The Korean survivors and relatives, whose claim for compensation was rejected last year by the South Korean Government, say that 300 were shot to death at the bridge and that 100 died in a preceding air attack.

One American veteran, Eugene Hesselman of Fort Mitchell, Ky., recalled his captain as saying: ''The hell with all those people. Let's get rid of all of them.''

Norman Tinkler of Glasco, Kan., a former machine gunner, said, ''We just annihilated them.''

A third veteran, Edward L. Daily of Clarksville, Tenn., who went on to earn a battlefield commission in Korea, said: ''On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming.

''The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group,'' he said. [''How many North Koreans were in there, I can't answer that,'' he said last night in an interview with The New York Times. ''But we ended up shooting into there until all the bodies we saw were lifeless.'']

Six veterans of the First Cavalry Division said they fired on the group of refugees at No Gun Ri, and six others said they witnessed the shootings. More said they knew or heard about it.