Jeju Island is known within and outside Korea as a tourist destination. But it has a tragic past that many Koreans do not even know about. On Tuesday, the islanders will mark the 70th anniversary of a government crackdown that took the lives of many Jeju citizens.
The people of Jeju are still hurting over the April 3, 1948 Jeju uprising in which government forces massacred civilians. The civilians were protesting against elections scheduled for May 10, 1948 by the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea only for the south of the Korean Peninsula. The protesters were opposed to the establishment of a separate government in the South for fear of permanently dividing it from the North, which the Soviet Union was backing.
Amid the ideological division following the 1945 liberation from Japanese rule, the government crackdown lasted for seven years and seven months, and around 10 percent of the island's population of 300,000 people was killed. About 33 percent of the victims were children and the elderly.
Many islanders had family members that were affected, but so far the rest of the nation has been indifferent and know little about the tragedy. To some Koreans, the incident has been misunderstood as a communist rebellion.
Apart from the 1950-53 Korean War, the Jeju uprising remains one of the darkest periods in Korean history. Although the uprising happened 70 years ago, the government only recently started to take an interest in telling the truth and trying to heal the scars.
It was only in 2006 during the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration that the government apologized for its role in the civilian massacre. But efforts to remember the victims and restore their honor were disrupted during the conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye.
Efforts to heal the scars of tragic events in history should continue regardless of who is in power.
President Moon Jae-in should take the 70th anniversary of the Jeju uprising as an occasion to console the people of Jeju, many of whom still live with the trauma of the massacre. Finding the truth about the Jeju massacre was one of Moon's election pledges.
The government should sincerely apologize for its role in the brutal killings. Parties should also take more interest in truth-finding activities and reparations for the victims.