하늘이 무너져도 솟아날 구멍이 있다

In the long and violent history of war, there are days when everything breaks. June 28, 1950, was one of those days. Just four days into the Korean War, the world seemed to come unglued on the Korean Peninsula. Chaos did not just reign, it roared. Orders were ignored or misunderstood, cities fell faster than anyone expected, and in the scramble to survive, soldiers and civilians alike were caught in a hurricane of confusion, brutality, and panic. The events of that single day tell a story not just of battle, but of collapse, betrayal, and the shattering of human dignity under the boots of war.

Let us start with the bridge. The Hangang Bridge stretched across the Han River just south of Seoul. It was the last escape route for South Korean troops and refugees trying to flee the North Korean advance. The order came to blow the bridge to slow the invaders and buy a little more time. But the order came too early. The charges were detonated at 2:30 in the morning, and the result was catastrophic. Trucks full of South Korean soldiers were still trying to cross when the bridge exploded. The blast killed hundreds. Three American journalists, Burton Crane, Frank Gibney, and Keyes Beech, were caught in the explosion just twenty-five yards away. Their jeep was thrown back, their faces torn by shattered glass. The soldiers in the truck in front of them were all killed instantly.

There had been no warning to the public. No word to the police or soldiers still on the bridge. The people trying to cross, many of them wounded or fleeing with children, had no idea they were walking into death. Some were blown apart. Others drowned in the river below. The South Korean Fifth Division was stranded on the wrong side, left to face the advancing enemy alone. The engineer who carried out the demolition, Colonel Choi Chang-sik, was executed later that year. A court eventually cleared his name, ruling that he had only followed orders. The damage, of course, was already done.

While the bridge was collapsing, horror was unfolding in the heart of Seoul. At Seoul National University Hospital, wounded soldiers, civilians, doctors, and nurses were lying helpless. The city was falling. At around nine in the morning, about fifty North Korean soldiers entered the hospital. Their orders were not to secure it, but to empty it. And by empty, they meant exterminate. The reasoning was cold and brutal. They needed beds for their own wounded. What followed was one of the most grotesque war crimes of the entire conflict.

The soldiers swept through the hospital floor by floor, shooting indiscriminately. No one was spared. Not the patients. Not the nurses. Not even those already dying. Witnesses said they were dragged from beds and executed on the spot. Others were taken outside and killed behind the building. Around one hundred eighty were marched to a hill and gunned down together. Some of the victims reportedly begged to be shot quickly. One soldier replied, “Sure, we will do just that,” and then they opened fire.

The bodies were left where they fell. Some were dumped in morgues, others buried along the river or thrown in garbage pits. It took seventy-five years for the South Korean government to officially recognize the massacre. It was labeled a war crime in 2025 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Until then, it had largely been ignored, pushed aside, lost in the noise of other stories and other wars.

But perhaps the darkest part of that day did not come at the hands of the North Koreans. It came from the South Korean government itself. As the North advanced, President Syngman Rhee gave a quiet but brutal order. Political prisoners were to be executed. No trial. No review. No delay. The victims were members of the Bodo League, a government-run “re-education” program that had become a blacklist. Many had never committed any crime. Some had simply held opposing political views. Others were swept up to fill quotas.

On June 28, the executions began. In towns like Hoengseong, prisoners were lined up and shot. Others were drowned or buried alive. American officers saw it happening. They photographed it. Ambassador John Muccio tried to intervene. General MacArthur called it an internal matter. The photos were locked away for decades. The bodies were not. Thousands of South Korean citizens were slaughtered, some tied together and dumped into the sea. One admiral later admitted he had two hundred executed and thrown overboard, saying trials were impossible during a war.

This was not a day of glory. It was not a day of courage under fire or heroism in the trenches. It was a day of confusion, betrayal, and blind violence. Three events, all separate, all devastating, all happening within hours of each other. The bridge was blown too early, killing hundreds of friendly forces. The hospital was turned into a slaughterhouse by invading troops. And the South Korean government, in a panic, began killing its own citizens out of fear and ideology.

하늘이 무너져도 솟아날 구멍이 있다

– Traditional Korean Proverb

There is a Korean saying that goes like this – Even if the sky falls, there is a hole to escape through. The chaos and destruction of June 28, 1950 were just the beginning or the conflict, and while there was still room for the world to escape, for far too many people, it marked the end of their lives.

And yet, for most of the last seventy-five years, few have remembered it. The Korean War became the Forgotten War. That is the phrase they use, as if it were some kind of unfortunate oversight. But forgetting is not harmless. Forgetting hides the mistakes. Forgetting erases the victims. Forgetting ensures that these things can happen again, because no one remembers what it looked like when they happened the first time.

June 28, 1950, is not just a chapter in a dusty history book. It is a lesson in what happens when panic takes the wheel. It is what happens when governments treat their own people as expendable. It is what happens when justice is postponed until every last witness is gone and every grave is grown over.

We remember days like this not to reopen old wounds, but to make sure they do not fester in silence. The people who died on that day had names. They had families. They deserved better. And the least we can do, all these years later, is tell the truth.