A court in Seoul has ruled that South Korean marines were guilty of committing a massacre of unarmed villagers during the Vietnam War and ordered the South Korean government to compensate one of the Vietnamese victims.
The ruling Tuesday was the first of its kind and expected to set a precedent in the country, where the government has long refused to address allegations of civilian massacres by South Korean troops in Vietnam.
Nguyen Thi Thanh, 62, sued the South Korean government in 2020, saying that she lost five relatives — and she and her brother were gravely wounded — when South Korean marines swept through the Phong Nhi and Phong Nhut villages in central Vietnam on Feb. 12, 1968, killing more than 70 villagers.
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