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CLICK HERE TO VIEW KOREAN VERSION (??Û©
On the evening of Tuesday, June 8, 1948, three Korean fishermen were rescued from a damaged fifteen-ton wooden boat in the East Sea/Sea of Japan. The men told of a horrifying ordeal they had endured earlier that day. They claimed that aircraft had bombed and strafed them while they and others in up to 80 other boats were harvesting seaweed at an island located off the East coast of Korea known as Dokdo. Of all the fishermen present at Dokdo that day, the three badly shaken men were among the few survivors. (i.)
In the weeks after the incident, the story had become national news in Korea, eliciting indignant responses from political leaders and the press in both the North and the South. (ii.) U.S. military representatives in the region issued statements to the Korean press, providing their own version of the incident, while admitting that U.S. Air Force bombers had indeed used Dokdo as a practice-bombing target that same day. Until now, the survivors´ testimonies, newspaper accounts and press releases issued by the U.S. military have provided the only explanations of how this bombing incident had taken place.
The purpose of this site is to provide a more detailed accounting of the June 8, 1948 bombing incident, and to provide possible explanations to still unanswered questions concerning this incident. NEXT
This research has been published in the following scholarly journals:
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society - Korea Branch, Vol. 78 (2003), pp. 21-33.
International Journal of Korean History, Vol. 4, (August 2003), pp.261-278.
This research is copyright ©2002 by Mark S. Lovmo
