Rape, among other acts of wartime sexual violence, was frequently committed against female Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War. It was an aspect of the various human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States and South Korea, as well as by local Vietnamese combatants. According to American political scientist Elisabeth Jean Wood, the sexual violation of women by American military personnel was tolerated by their commanders. [3] [4] [5] : 65 American professor Gina Marie Weaver stated that not only were documented crimes against Vietnamese women by American soldiers ignored during the international legal discourse that occurred immediately after the conflict, but modern feminists and other anti-war rape campaigners, as well as historians, have continued to dismiss them. [6]
Some American veterans[ vague ] believe that sexual violence against Vietnamese women was motivated by "racism, sexism, or a combination of both" as a result of the strong social reform movements that were roiling the United States in the early 1970s. [5] According to one source,[ which? ] only 25 cases of rape from the United States Army and 16 cases of rape from the United States Marine Corps resulted in court-martial convictions involving Vietnamese victims between 1965 and 1973.[ citation needed ]
The issue of pregnancies resulting from rapes has had a significant impact on South Korea–Vietnam relations: these people, conceived through the rape of Vietnamese women by South Korean soldiers, continue to be subjected to discriminatory treatment by the Vietnamese government, while their presence in South Korea is unacknowledged by the South Korean government. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] In Vietnam, the term "Lai Đại Hàn" ( [laːiɗâˀihâːn] ) refers to a person beget by a Vietnamese mother and a South Korean father during the Vietnam War. The extent of these relationships' sexual consent is still debated; [12] [13] one Japanese study determined that over half of Lai Đại Hàn births had resulted from rape. [14]
During the Vietnam War, U.S. soldiers stationed in South Vietnam engaged in various sexual interactions, including consensual sex, prostitution, and rape. Mixing consenting sexual activity and rape may also be viewed as the outcome of indifference toward a nation at war. [15] : 181 According to Gregory A. Daddis, certain U.S. Army drill instructors assured recruits that they could rape Vietnamese women, which Daddis partially attributed to "Orientalist" beliefs that portrayed Asian women as "creatures of a male power fantasy." [15] : 180 Men's adventure magazines contributed to a culture that accepted sexual aggressiveness and violence towards Vietnamese women. [15] : 176
According to Gina Marie Weaver, the primary sources are rich in accounts of violence, including testimony provided in open hearings held during the war, court cases, military investigations, oral reports gathered for publishing both during and long after the war, and literary works, such as poems, novels, and memoirs. [5] : 6 Sexual mistreatment of the Vietnamese women during the Vietnam war has been witnessed by numerous U.S. veterans and other eyewitnesses. [5] : 47
According to Kerry Crawford, rape of Vietnamese women was a "normal operating procedure", [16] : 13 [15] : 194 and brothels were built inside military installations to maintain morale and discipline. [16] : 13 Approximately 100 recruits who were interviewed in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, had little to say about the war's greater difficulties since "the men’s personal concerns were mostly sexual." [15] : 175 Many U.S. servicemen sought local women in hopes of filling the void created by the frustrating war in Vietnam. According to Daddis, military leaders were likely aware of this, as one deployed officer noted that his in-processing briefings covered topics ranging "from the current Viet Cong infrastructure to the common venereal diseases in Vietnam." [15] : 175 A U.S. soldier in Vietnam reportedly said: [17] [18]
They are in all-male environment...There are women available. Those women are of another culture, another colour, another society...You've got an M-16. What do you need to pay a lady for? You go down to the village and you take what you want.
During the Winter Soldier Investigation, sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), some of the testimonies of Vietnam veterans included the rape and murder of Vietnamese women, [19] with some being tortured and sexually mutilated. [17] According to Mark Baker, who interviewed Vietnam veterans for his book, one became a "double veteran" by "having sex with a woman and then killing her." [17] [18] [20] One marine recalled an incident where a Vietnamese girl was gang-raped by members of his unit, with the final perpetrator shooting the victim in the head. In a similar incident, a soldier observed that the female victim "freely submitted" to rape to avoid death. [15] : 181 At a hospital in Da Nang, a nurse was killed after being raped by seven marines. [21]
In his controversial study The Perfect War: The War We Couldn't Lose and How We did, James William Gibson contends that raping women was a means by which some soldiers could demonstrate their power over Vietnamese women. According to Gibson, U.S. soldiers would rape Vietnamese girls, then kill them in horrific ways, including allegedly making their "stomachs explode" by sticking "hand flares" inside their vaginas. [22] : 183
According to one source, only 25 cases of rape committed by army soldiers and 16 by marines resulted in court-martial convictions involving Vietnamese victims from 1965 to 1973. Daddis argues that the low number of complaints and convictions reported by the UCMJ, the only service that keeps track of its war crimes cases, demonstrates the faults in the UCMJ system. [15] : 195
The incident on Hill 192 refers to the kidnapping, gang rape, and murder of Phan Thi Mao, a young Vietnamese woman [23] : 1 by an American squad during the Vietnam War [23] : 1 on 19 November 1966. [23] : 2 The woman was raped by the soldiers, after which she was stabbed and shot in the head. [24] All soldiers involved faced court sentences and were also dishonorably discharged from the Army. [23] : 3 The Mỹ Lai massacre is another infamous incident where [25] almost 20 Vietnamese women and girls, some as young as 13, were raped by the U.S. troops. [15] : 202
In August 1967, a 13-year-old Vietnamese girl was raped by an American MI interrogator of the 196th Infantry Brigade [26] while interrogating her as a suspected VC member. A general court martial tried the soldier, and he was given a dishonorable discharge and 20 years in prison with hard labor. However, his sentence was reduced to one year upon appeal. In total, he was incarcerated for only seven months and 16 days. [15] : 196
According to Daddis, the UCMJ system discriminated against Vietnamese rights in favor of American rights. The court system did not protect local women or listen to their stories. For example, military officials detained a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman who later alleged that 10 American soldiers raped her while she was jailed. The woman could only identify two of her rapists when questioned by investigators. Later, she stated that "she was not sure," and the case was swiftly dismissed due to a lack of sufficient evidence to support her assertions. [15] : 195
Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers served while fighting in the Vietnam War, with each typically serving a one-year tour of duty. [27] Maximum troop levels peaked at 50,000 in 1968, with all being withdrawn by 1973. [28] Rapes of Vietnamese women by South Korean military personnel occurred throughout the conflict, some of which resulted in forced pregnancies. According to Kim Nak-yeong, who was a staff sergeant at Bình Khê in Bình Định Province, South Vietnam, from May 1971 to June 1972, "Some of the units didn't cause any problems because they were strictly instructed not to harm civilians. However, I heard a lot of talk about brutal sexual assaults taking place throughout the operation zones, and my understanding is that there's a definite possibility it was true." The same article from The Hankyoreh in April 2015 also reported quotes from the interviews of ten elderly Vietnamese women who said they were victims of sexual assaults perpetrated by the South Korean military during the Vietnam War in Bình Định Province. One stated, "Four people took turns doing it to me one at a time." Another was quoted as saying, "They'd put one person at a time in the trench, keep me there all day and night and just rape me again and again". [28]
In October 2016, it was reported that the head of the Vietnam Veterans' Association of Korea was representing 831 plaintiffs in a defamation lawsuit against Ku Su-jeong for her 2014 interview in the Japanese newspaper Shūkan Bunshun and 2016 interview in The Hankyoreh, as well as her statements in a video.[ further explanation needed ] They said that Ku's statements of about the actions of the South Korean military during the Vietnam War were all "falsehoods and forgeries", that the victims were just "Viet Cong disguised as civilians", and that "no sexual violence occurred". [29]
In Vietnamese, "Lai Dai Han" is a derogatory epithet that means "mixed blood." The Vietnamese-Korean children contend their lives have been wrecked by shame in a culture that has not recognized them or their mothers' sexual abuse. Many are illiterate as a result of being denied an education, and they have limited access to healthcare and social services. [30] The exact number of Lai Dai Han is unknown. According to Busan Ilbo, there are at least 5,000 and as many as 30,000. [31] According to Maeil Business, however, there are 1,000 at least. [32] A 1998 paper which was cited in a 2015 paper said that the South Korean government put the number of Lai Dai Han at 1,500. [33] The Lai Dai Han community continues to face social exclusion due to their mixed ethnicity. [7] [8] It has been reported that many cannot read or write, with most not having access to basic health or education services. [9] In addition to living with "stigma, shame and prejudice", the community also faces acute poverty as of 2020. [10] A 27 March 2020, article in BBC News details some testimonies of the women of the Lai Dai Han community, who reported that their children "have faced a lifetime of abuse and discrimination, mocked for being Lai Dai Han". [11] One rape victim's father was beaten to death by Vietnamese government personnel shortly after the war ended. Both the Korean and Vietnamese governments have sidelined or ignored the issue, and requests by the BBC to make a documentary were turned down by the Vietnamese government. [11]
South Korea has never recognized allegations of sexual assault by its forces against Vietnamese women and girls (some as young as 12 years old) or the children conceived as a result. Justice for Lai Dai Han (JLDH) is a campaign group that is seeking recognition from South Korea for both the children born as a consequence of rape by Korean troops and their mothers. According to JLDH, tens of thousands of children were born as a consequence of rape by Korean troops, with roughly 800 mothers still living today. [30] Vietnamese women raped by South Korean personnel during the war continue to seek reparations. [34] On 19 October 2015, a petition with close to 29,000 signatures asked South Korean president Park Geun-hye for a formal apology from the South Korean government for the systematic rape and sexual assault perpetrated by South Korean soldiers during the war. [35] [36] According to Nadia Murad, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, the Lai Dai Han have long been marginalized in Vietnamese society. She went on by saying that as we collaborate to seek justice, the victims and their families deserve to be acknowledged. [30] Also in 2019, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to launch a comprehensive inquiry into sexual abuse during the Vietnam War, and has urged South Korea "to confront a murky period in its past." [30]
According to Gina Marie Weaver in her book Ideologies of Forgetting Rape in the Vietnam War, the role of rape in the Vietnam War has been omitted from the narratives [5] : 1 and the impact of war on women has altered considerably because war in the twentieth and twenty-first century has evolved into total war. [5] Weaver argues that the United States' replacing of the national conversation about the war onto "the medical and psychological issues of the Vietnam veteran" has suppressed the traumas experienced by "the truest victims of the Vietnam war—Vietnamese civilians, namely, women." Weaver argues that by acknowledging the atrocities committed by the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, the American's ability to view the veteran as a victim would be "mitigated" or possibly "destroyed". [5] : 11 Weaver stated that not only were documented crimes against Vietnamese women by United States military personnel ignored in the international legal discourse immediately after the war, but modern feminists and other anti-war rape campaigners, as well as historians, have continued to dismiss them. [5] : 5
According to Daddis, gang rapes were common throughout the war, allegedly because United States military personnel implemented a "systematic, purposeful command policy of violence" against the Vietnamese people. [15] : 194 Numerous personnel viewed both consensual sex and forced rape as time-honored results of the battle, either as "just rewards" or as "collateral damage." [15] : 177
According to Gina Marie Weaver, the primary sources are rich in accounts of violence, including testimony provided in open hearings held during the war, court cases, military investigations, oral reports gathered for publishing both during and long after the war, and literary works, such as poems, novels, and memoirs. [5] : 6 Additionally, Weaver argues that American discourse around the Vietnam War has largely encompassed only American experiences and the cost to America. There are primary sources from Vietnamese women on their sexual abuse, but due to the nature of the abuse, it is harder to talk about due to its "deeply private nature". [37] Weaver concludes that "true healing" occurs when the public listens to the victims of the war, and become involved in the recovery of Vietnam. [38]
According to Mark Heberle, despite the fact that the violence of war is typically depicted in its entirety, with violent battles and atrocities done by all sides, rape and sexual violence are frequently avoided and in some cases purposefully omitted from the majority of films. [39] : 52 Although veterans have long given testimony to such crimes, Hollywood war productions have altered or omitted veteran accounts in such a way as to deny their existence or imply that they were the work of deviants instead of typical soldiers. [6] In South Korea, analyses of these works which problematize contentious Vietnam War recollections show "aesthetic, ethical, and political" restrictions and opportunities for depicting memories of sexual abuse and (un)conditional apologies during wartime in visual art. [40]
Incident on Hill 192 is covered in a book by Daniel Lang. [23] : 4 The 1970 film o.k. by Michael Verhoeven was based on the same incident. The 1989 film Casualties of War was based on Lang's book and directed by Brian De Palma. [23] : 4 [41] De Palma's film contains scenes that do not appear in Lang's account of the incident. These sequences include a scene in which the men witness the death of their favorite friend at the hands of VC forces and a scene in which it is implied that these soldiers would not have planned to kidnap and rape a Vietnamese girl if they were permitted to vent their "anger, aggression, and sexual needs on prostitutes". [39] : 50 Furthermore, Peter Conolly-Smith argues that through using a bystander as the viewer of the sexual violence, the film absolves itself of responsibility, allowing a graphic reenactment of the act. This leads to the conclusion that sexual violence in combat films prospers through a "confirmation (however critically it may be articulated) of American hegemony" that is achieved through the domination and subjugation of people, and particularly women, of colour. [42]
In her memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places , Le Ly Hayslip wrote about her experience of being raped by Viet Cong soldiers when she was fourteen years old. [43] The 1993 Oliver Stone film Heaven & Earth was based on her memoir. The books Between Heaven and Earth by Le Ly Hayslip and Then the Americans Came by Martha Hess are said by Elisabeth Wood to provide a voice to women who were sexually abused during the war. [5] : 7
In the book Against Our Will by Brownmiller, her chapter on war offers a thirty-page investigation of the sexual exploitation of women in Vietnam, citing information that has come to light since 1975. [5] : 6
The My Lai massacre was a war crime committed by the United States Army on 16 March 1968, involving the mass murder of unarmed civilians in Sơn Mỹ village, Quảng Ngãi province, South Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. At least 347 and up to 504 civilians, almost all women, children, and elderly men, were murdered by U.S. soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade and B Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Division. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated, and some soldiers mutilated and raped children as young as 12. The incident was the largest massacre of civilians by U.S. forces in the 20th century.
The First Indochina War was fought between France and Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 21 July 1954. Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.
An Amerasian may refer to a person born in East or Southeast Asia to an East Asian or Southeast Asian mother and a U.S. military father. Other terms used include War babies or G.I. babies.
Estimates of casualties of the Vietnam War vary widely. Estimates can include both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
Ronald L. Haeberle is a former United States Army combat photographer best known for the photographs he took of the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968. The photographs were definitive evidence of a massacre, making it impossible for the U.S. Army or government to ignore or cover up. On November 21, 1969, the day after the photographs were first published in Haeberle's hometown newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense, discussed them with Henry Kissinger who was at the time National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon. Laird was recorded as saying that while he would like "to sweep it under the rug," the photographs prevented it.
The Three Alls policy (Japanese: 三光作戦, Hepburn: Sankō Sakusen, was a Japanese scorched earth policy adopted in China during World War II, the three "alls" being "kill all, burn all, loot all". This policy was designed as retaliation against the Chinese for the Communist-led Hundred Regiments Offensive in December 1940.
Koreans in Vietnam form an unrecognized minority group in Vietnam.
Prostitution in Vietnam is illegal and considered a serious crime. Nonetheless, Vietnam's Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) has estimated that there were 71,936 prostitutes in the country in 2013. Other estimates puts the number at up to 200,000.
Wartime sexual violence is rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during an armed conflict, war, or military occupation often as spoils of war, but sometimes, particularly in ethnic conflict, the phenomenon has broader sociological motives. Wartime sexual violence may also include gang rape and rape with objects. It is distinguished from sexual harassment, sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service.
Lai Đại Hàn is a term used in the Vietnamese language to refer to a person who was born to a Vietnamese mother and a South Korean father during the Vietnam War. The births of these people occurred because of South Korean involvement in the Vietnam War; approximately 350,000 South Korean soldiers were deployed to South Vietnam between 1964 and 1973. It is a politically significant term with regard to South Korea–Vietnam relations and carries a heavy social stigma due to the fact that wartime sexual violence was endemic in Vietnam when these people were conceived. An unknown number of Lai Đại Hàn births were the result of pregnancies from rape. The community has faced unequal and discriminatory treatment from the Vietnamese government, while the South Korean government has refused to acknowledge and address the rape of Vietnamese women during the conflict.
The United States Armed Forces and its members have violated the law of war after the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the signing of the Geneva Conventions. The United States prosecutes offenders through the War Crimes Act of 1996 as well as through articles in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The United States signed the 1999 Rome Statute but it never ratified the treaty, taking the position that the International Criminal Court (ICC) lacks fundamental checks and balances. The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002 further limited US involvement with the ICC. The ICC reserves the right of states to prosecute war crimes, and the ICC can only proceed with prosecution of crimes when states do not have willingness or effective and reliable processes to investigate for themselves. The United States says that it has investigated many of the accusations alleged by the ICC prosecutors as having occurred in Afghanistan, and thus does not accept ICC jurisdiction over its nationals.
Allied and Japanese troops committed a number of rapes during the Battle of Okinawa during the last months of the Pacific War and the subsequent Allied occupation of Japan. The Allies occupied Japan until 1952 following the end of World War II and Okinawa Prefecture remained under US governance for two decades after.
As Allied troops entered and occupied German territory during the later stages of World War II, mass rapes of women took place both in connection with combat operations and during the subsequent occupation of Germany by soldiers from all advancing Allied armies, although a majority of scholars agree that the records show that a majority of the rapes were committed by Soviet occupation troops. The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence.
South Korea and Vietnam established formal diplomatic relations on 22 December 1992, though the two countries had already had various historical contacts long before that. According to Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải, "The Republic of Korea is a very important partner of Vietnam and a good model for Vietnam to expand cooperation and exchange experiences during its development process." On 2022, South Korea and Vietnam upgraded their relationship in to "comprehensive strategic partnership", became the fourth country after China, Russia and India to do so.
In mid-1940, Nazi Germany rapidly defeated the French Third Republic, and the colonial administration of French Indochina passed to the French State. Many concessions were granted to the Empire of Japan, such as the use of ports, airfields, and railroads. Japanese troops first entered parts of Indochina in September 1940, and by July 1941 Japan had extended its control over the whole of French Indochina. The United States, concerned by Japanese expansion, started putting embargoes on exports of steel and oil to Japan from July 1940. The desire to escape these embargoes and to become self-sufficient in resources ultimately contributed to Japan's decision to attack on December 7, 1941, the British Empire and simultaneously the United States. This led to the United States declaring war against Japan on December 8, 1941. The United States then joined the side of the British Empire, at war with Germany since 1939, and its existing allies in the fight against the Axis powers.
The South Korean government, under the regime of Park Chung Hee, took an active role in the Vietnam War. South Korea's decision to join resulted from various underlying causes, including the development of US-South Korea relations, political exigencies, and the promise of economic aid from the United States. Under the wartime alliance, the South Korean economy flourished, receiving tens of billions of dollars in grants, loans, subsidies, technology transfers, and preferential economic treatment. From September 1964 to March 1973, South Korea sent some 350,000 troops to South Vietnam. The South Korean Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force all participated as an ally of the United States. The number of troops from South Korea was much greater than those from Australia and New Zealand, and second only to the U.S. military force for foreign troops located in South Vietnam. The military commander was Lieutenant general Chae Myung-shin of the South Korean army. Participation of Korean forces in the war included both non-combatant and combatant roles.
Kim Bok-dong was a human rights activist that campaigned against sexual slavery and war rape. She was a young woman who was put into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army; a military that recruited girls between the ages of 10 and 18 years of age from colonized and occupied countries from the 1930s until the end of World War II. From age 14, she was put into comfort stations for eight years across different countries in Asia. Her experiences led her to become an activist; advocating the end of war-time sexual violence, anti-imperialism, workers' rights, and inter-Korean reconciliation. Along with the other "comfort women", she made the three-fold demand from the Japanese government: a formal state-level apology, reparations, and correction of Japanese history. In addition, Kim Bok-dong herself also supported other "comfort women" to step forward, and was a spokesperson in the "comfort women" movement. Kim Bok-dong died in Seoul, South Korea, in a hospital on January 28, 2019.
The People's Tribunal on War Crimes by South Korean Troops during the Vietnam War was a citizen's tribunal organised by South Korean social organizations including Minbyun, Korea-Vietnam Peace Foundation, The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan during 21–22 April 2018.
Women in the Vietnam War were active in a large variety of roles, making significant impacts on the War and with the War having significant impacts on them.
Sex trafficking in Vietnam is human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and slavery that occurs in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam is a source and, to a lesser extent, destination country for sexually trafficked persons.
Haeberle: they started stripping her, taking her top off, and the mother, if that was her mother, was trying to protect her. The GI's were punching her around and one of them kicked her in the ass.
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