Word: warring
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...From 1950 to 1953, communist forces from North Korea and the military-run South fought one of the bloodiest civil wars of the 20th century, leaving more than 2 million civilians dead. Troops from both sides carried out mass executions. But after the Korean War ended, a succession of military dictators through the 1980s in the South suppressed the accounts; those who suggested South Korean forces might have executed innocents - and even family members who exhumed their relatives for proper burials - were harassed or arrested for being communist sympathizers...
...like toys and hairpins were found, indicating the people were civilians not involved in the fighting. "As we can see, the military reports were manipulated," says Park Sun Ju, chief of the excavating team. The group has also investigated American carpet bombings used to rout communist forces during the war, a practice it claims killed thousands of civilians. (See pictures of Seoul, the world's most connected city...
...feeling that airing the army's war crimes is against the nation's best interest has not disappeared. Critics accuse the commission itself of manipulating the facts. In May, the group reopened one investigation after a victims' association filed a complaint about a report. The victims' families claimed that North Korean soldiers participated in executing 273 civilians in one county on the west coast - contrary to the commission's statements that said the perpetrators were exclusively members of the South Korean army. Some say questionable proclamations like these reflect a political bias. "Many of the commissioners are ... people who have...
...Truth commissions do not charge people with crimes; they only reveal facts based on excavations and testimonies that in theory allow the victims to move on. But the South Korean project poses a unique problem. Formed a half-century after the war, many victims and perpetrators have already died, complicating the processes both of fact-finding and bringing justice. Critics have questioned the value of delving so deeply into a violent era, after South Korea has already moved on to become one of the world's wealthiest democracies. Still, the long-hidden information about tactics used in a brutal war...
...authorities are now desperately trying to prevent a revenge-driven clan war - or "rido" as it is called in Mindanao - between the two families. A day after the killings, Arroyo put two southern provinces and a city under a state of emergency and deployed more troops to the area. All permits to carry firearms there have been canceled. "Retaliatory violence can be expected although a small chink of hope remains that Mangudadatu may rise above rido and avert further bloodshed," says Ian Bryson, a regional analyst at Singapore-based Control Risks...