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This article was published 6/12/2008 (4315 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SEOUL, South Korea -- Investigators digging into the grim hidden history of mass political executions in South Korea have confirmed that dozens of children were among the more than 100,000 people killed by their own government during the Korean War.

The investigative Truth and Reconciliation Commission has thus far verified more than two dozen mass killings of leftists and supposed sympathizers.

The victims are among at least 100,000 people estimated to have been hastily shot and dumped into makeshift trenches, abandoned mines or the sea shortly before and after communist North Korea invaded the south in June 1950.

The killings, details of which were buried in classified U.S. files for a half-century, were intended to keep southern leftists from aiding the invaders at a time when the rightist, U.S.-allied government was in danger of being overrun by communist forces.

Family survivors last month met with the U.S. Embassy for the first time, saying afterward they demanded an apology for alleged "direct and indirect" American involvement in the killings.

Declassified records show U.S. officers were present at one killing field and that at least one U.S. officer sanctioned another mass political execution if prisoners otherwise would be freed by the North Koreans. Uncounted hundreds were subsequently killed, witnesses say.

With thousands of citizens' petitions in hand, the three-year-old truth commission has been taking testimony from witnesses and family survivors, poring over police and military files, both here and in the United States, and excavating mass grave sites.

Before suspending operations for the winter, crews had exhumed the remains of 965 victims from 10 mass graves, out of at least 168 probable sites across South Korea.

They only scratched the surface in some cases: At a cobalt mine in the far south, they penetrated just 10 metres into a vertical shaft, recovering 107 skeletons from among 3,500 bodies believed dumped there.

Some mass killings were carried out before the war; many came in the first weeks after the June 25, 1950, invasion, and others occurred later in 1950 when U.S. and South Korean forces recaptured Seoul and the southerners rounded up and shot alleged collaborators with northern forces.

The executioners at times cold-bloodedly killed families of suspected leftists, the commission has found.

In late 1950 and early 1951, in Namyangju, 25 kilometres northeast of Seoul, the commission estimates that police and a local militia slaughtered more than 460 people, including at least 23 children under the age of 10.

Survivor Kim Jong-chol, 71, said his father, a South Korean border guard, had been forced to work for the conquering northerners, and then was executed by the southerners as a collaborator. More than a dozen relatives were also killed, including Kim's grandparents and seven-year-old sister, he said.

"Young children or whatever were all killed en masse," Kim told The Associated Press. "What did the family members do wrong? Why did they kill the family members?"

The 15-member panel, whose unprecedented inquiry will stretch into 2010, has thus far verified that children were among the victims in at least six mass killings. In a seventh case, it found, southern leftists killed children of supposed South Korean rightists.

-- The Associated Press