Excavation resumes at Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine, stirring questions of memory and justice

The second horizontal tunnel of the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine at Pyeongsan-dong, North Gyeongsang Province, Sept. 2, 2024. A new track was laid in 2023 during site cleanup by the Hanbit Institute for Cultural Properties. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Sixteen years after excavations halted in December 2008, amid an undermining of the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) mandate, a new phase of work has resumed at the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine to search for the bodies of massacre victims killed by South Korean government forces.

This time, the focus is on the vertical shaft beneath the second horizontal tunnel in Pyeongsan-dong, with a backing of 300 million won from Gyeongsan City and North Gyeongsang Province. If large-scale burials are verified, stakeholders will push for a nationally led excavation. For now, the budget is limited and the work slow, due to safety concerns.

The project is overseen by the Hanbit Institute of Cultural Properties, which in 2023 cleared soil sacks left from previous digs. This year’s excavation marks a modest but meaningful step toward recovering and identifying remains and artifacts buried at one of Korea’s most significant massacre sites.

Between July and September 1950, as the Korean War escalated, state forces — including local police in Gyeongsan and Cheongdo, the Gyeongbuk Counter Intelligence Corps detachment in the same area and the 22nd Military Police Unit — rounded up members of the National Bodo League, a state-run program that registered suspected leftists for reeducation and the pretext of protection. Alongside them, individuals under surveillance and prisoners from Daegu Prison were taken to sites including the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine — an abandoned colonial-era mine — and summarily executed.

A 2009 TRC report estimated more than 1,800 victims from Gyeongsan, Cheongdo, Daegu and Yeongdong. Civil groups and bereaved families believe the actual number approaches 3,500.

Lee Chang-hui, director of the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine Bereaved Family Association, left, inspects the excavation site in the second horizontal tunnel, June 4. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Interest in the massacre reemerged in 2000 after decades of silence. That year, historian Lee Do-yeong published an article in the Hankook Ilbo based on declassified U.S. documents describing the mass execution of political prisoners from Daejeon Prison. The piece helped break a long-standing taboo surrounding post-liberation state violence.

One person moved by Lee’s article was Choi Seung-ho, now publisher of local paper Gyeongsan Shinmun. In 1993, while writing a travel column, Choi had visited the valley near the mine.

“They told me Daewon was written with the hanja for ‘great’ and ‘resentment,’” Choi recalled. “I asked, ‘What kind of resentment?’ They said many were unjustly killed during the Korean War, and that red blood flowed to the village for three days. They didn’t want to say more. When I asked to visit, they refused and just pointed with their fingers.”

Choi returned to the newspaper office disturbed by what he had heard and began to research. Later, inspired by Lee’s example, he found the courage to publish a front-page article. The story drew out three bereaved families. With support from the paper and the Gyeongsan Local History Research Association, they formed a local bereaved families association.

Choi was not the first to try to break the silence. Forty years earlier, following the April 19 Revolution in 1960, journalist Kang Chang-deok had visited the mine and published the first report of the massacre. Like Choi, he was met with reticence from local residents. While exploring alone, he met a young man who shared what he had seen.

Ten days after his article appeared in the Daegu Maeil Shinmun, Kang launched a fact-finding effort. He distributed 10,000 flyers, published appeals and drove around rural villages in a jeep with a loudspeaker, urging families to speak up. His work led to the registration of 354 victims and a petition to the 4th National Assembly’s Special Investigation Committee for Civilian Massacres. The request was submitted through a bereaved families association Kang helped to establish.

Momentum was short-lived. After the May 16 coup in 1961, bereaved family associations were suppressed, and the committee’s recommendations were shelved. Key leaders of the national bereaved families association, formed through cooperation between the Gyeongbuk and Gyeongnam chapters, were arrested and prosecuted by the revolutionary tribunal on fabricated charges of aiding North Korea.

The Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine remains a site of pain, where the souls of the dead are mourned. The resumption of the excavation is long overdue, but in a land marked by colonial exploitation, state violence and its resulting trauma is far from resolved.

Some improvements have been made. A cenotaph, though weathered and damaged by vandalism, lists victims confirmed by the TRC. Trees bearing the names of bereaved families have been planted, and a stone monument honors an early association leader. Still, infrastructure for education or historical interpretation is limited, apart from a few brief signboards. Civil groups have recently raised concerns about informal gatekeeping and unequal access to the site.

A cenotaph, or memorial tower, inaugurated in 2016 is displayed at Pyeongsan-dong in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province, Aug. 16, 2024. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Within the bereavement community, there is no single vision for justice. Some focus on restoring honor. Many call for state recognition or compensation. Some stress the need to identify and respectfully preserve remains. These tensions mirror broader national questions: how to confront state violence, how to build shared memory and who holds the authority to tell the story of the dead.

A proposed Daejeon Peace Park was designed around cremating the exhumed remains of Korean War massacre victims, currently stored in Sejong, based on earlier consultations with bereaved family representatives. That plan is now contested. Today, representatives from both Daejeon and Jeju Island oppose cremation. With feasibility studies complete, the Lee Jae Myung government may decide whether construction on the park begins at all.

The debate is especially charged for families from Jeju. After the April 3 Jeju uprising, prisoners were sent to places like Daegu and later killed at sites including the Gyeongsan mine. In 2024, the remains of Jeju prisoners were unearthed at the former Gwangju Prison site. So far, limited forensic testing or DNA analysis has been done, due in part to cost and the difficulty of collecting viable samples while surviving relatives are still available. Some Jeju families have called for repatriation.

A memorial wreath and helmet are left at the meeting point of the second horizontal tunnel and first vertical tunnel, Sept. 2, 2024. This stands as one of the most challenging areas of the mine to excavate, due to its depth and the constant need to pump out water bubbling up from below. Courtesy of Jack Greenberg

Debate also continues over the future of the TRC, with some calling for a third term under new leadership and structure, while others prefer extending the current mandate.

These issues raise difficult questions of memory politics. The longer the past remains unresolved, the harder these questions become to answer. Without renewed commitment from stakeholders to find common ground, there is a risk of losing sight of what matters most: restoring the honor of the victims, preserving their stories with respect and fostering meaningful remembrance. The work ahead demands both urgency and care, not haste for expediency’s sake.

Jack Greenberg works as a consultant, researcher and freelance writer. He will deliver a lecture on "Civilian Massacres and the Politics of Memory in the Daegu–Gyeongbuk Region" on Tuesday, Aug. 12, at 7:20 p.m. is in the basement of the Seoul Public Activities Center near Exit 8 of Samgakji Station on Seoul Metro lines 4 and 6. Entry costs 10,000 won, or 5,000 won for students of all ages with valid student ID, and is free for RAS Korea members.