On a cold February morning in 1951, Kim Woon-seop, a skinny 9-year-old, crawled down a ridge here that was flooded with blood.
Climbing over and through piles of dead bodies, trying to believe this was all a horrible dream, young Woon-seop sensed his life would never be the same as it was a few hours before. Soldiers had just slaughtered his family and people from his village, leaving the ridge bright red and certain no one was left breathing.
There was a tomb-like silence and the stench of gore coming from those who had once comprised Cheongyeon village in Geochang County, South Gyeongsang province.
What had hit little Woon-seop hardest that day was not the ear-splitting sound of the endless hail of machine gun fire. It was the uniforms of the people firing those machine guns ?khaki-green uniforms, the kind worn by the South Korean Army.
At first, he couldn't believe it, telling himself his eyes must be playing tricks. But what he saw was real. The soldiers were the 3d battalion from the 9th regiment of the 11th division of the South Korean Army, led by Major Han Dong-seok, a hard-nosed officer in his mid-20s.
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