Saigon officials see only two alternatives: "One would be to leave the entire Vietnamese economy. including the payment of staggering sums to veterans. in the lap of the United States Treasury. just to keep the country from blowing up. "The other would be to continue maintaining the Vietnamese Army at somewhere near its present size. also at American expense. if only to keep mobs of veterans off the streets."" Mercenary forces U.S. aid has included paying Vietnamese to fight. sending our own troops to fight. and sending and paying for Thai and Korean troops to fight. Most of the Thais have left Vietnam. but about 40.000 Korean troops remaina substantial force. Their reputation for treating all Vietnamese as the enemy was strengthened recently by the public airing of a study by the RAND Corporation for the Defense Department. kept secret since 1966."7 Following is an account of how the Korean troops operated. as told by a Vietnamese refugee to a RAND interviewer: "The Korean troops walked into my hamlet at noon. The hamlet was emptied of people then. Seeing fire rising from the communication trenches. we knew that the soldiers were burning our paddy (rice) ....
Identified stereotypes
Korean troops treat all Vietnamese as the enemy.