A group of South Korean and Vietnamese lawyers have called on President Moon Jae-in’s administration to investigate and provide reparations for alleged atrocities committed by Korean soldiers in Vietnam , amid rising awareness of the country’s involvement in war crimes. The issue has not been strongly acknowledged by Seoul, even as research in the past two decades has linked Korean troops to at least 80 massacres in the Vietnam war, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians. “Finding the truth behind the civilian killings during the Vietnam war is necessary for human rights and peace,” said the lawyers in a statement, adding that the move would help strengthen future ties between both nations based on “the foundations of historical truth”. Explained: the legacy of war in Asia Former President Park Chung-hee sent about 320,000 soldiers to Vietnam to aid United States forces against the North Vietnamese communist insurgency between 1964 and 1973. There, South Korean troops allegedly slaughtered about 9,000 civilians in some 80 different attacks, according to one estimate by a researcher who interviewed survivors at over 50 massacre sites. In one notorious case, soldiers from the 2nd Marine Division of Korea were believed to have killed about 430 people in the village of Binh Hoa in December 1966. More than half the victims were women, of whom seven were pregnant. The dead also included 166 children. Civic groups in Vietnam and South Korea have endeavoured to uncover the truth about the alleged atrocities since 2000, but the government’s response has been insufficient, the lawyers said. Former President Kim Dae-jung expressed “regret” during a visit to Hanoi in 1998, but subsequent administrations have failed to issue a formal apology or compensate victims. The closest the current administration has come to an apology was in March last year, when President Moon Jae-in expressed “regret for the unfortunate history between the two countries” during a state visit to Hanoi. Earlier this month, 103 Vietnamese survivors submitted a petition to South Korea’s presidential Blue House demanding an official apology. Lawyers representing the civilians also filed requests for Seoul to release military and intelligence records about several attacks, including the February 1968 killing of some 79 people in Phing Nhi village. Seoul’s reluctance to take responsibility for its alleged war crimes has infuriated critics and conservative groups in neighbouring Japan, which has been mired in diplomatic tension with South Korea in recent months. South Korea has long demanded for Japan to apologise for forcing women to serve as military sex slaves, known as “comfort women”, during the second world war, and for making Koreans work as war labourers. Activist Ken Kato, director of Tokyo-based Human Rights in Asia, called Seoul’s position a “shocking hypocrisy” and an embarrassment for the Moon administration. Vietnamese veterans remember North Korean fighter pilots at memorial that recalls wartime alliance “To keep making those demands, but at the same time refusing to acknowledge that South Korean troops were involved in around 80 atrocities against Vietnamese citizens that led to over 8,000 deaths shows shocking hypocrisy,” Kato said. “Failing to speak out undermines his image of a leader who fights for human rights.” The head of a right-wing group condemned Moon for his failure to acknowledge the nation’s crimes against humanity. “Once again, he demands one thing from Japan and refuses to do the same when his countrymen are clearly in the wrong,” said Hiromichi Moteki, acting chairman of the Tokyo-based Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. “The government should release all the documents it has on these cases and apologise.” Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of international relations at Tokyo’s International Christian University, suggested South Korea should act quickly to deal with a controversy that has been overlooked, before the Japanese government and conservatives attempted to turn the issue in their favour. “There is a clear record of the behaviour of Imperial Japan in Korea and the rest of Asia, and few would deny that there were significant atrocities carried out by the Japanese military and some egregious acts against people at that time, including a lot of women,” he said. ‘Japanese war crime’ stickers and anti-Korea tirade cause another hit in Tokyo-Seoul ties “The actions of the Korean military in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s are far less well documented, but now they are emerging, they could easily be used to accuse Seoul of hypocrisy,” he said, pointing out that conservatives in Japan would be more than happy to exploit reports that Seoul effectively operated a system of comfort women for both its military and US forces in the Korean war. “Conservatives in Japan could very easily start pointing fingers at Korea and accuse Seoul of doing exactly what they’re condemning Japan for doing,” Nagy said. “And they would have a point, although clearly two wrongs don’t make a right. “Seoul needs to deal with this just as much as Japan needs to deal with its own past.”