A half-century later, the Seoul government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has more than 200 such alleged wartime cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens' petitions recounting bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings and unsuspecting villages in 1950-51.

Concluding its first investigations, the 21/2-year-old commission is urging the government to seek U.S. compensation for victims.

"Of course the U.S. government should pay compensation. It's the U.S. military's fault," said survivor Cho Kook-won, 78, who says he lost four family members among hundreds of refugees suffocated, burned and shot to death in a U.S. Air Force napalm attack on their cave shelter south of Seoul in 1951.

Commission researchers have unearthed evidence of indiscriminate killings in a declassified U.S. archive, including a report by U.S. inspectors-general that American pilots couldn't distinguish their South Korean civilian allies from North Korean soldiers.

South Korean legislators have asked a U.S. Senate committee to join them in investigating another long-classified document, one saying American ground commanders, fearing enemy infiltrators, had adopted a policy of shooting approaching refugees.

The U.S. government has been largely silent on the commission's work. The U.S. Embassy here says it has not yet been approached by the Seoul government about compensation. Spokesman Aaron Tarver also told the AP that the embassy is not monitoring commission findings.

The commission's president, historian Ahn Byung-ook, said the U.S. Army helped defend South Korea in the 1950-53 war, but also "victimized" civilians. "We feel detailed investigation should be done by the U.S. government itself," he said.

The citizen petitions have accumulated since 1999, when the AP, after tracing Army veterans who were there, confirmed the 1950 refugee killings at No Gun Ri, where survivors estimate 400 died at American hands, mostly women and children.

In newly democratic South Korea, after decades of enforced silence under right-wing dictatorships, that report opened floodgates of memory about other wartime mass killings.

The National Assembly established the 15-member panel in December 2005 to investigate not only long-hidden Korean War incidents, including the southern regime's summary executions of thousands of suspected leftists, but also human-rights violations by the Seoul government during the authoritarian postwar period.

Findings are meant to "reconcile the past for the sake of national unity," says its legislative charter.

The panel cannot compel testimony, prosecute or award compensation.

Since the commission may shut down as early as 2010, the six investigators devoted to alleged cases of "civilian massacre committed by U.S. soldiers" are unlikely to examine all 215 cases fully.

News reports at the time hinted at such killings after North Korea invaded the south in June 1950. But the extent wasn't known.

Commission member Kim Dong-choon, in charge of investigating civilian mass killings, says there were large numbers of dead - 50 to 400 - in many cases.

As at No Gun Ri, some involved U.S. ground troops, such as the reported killing of 82 civilians huddled in a shrine outside the southern city of Masan in August 1950. But most were air attacks.

To read more about the work of South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, go to: http://go.philly.com/koreawar