Silencing Survivors’ Narratives: Why Are We Again Forgetting the No Gun Ri Story?

This essay examines how the U.S. media has remembered and forgotten again the incident in which U.S. troops killed South Korean civilians who were taking refuge on the trestles of the No Gun Ri bridge in an early stage of the Korean War. Through textual analysis and oral history interviews, the research identifies narratives from both front stage (the U.S. media) and back stage (survivors’ testimonies). The study concludes that through reaffirming the official account of the Korean War—America’s mission of saving Koreans from Communist aggression—the U.S. media largely silenced South Korean survivors’ counter-narratives. As a result, the No Gun Ri story became sanitized as just another anecdotal war story that asks to be forgotten.