By GI Korea on September 21st, 2009 at at 5:56 am

First Time Published Image of the Daejon (Taejon) Massacre

Via the ROK Drop Forums comes this image from the Korean War with the inscription on the back of, “South Koreans killed at Tae Jon by North Koreans”:

The son of the veteran who took this photograph is looking for any information to confirm the location of the picture. The way the Tae Jon is spelled on the photo leads me to believe that this was in fact taken at the modern day Daejon because the spelling of “Tae Jon” was common during the Korean War. The hills in the background do not immediately jump out at me though and maybe some ROK Drop readers living in Daejon can better identify them.

The biggest question to answer though is whether this execution was a North Korean execution as depicted on the back of the photo or ROK Army execution. Below is a number of photos from executions carried out around Daejon by the South Korean governmental authorities:

For more on these photographs I highly recommend reading:

• Rehashing Korean War Era Executions
• Rehashing Korean War Era Executions, Again
• Rehashing Koreean War Era Executions, Again and Again

Notice in these pictures none of the bodies executed by the ROK authorities wer lined in up in neat lines like the picture in question. Now here are pictures of executions in Daejon carried out by the North Koreans:

In all the pictures I have seen of executions carried out in Daejon none of them show bodies neatly organized like in the picture in question. Additionally what I find interesting about the picture is how big the trench is compared to other execution sites. It makes me wonder if this is actually some kind of irrigaton canal for example that the bodies were left in?