HANOI: Vietnam has asked Netflix to stop showing the South Korean drama series Little Women in the Southeast Asian country, alleging the series distorted events of the Vietnam War, state media said Wednesday (Oct 5).
In episode eight of the 12-part drama, which is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott, a war veteran from South Korea is seen bragging about the “kill-to-death ratio” between troops from his country and the Viet Cong.
More than 320,000 South Koreans were sent to Vietnam between 1964 and 1973 to fight alongside US soldiers.
They have long faced allegations that they committed mass killings of Vietnamese civilians.
The war veteran in the series, a Korean, tells one of the main characters in the show that “in our best battles, the kill-to-death ratio for Korean troops was 20:1. That’s 20 Viet Cong killed for one Korean soldier dead”.
He then goes on to say the ratio was even higher in South Korea’s favour among the country’s elite soldiers.
It is not known how many North Vietnamese soldiers were killed by South Korean troops during the war.