NEW YORK (IPS)�Five decades have passed since the start of the Korean War, but accounts by both survivors and veterans of alleged U.S. war crimes are only now gaining serious attention.

A July forum here on alleged U.S. war crimes in Korea, timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war, heard emotional testimony from eyewitnesses who described civilian refugees strafed by U.S. planes, and the horror of seeing relatives literally blown apart.

Hwang Gae Il, a 57-year-old South Korean laborer gave vent to the "sorrow of half a century" as he described the U.S. bombing raid that cost him an eye and took the lives of friends and neighbors.

He recounted how, on the morning of August 20, 1950, a U.S. reconnaissance jet had flown low over a field where 2,000 refugees, including Mr. Hwang and his family, had taken shelter among the reeds. About 10 minutes later, Mr. Hwang said, four bomber jets approached from the south and began firing machine guns and dropping bombs on the people huddled below.

"Dead bodies began to roll around," Mr. Hwang said, through an interpreter. "People with no arms, broken heads and bleeding thighs�the sight cannot be described in words."

Mr. Hwang�s father tucked him under his arm and the two attempted to flee. But a machine-gun bullet blew off his father�s chin and went through the 7-year-old boy�s right eye. Luckily, the two survived.

But Mr. Hwang said that his wounds�physical and psychological�have never healed. Tears flow constantly from his injured eye, he said, and his disfiguring scar has limited his opportunities in life.

An estimated 5 million people, more than half of them civilians, died in the Korean War, which pitted the United States and South Korea against North Korea and China.

In the weeks leading up to the anniversary on June 25, Korea was frequently referred to in the U.S. media as "the forgotten war." Yet, amid the wreath-laying and the talk of military honor and sacrifice, more and more reports were surfacing of massacres of Korean civilians at the hands of U.S. troops during the 1950-53 conflict.

Another witness, Kim Sun Joon, told a similar tale. His left arm was blown off by shrapnel on August 10, 1950. Mr. Kim, then 10-years-old, recalled how U.S. warplanes swooped down on a field where hundreds of villagers had gathered for safety, dressed in white to show that they were civilians.

"The jet planes were flying so low that some kids even made eye contact with the pilots," Mr. Kim said, through an interpreter. When the bombing and shooting started, everyone thought that it must be a mistake, the 60-year-old calligraphy teacher said.

The Reverend Kiyul Chung, one of the organizers of the forum, said the events related by the two South Koreans were they not isolated incidents, nor the result of error.

"The U.S. military took part in systematic killings of civilians," Rev. Chung said. "The ground commanders asked the U.S. Air Force commanders to consider all civilians as enemy forces."

Rev. Chung, a Methodist minister, is secretary general of the newly formed Korea Truth Commission on U.S. Military Massacres of Civilians, based in Washington, D.C. The commission is calling for an "independent people�s investigation of U.S. war crimes."

The U.S. Army Inspector General�s office is looking into allegations, reported by the Associated Press last September, that in July 1950 U.S. troops opened fire with machine guns on South Korean refugees trapped beneath a bridge near the hamlet of No Gun Ri. So far, no results have been released, although Pentagon officials admitted to the New York Times in May that U.S. troops had indeed fired on unarmed civilians and hundreds had been killed.

Activists involved with the Truth Commission dismiss the official inquiry, and want an independent commission set up by Congress.

Scott Scheffer, a member of the International Action Center, which co-sponsored the forum, said that unlike the My Lai massacre, which took place during the Vietnam war, killings of civilians in Korea were never revealed to the U.S. public.

Truth Commission members also pointed out that South Korean survivors of alleged massacres have struggled for 50 years to obtain an apology and compensation from the U.S. government. But the allegations were suppressed by U.S.-backed military regimes and dismissed by the Pentagon, they contend. In the wake of the No Gun Ri allegations, the Korea Truth Commission has tallied 60 reports of incidents in which U.S. forces allegedly killed civilians indiscriminately. Thirty-eight of those incidents reportedly occurred in South Korea and the remainder in North Korea.

"Some experts estimate that 2 million North Korean and 1 million South Korean civilians were killed through indiscriminate bombing," one attorney said, citing published sources.

He also pointed to an Air Force document unearthed recently at the National Archives. The document, a memorandum written by an Air Force colonel, confirmed that the Air Force had complied with an Army request to "strafe all civilian refugee parties." The AP reported last December that, according to formerly secret Air Force documents, pilots were ordered to fire on "people in white" on suspicion that North Korean soldiers might be among them.