April 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of a popular uprising and its bloody suppression on the island of Jeju.
Historical timeline and information about the events by the Jeju 4·3 Peace Foundation.
On April 3, 1948, 350 individuals on Jeju attacked police stations as part of their opposition to the division of Korea and the formation of the US-backed southern regime. On this day, 12 of the 24 police stations on the island were attacked and 14 people were killed. The armed resistance announced: “Resist against Oppression!” The people’s resistance to the division of the peninsula and the establishment of the southern regime triggered a brutal suppression by government and right-wing paramilitary forces, which not only targeted communist guerillas, but imposed its deadly measures on virtually the entire citizenry of Jeju island.
In the Jeju massacre, one tenth of the island’s population (~30,000 people killed) were massacred and 95% of villages burned down, to punish and terrorize the entire population of the so-called “red island”, which had been largely governed by peoples’ committees, for opposing the division of Korea and the formation of the south Korean government under US-backed, mass-murdering dictator Syngman Rhee.
During the massacre, a decree was made that all land beyond 5 km from the coast was “hostile territory” and any individual entering the region “will be killed unconditionally.”
Under these operations, a curfew was imposed on the residents of the upland areas and if anyone broke it, he or she was executed without exception. From the middle of November 1948 to February 1949, for about four months, the anti-guerrilla expeditions burned down the upland villages and killed the residents collectively. During this period, the casualties were the highest and most of the upland villages were literally burnt to the ground.
Thousands of the island’s residents were arrested, and of those who survived their imprisonment, some remained imprisoned for decades, while others carried their arrest record with them and faced social ostracization and disadvantaged employment prospects, not having their charges dropped and acknowledged as baseless by the south Korean government until 2019.
People attempting to speak publicly about the incident faced secret arrests and beatings even decades after it occurred.
The Jeju massacre has been claimed to be the second largest massacre in South Korea’s modern history. Because the facts of the Jeju massacre were officially suppressed for several decades, only coming to light in January 2000 when a Special Act was decreed by the South Korean Government calling for an official investigation of the incident, an official death toll could not be established until that time. Additionally, discoveries of mass grave execution sites, such as the one uncovered in 2008 near Jeju Airport, illustrate the difficulty of calculating the massacre’s true toll.
Articles:
‘My mission is suppression’: Jeju blood on the hands of the US military government
“We can’t really expect an apology when US academics are unaware and politicians are even less aware of Jeju April 3,” said a professor at Jeju National University, who asked not to be identified. “Our first priority should be to raise awareness in the US about the relationship between the US and Jeju April 3,” they added.
For survivor, Jeju April 3 massacre is a living reality, not dead history
After witnessing her entire family be massacred at the age of 6, Yang’s life has felt suffocating. When she wakes up, the events of that day come to mind as if they had happened yesterday and her heart beats fast whenever she hears any news related to the uprising and massacre on TV.
People’s Republic of Korea: Jeju, 1945-1946
It is only in the last 20 years that the story has begun to be told of the Jeju experiment which showed that Korean people were capable of building local democracy in support of an independent country. But the USAMGIK had as its mission to prevent this goal. The Jeju people deserve to have this story told and deserve an apology and compensation from the US government for its ultimate responsibility for the punishment that Jeju suffered.
More information:
The Blowback podcast’s season 3 episode 4, “Red Island” is about these events on Jeju.
Many articles featured by Hankyoreh, from the 70th anniversary of 4.3