 In the two weeks following the first significant U.S. ground troop engagement on July 5 , the U.S. Army estimated that 380 @,@ 000 South Korean civilians fled south , passing through the retreating U.S. and South Korean lines . With gaps in their lines , U.S. forces were attacked from the rear , and reports spread that disguised North Korean soldiers were infiltrating refugee columns . Because of these concerns , orders were issued to fire on Korean civilians in front @-@ line areas , orders discovered decades later in declassified military archives . Among those issuing the orders was 1st Cavalry Division commander Maj. Gen. Hobart R. Gay , who deemed Koreans left in the war zone to be " enemy agents , " according to U.S. war correspondent <unk> King and U.S. diplomat Harold Joyce Noble . On the night of July 25 , that division 's 2nd Battalion , 7th Cavalry Regiment , hearing of an enemy breakthrough , fled rearward from its forward positions , to be reorganized the next morning , digging in near the central South Korean village of No Gun Ri . Later that day , on July 26 , 1950 , these troops saw hundreds of refugees approaching , many from the nearby villages of Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri . 
