Bodo League massacre

Bodo League massacre
Summary execution of South Korean political prisoners by the South Korean military and police at Daejeon, South Korea
Location	Korea
Date	Summer of 1950
Target	Communists and suspected Communist sympathizers
Attack type	Massacre
Deaths	100,000-200,000
Perpetrators	South Korean anticommunists
Motive	Anti-communism; fear of North Korean collaborators

The Bodo League massacre (Hangul: 보도연맹 학살사건; Hanja: 保導聯盟虐殺事件) was a massacre and war crime against communists and suspected sympathizers (many of whom were civilians who had no connection with communism or communists) that occurred in the summer of 1950 during the Korean War. Estimates of the death toll vary. According to Prof. Kim Dong-Choon, Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at least 100,000 people were executed on suspicion of supporting communism; others estimate 200,000 deaths. The massacre was wrongly blamed on the communists. For four decades the South Korean government concealed this massacre. Survivors were forbidden by the government from revealing it, under suspicion of being communist sympathizers. Public revelation carried with it the threat of torture and death. During the 1990s, several corpses were excavated from mass graves, resulting in public awareness of the massacre.

In June 1949 the South Korean government accused independence activists of being members of the Bodo League.

The League had been created by Korean jurists who had collaborated with the Japanese. Non-communist sympathizers or political opponents of South Korean President Syngman Rhee were also forced into the Bodo League to fill enlistment quotas. Syngman Rhee had about 300,000 suspected communist sympathizers or his political opponents enrolled in an official "re-education" movement known as the Bodo League (or National Rehabilitation and Guidance League, National Guard Alliance, National Guidance Alliance National Bodo League, Bodo Yeonmaeng, Gukmin Bodo Ryeonmaeng, 국민보도연맹, 國民保導聯盟) on the pretext of protecting them from execution.

In 1950, just before the outbreak of the Korean War, the first president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, had about 20,000 alleged communists imprisoned.

Under the leadership of Kim Il-sung, the Korean People's Army attacked from the north on 25 June 1950, starting the Korean War. According to Kim Mansik, who was a military police superior officer, President Syngman Rhee ordered the execution of people related to either the Bodo League or the South Korean Workers Party on 27 June 1950. The first massacre was started one day later in Hoengseong, Gangwon-do on 28 June. Retreating South Korean forces and anti-communist groups executed the alleged communist prisoners, along with many of the Bodo League members. The executions were performed without any trials or sentencing. Kim Tae Sun, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, admitted to personally executing at least 12 "communists and suspected communists" after the outbreak of the war. When Seoul was recaptured in late September 1950, an estimated 30,000 South Koreans were summarily deemed collaborators with the North Koreans and shot by ROK forces. At least one US lieutenant colonel is known to have approved the executions, when he told a South Korean colonel that he could kill a large number of prisoners in Busan if the North Korean troops approached. A mass execution of 3,400 South Koreans did indeed take place near Busan that summer.