U.S. military during this period, when orders are flying around the warfront to indiscriminately shoot, strafe and blow up fleeing civilians on the chance they may harbor infiltrators, is essential context for an article on the most notorious of those killings, No Gun Ri. To do otherwise is to leave the reader perplexed, wondering whether No Gun Ri was some inexplicable anomaly, and wondering whether there was some other effect from all those orders (“fire everyone,” “treat civilians as enemy,” “shoot all refugees trying to cross river” etc.), some of which are cited in this article. Beyond that, this recurrent notion in Talk that these many, many civilian dead are some kind of inadvertent “collateral damage” is totally befuddling. The orders, which today's military lawyers find shocking and unprecedented, are unambiguous and are there for all to read. Please do. Meantime, I will undo the deletion of the bridge blowings. Charles J. Hanley 22:05, 16 July 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley (talk)

Please try to look at this from purely a encyclopedic pov. A higher level article can have the kitchen sink in it but must be named so that the kitchen sink can logically be included. Or rename this one, I suppose, "All South Korean civilian deaths in the early days of the Korean War, caused by the United Nations." Hopefully something more economical than that!  :)

Otherwise it is merely WP:COATRACK, an article, the purpose of which is to attach unrelated material. Student7 (talk) 20:26, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

At WP:COATRACK, its “nutshell” description says: “Articles about one thing shouldn’t mostly focus on another thing.” That plainly doesn’t apply here. The vast bulk of this article is about the No Gun Ri Massacre. But context is essential. Among several sentences describing orders to kill refugees, I have restored the sentence mentioning other refugee killings, so the reader understands that No Gun Ri was not alone. I have also restored the sentence noting that ROK National Assembly leaders (the deputy speaker and foreign relations committee chairman) asked counterparts in the U.S. Senate for a joint investigation of the Muccio letter cover-up, and were denied. This is the highest-level post-investigation interaction and belongs in the article. Charles J. Hanley 16:20, 10 September 2012 (UTC)Cjhanley

Hello,

I was a Korea-era draftee, and have read several books about the war. Soldiers I met in a U. S. Army hospital were quite clear that North Korean soldiers or sympathizers concealed themselves among crowds of refugees and attacked our troops, especially with hand grenades. I think that any discussion of massacres, such as at the No Gun Ri bridge, should explore this situation. That our troops were green, poorly prepared, and in a chaotic backs to the wall retreat should in some way mitigate their conduct. On the other hand, the persistent Army and Government stonewalling and lies your articles detail are disgusting to any patriotic American. 75.140.157.186 (talk) 00:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC) Rich Persoff US 56 - 196 - ---

The fear of infiltration was, of course, a major element in the No Gun Ri story, and is so in this article, beginning with a reference in the second paragraph. It is explored most extensively in addressing the narrow, important question of whether there were enemy infiltrators at No Gun Ri itself. In a broader, theater-wide sense, the issue is summarized in the Background section, where it’s noted U.S. units were being attacked from the rear, General Gay said he believed half the people on the roads were infiltrators, but a 24-hour-long search turned up no infiltrators.

More could be said: The book The Bridge at No Gun Ri cites a case, months after No Gun Ri, in which a 7th Cavalry unit was attacked by infiltrators among refugees; a U.S. newspaper report in mid-1950 cited another day-long search of hundreds of refugees that turned up no infiltrators; the Pentagon’s No Gun Ri investigative report lists 20 references to infiltration in military documents from July and August 1950, but 16 of these sometimes redundant references consisted of warnings, hearsay, or items qualified by the term “reportedly.” In only four cases, over a 100-mile–wide war front and weeks of refugee movements, did units report capturing or being fired on by armed men in civilian clothes. In my view, however, elaborating beyond the basic points the article already makes would inflate the wordage unnecessarily, without adding clarity. I hope you agree.

As for the U.S. troops’ difficult situation, the article does note they were “green American troops, insufficiently trained, poorly equipped and often led by inexperienced officers. In particular, they lacked training in how to deal with war-displaced civilians.” Thanks. Charles J. Hanley 00:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley

Improper reliance on a primary source

"Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources," per WP:PRIMARY. For this subject, the secondary sources are Bateman's No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident (2002) and Hanley's The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War (2002). The article has no business making claims whose notability and relevance is not established by one of these two sources. But in fact, it relies heavily on the "Committee for the Review and Restoration of Honor for the No Gun Ri Victims", particularly in the opening paragraph. Just from the name of this group, it seems unlikely that it engaged in an open-minded investigation. More to the point, this report is being given WP:UNDUE prominence here. On Highbeam, the committee's estimate of 163 dead is mentioned in seven news reports. This is mostly the same 2007 AP story published in different places. I did not find an English-language source that discusses the report in any detail. The sites for Chosun (Noguen-ri site:english.chosun.com), Korea Herald ("No Gun Ri" site:www.koreaherald.com), and Yonhap (Nogeun-ri site:english.yonhapnews.co.kr) don't even mention it. In fact, Yonhap is still giving the number killed as 248, a guesstimate made by the Yongdong County Office back in 2000. The best evidence is the aerial photos from 1950, and the excavation of the site conducted in 2007. Neither of these sources support the claim made in the caption that "a large number" of refugees were killed. Finally, I do not think it is appropriate put the quote claiming that the Pentagon report is a "whitewash" in the lede. An encyclopedia article should summarize the secondary sources, not ping pong between the disputing parties like a news report. Kauffner (talk) 08:13, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

The official South Korean government source seems reasonable to use in the lead, along with both the official US position and a note other numbers have been produced over the years. It being the most recent source also helps. The lead looks fine to me. If you have an actual constructive change, rather than more whining moaning (which is becoming tiresome), then lets discuss that. I've tweaked the lead a bit to emphasize the two main offical stances (US and SK) as well as the range of estimates over the years from all parties. Does that address the issue? --Errant ^(chat!) 19:13, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

To base a comprehensive, authoritative encyclopedia entry on just two secondary sources is highly problematic, especially when one (The Bridge at No Gun Ri) was published in 2001 and missed a subsequent decade of important disclosures and developments, and the other is a dangerously unreliable piece of work. The authority and relevance of the South Korean government's 2006 report (with 2009 translation) is self-evident. As kmhkmh noted above in Talk, "It appears to be a perfectly fine source, maybe even the best available." Suggesting that this prime minister-led body's standing depends on how often it was cited in American news media is to place too much faith in the scattershot approach of U.S.-centric media, and to ignore the simple fact that the South Korean government's conclusions are likely to stand as the final best word on minimum casualties. Such bedrock official sources inform many WP articles: My Lai Massacre has at least 12 citations of the Peers Commission report; Malmedy Massacre, more than a dozen cites of an Army judge advocate's report; Wounded Knee Massacre relies on General Miles' report on casualties.

As for aerial photos, excavations etc. and the number of No Gun Ri casualties, please refer to 1) the article's "Aerial imagery, victims' remains" section, which addresses the serious questions about the integrity and relevance of the photos, and the excavation team's explanation of its findings, and 2) Talk's "No Deaths?" section, which lays out the overwhelming evidence of a large number of casualties.

Finally, the survivors' rejection of the Pentagon report as a whitewash is central to the No Gun Ri story and certainly belongs in the intro section. To leave any other impression at the top of the article would be deceitful. Charles J. Hanley 19:46, 27 December 2012 (UTC) Cjhanley

The "survivors" were mostly children at the time, and they expect to get money from a settlement. The Peers Commission was set up by the Pentagon, so the corresponding report on this incident is the U.S. Army's 2001 report. The Army report is a whitewash, but old news stories in the North Korean press are "overwhelming evidence"? The NK press stands at the forefront in other areas as well. For example, it has exposed the "poisonous germ bullets and shells" that the U.S. used in Yugoslavia.[5] They also have outstanding coverage of the "unheard-of ogreish bestialities" committed by American troops in Taejon and Taegu.[6] Prize-winning blockbuster stories start with tips like these! Kauffner (talk) 00:04, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Not sure where you get the north Korean press thing from... Where was is it used in the postings above and where in the article?--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:13, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

The massacre story originated with a report published in 1950 in Chosun In Min Bo, the North Korean military newspaper. This report estimated that 400 refugees were killed, a figure that was later quoted very widely. The report also claimed that hundreds of bodies were left in the open for weeks, so many that it was "difficult to walk around without stepping on corpses." This version of events is not consistent with the U.S. aerial photos. But from Cjhanley's comments above, it seems that he still thinks highly of the North Korean account. Kauffner (talk) 01:30, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

You didn't really answer my question. I did not ask you in which publication the massacre was first mentioned. But I asked you where the article or the posts above refer to/rely on North Korean sources. I still don't see where that's the case (maybe I'm just blind right now). And if it is indeed not the case, I don't quite see what the point of your posting was. I.e., it seems rather pointless to rant about the unreliability of North Korean sources, which are not used for the article nor are considered reliable by anyone to begin with.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Handley obviously thinks North Korean sources are reliable since he cites several of them in the "No Deaths?" section above. A lot of the evidence presented is dependent on NK sources. The survivor and GI witnesses were uncovered by people who wanted to confirm the North Korean version of events. Edward Daily and others fabricated "eyewitness" accounts consistent with this version because they figured that was what the AP wanted to hear. Kauffner (talk) 11:23, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Kauffner’s grossly uninformed, falsehood-packed statements are beyond comment, and the overwhelmingly obvious facts he chooses to ignore are beyond number, beginning with the fact that the governments of South Korea and the United States have confirmed – repeat, the two governments have confirmed -- that the U.S. military killed the refugees at No Gun Ri “by the effects of small-arms fire, artillery and mortar fire, and strafing,” and the South Korean government has established a minimum casualty toll. It happens that a North Korean journalist reported the massacre contemporaneously. So what? The same thing happened with My Lai and the North Vietnamese/VC press. The difference: Within a year of the communist reporting of My Lai, a U.S. Army cornered by belated U.S. press disclosures had to give up its cover-up on My Lai; it took a half-century for the Pentagon to acknowledge what happened at No Gun Ri.

One can only ask, with ErrantX, that such nonsensical comic-book fantasies (a conspiracy of North Korea, three dozen South Korean villagers and two dozen veterans of the U.S. 7th Cavalry that then duped two sovereign governments?) be left out of discussions of such a serious WP topic. Please, in simple decency and respect for the No Gun Ri victims. Thank you. Charles J. Hanley 15:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC). Cjhanley

Before the U.S. Army report was a whitewash, but now you are claiming that it supports your position? Here is what it actually says: "This depiction of hundreds of casualties is unsupported either by the reconnaissance film analysis discussed in Appendix C or the forensic pathology analysis in Tab 3 to this Appendix." The Aug. 2 North Korean "Cultural Officer" report, which may be the earliest iteration of this story, is in fact a directive on the "Cultivation of Hatred to Obtain Revenge." Kauffner (talk) 21:35, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

The U.S. report

To characterize the 2001 U.S. Army report on No Gun Ri as an authoritative source, let alone the most authoritative source on No Gun Ri, as Kauffner does in his latest unhelpful intervention (9 Jan 13 edit), is to blatantly ignore the deceitful nature of that report, glaringly obvious even in this WP article’s brief account of its suppression and misrepresentation of documents and testimony on No Gun Ri. Rich Persoff notes above in “Talk” that the stonewalling and lies “are disgusting to any patriotic American.” It was disgusting enough to lead ex-U.S. Rep. and Korean War veteran Pete McCloskey -- the only one of eight outside experts advising the 1999-2001 Army investigation to thoroughly review the documents and confidential testimony – to declare afterward that the final report was a “whitewash.”

The Army’s suppression of the Ambassador Muccio letter alone, warning the State Dept. that the Army had adopted a policy of shooting South Korean refugees, is enough to write off the investigation as a deeply dishonest effort to bury the case of No Gun Ri. This WP article notes further that the Army report suppressed the testimony of five ex-Air Force pilots that they’d been directed to strafe refugees; quashed the fact that 17 ex-infantrymen believed there were orders to shoot the NGR refugees; hid the fact that the unit document that would have held such orders had vanished from the National Archives; deep-sixed the operations chief’s statement to his boss that the Air Force was strafing refugees at the Army’s request; suppressed Army documents in which, among other things, the 25th Infantry Division was ordered to shoot any civilians in the war zone, and 1st Cav Division units were told refugees were “fair game” and to “shoot all refugees coming across river”; squelched repeated statements by 7th Cav men that they’d been told to kill civilians indiscriminately.

The problems with the aerial photos begin with the fact that the No Gun Ri segment had been spliced into an Aug. 6, 1950, reconnaissance film roll. That and other irregularities led the photo analyst, clearly worried that Army intelligence had duped him, to demand stricter controls on the integrity of future subject photos. Not noted in this WP article is the fact that this analyst, in his small-print internal report within the Army final report, discussed the difficulties of detecting graves, without further “indicators,” in a culture and environment unfamiliar to him. (The Army then chose to convey this as a conclusion that there were no mass graves.)

The list of deceptions in the Army report extends well beyond what’s in the WP article (one more example: Air Force pilots’ July 1950 mission reports reporting the strafing of refugees were suppressed, as were mission reports of air attacks at or around No Gun Ri). But this article should not be allowed to diverge and balloon into a point-by-point knockdown of statements from the Army report, like the ones Kauffner has now inserted. Rather than turn into an analysis of the Army report, it should stick to the ground truths of No Gun Ri, including the prominently noted Army bottom-line statement that the number of casualties is “unknown.”

Secondarily, Kauffner’s latest edit reintroduces some of the incoherence that marked this article in earlier years. Anyone reading the first paragraph under “Casualties” and then his second, inserted paragraph can only wonder, “Huh?” In fact, his rendering of what the Army report says about No Gun Ri dead is selective and incomplete; his cited page B-3 actually says, ``The U.S. veterans' estimates range from several to two hundred.’’ But the first paragraph under “Casualties” already notes that veterans testified to “dozens to 300 dead” (from the Korean investigators’ reading of the soldiers’ testimony; the Korean report is more trustworthy because it usually jibes with what ex-GIs and Korean witnesses told journalists independently; also, of course, the Korean Defense Ministry were not the alleged perpetrators investigating themselves, as the Army was).

In summary, tossing in gratuitous statements from the highly suspect Army report adds nothing but words that then require more words to knock down or clarify. In dealing with the U.S. Army's No Gun Ri Review, a 10-foot pole is required. Charles J. Hanley 17:16, 10 January 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley

Hundreds of books and thousands of news stories mention the U.S. Army report, so it is certainly notable and it's contents should be summarized in some detail. That the exact number of refugees killed at No Gun Ri is not known is a statement of the obvious, and to use this as the money quote makes the report sound trivial. Wikipedia articles are supposed to summarize the secondary sources, not uncover The Truth. The English-language reliable sources say next to nothing about the "victim review report." I find only catalog listings, so can't verify any of the numerous claims this article makes based on it. If you are interested in finding out what really happened, the fact that the site was later excavated, with nothing suggesting a massacre found, is as least as relevant as this obscure report. As for the material about the Naktong bridges and Muccio's letter, that seems to be less about No Gun Ri than about promoting other news stories you were involved in. Kauffner (talk) 21:59, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Your comments grow more outlandish and your chauvinistic biases ever more obvious. To suggest that the U.S. cover-up of the Muccio letter -- a high-level report of a policy to indiscriminately shoot refugees sent on the day the refugee carnage began at No Gun Ri -- does not belong in the No Gun Ri Massacre article is ludicrous, as is your denigration of the South Korean report, the highest-level, final accounting by the government of the nation where the killings took place. These are stark examples of why you have been asked repeatedly to cease and desist, for the good of Wikipedia and out of respect for the No Gun Ri survivors, Korean and American. There's been far too much nonsense spread already about No Gun Ri. Your uninformed interventions regarding the excavation, the Naktong bridges etc. have all been addressed above. It's time to leave it alone. Charles J. Hanley 16:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley

Not sure why aerial photographs are not acceptable. August 6 would have been a pretty early date to have removed all the bodies in a supposedly active combat zone. And archaeological findings should not be ignored either. Citizens were proceeding south through what they assumed was a "safe" zone. They were wrong. It was, or was about to become a combat zone. People were killed, perhaps from a distance. Locating all the disappeared people at "No Gun Ri" makes a great headline, but may not be accurate. All reports should be included IMO. Student7 (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Please look again. The photos and excavation are dealt with under "Aerial imagery, victims' remains" in the article. Also please see "Disposition of bodies" in Archive 2 of Talk. Charles J. Hanley 20:18, 14 January 2013 (UTC) Cjhanley