Peace foundation offers statue to apologize for S. Korea’s war atrocities in Vietnam

• Artists cast statues to apologize for S. Korea’s war atrocities in Vietnam

A foundation from South Korea presented a statue to the Da Nang Museum in the central city on Tuesday to apologize for the atrocities South Korean troops committed here during the Vietnam War.

It is part of the Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation’s efforts to honor the Vietnamese victims killed by Korean mercenaries during the war.

The “Vietnam Pieta – the Last Lullaby” statue was created by Korean artists Kim Seo Kyung and Kim Eun Sung to comfort the souls of mothers and unnamed new-born babies killed in the massacre in Central Vietnam. The two artists are known for the “Statue of a Girl of Peace”, which symbolizes the young Korean women forced to work as Japanese military sex slaves during World War II.

The foundation also offered 19 photos from the “Sincerely Sorry Vietnam” exhibition in South Korea, 11 photos that captured the cruelties inflicted by South Korean troops in Vietnam and six paintings commemorating the victims.

Young members of the foundation created a card containing a message of peace to send with the statue.

The "Vietnam Pieta" statue. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong

"Vietnam Pieta" depicts a woman holding her baby. With her eyes closed as if asleep, the baby clenches her hands, which are tiny compared to her head.

The Korean-Vietnamese Peace Foundation was founded in South Korea in 2015 with 68 members from all walks of life.

Nearly 2,000 civilians in the central province of Quang Ngai were slaughtered by South Korean troops in 1966 alone, according to a report by Quang Ngai Newspaper in July 2012. In 1990, local people and the government built a memorial to commemorate the victims.

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times in May 2015, the South Korean government has never acknowledged that any civilian massacres took place at the hands of its troops.

South Korea deployed more than 300,000 troops to Vietnam from 1964 to 1973, second only to the U.S. military force.

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