Jeju Island marks 70th anniversary of 1948 massacres

Empty tombs placed in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park commemorate 3,895 people whose bodies were never recovered after being arrested without due process. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

By Choi Ha-young

JEJU ISLAND ― Camellia, called "dongbaek" in Korean, is an iconic flower of Jeju Island. The flower bursts into bloom during winter and begins to fall from trees as spring comes. Islanders, fearing misfortune, tend not to plant dongbaek trees on their properties. The bloody red flowers falling remind of families and friends beheaded in the bloody spring of 1948.

Seventy years have passed since the beginning of the massacres, which claimed 25,000 to 30,000 lives ― about 10 percent of islanders. This year's decennial event is especially meaningful for Jeju residents, since it could be the last one for most of the aging survivors.

It's not very long ago that islanders could openly mourn the victims, said Ko Wan-soon, 80, who lived through a massacre in the island's northern Bukchon Village. There, 398 people were shot dead within only two days, the second-largest number of victims in Jeju.

About 3 p.m. on Dec. 19, 1949, a nine-year-old Ko, along with her mother, older sister and younger brother was summoned to Bukchon Elementary School. "I stood up to see what's going on, and was beaten by a soldier. At the moment, I heard a series of gunshots and saw seven to eight men collapse," Ko told reporters.

Ko Wan-soon, 80, speaks to reporters visiting Jeju Island on the 70th anniversary of the April 3 Incident of 1948.

Struggling to escape, Ko's younger brother screamed out of fear. "Then a soldier gave a hard blow to my brother's head with a club," she said. The soldier yelled at the boy: "No matter if you are killed now or later." She only survived by a commander's order made about 5 p.m. Her brother later died of his head injury in August 1952.

According to a former soldier's testimony, the troops originally planned to fire a mortar to annihilate the villagers, but decided to shoot them individually to "train" new recruits, said Kim Nam-hoon, a staffer of Jeju Dark Tours, a civic group that organized the press tour.

A few days before the massacre, a group of "mountain people" ― the guerillas who resisted the May 10 general elections ― killed two ROK soldiers near Bukchon, Kim said. The military slaughtered the villagers in retaliation, suspecting collusion between the anti-government guerillas and the villagers.

"According to a former soldier's testimony, some soldiers born on Jeju appealed to the general to stop the killings and the general accepted their plea," Kim said.

Traces of the killings remain within Ko's body and nerves. "To this day, I can never bear hunger due to memories of starvation throughout my childhood," Ko said. She vividly remembers stealing boiling rice at her friend's home, not even using a spoon. "I still feel scared when I go to Ompangbat, where bodies were piled. Rumors still circulate that someone saw a ghost in front of Bukchon Elementary School."

Many of the elderly women of Bukchon ― dubbed "Moonam-chon," or village without men, as they were all massacred ― live alone, suffering depression and PTSD. Like others, they want to sing, dance and travel, but they can't. "Because of injuries received during the massacres, we can't even stand up. I am always afraid of dying alone," Ko said.

Why Jeju targeted?

The May 10 general election to form the Constitutional Assembly brought a bitter ideological conflict to southern Jeju Island. Islanders boycotted the election, as it would consolidate the division of the peninsula. Anti-election sentiment was widespread in the nation but it turned especially bloody on Jeju.

The resistant mood was kindled by police shootings on March 1, 1947, under the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK). About 30,000 people had gathered to mark the nationwide independent movement that took place on March 1, 1919. The incident brought demonstrations across the island, with 95 percent of islanders joining in.

Yang Jo-hoon, chairman of the Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation, analyzes the high education level among Jeju residents as a reason for the tragedy. "In 1947, USAMGIK conducted a nationwide survey on education level. Jeju was the most educated area of the nation," Yang said.

"Progressive thoughts intensified their resistance against the USAMGIK-backed elections. If they were totally ignorant, they wouldn't have protested like that."

About 50,000 Jeju islanders had moved to Japan during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation, according to Japan's policy to supplement work forces in Osaka, Yang said. "Living as foreign workers, Koreans in Japan struggled to educate themselves and their children."

Ko's uncle was among them. He graduated from a college of education in Tokyo and worked as a middle school math teacher on Jeju. In such a progressive atmosphere, Ko was familiar with socialism during her childhood. "Amid poverty during the occupation era, I could easily sympathize with communism aimed at achieving equal society," Ko said.

In this respect, Yang pointed out administrative failures of the 1945-48 USAMGIK, as well as Syngman Rhee's government afterward. "Without policies to handle public unrest, the authorities recklessly arrested protesters even including teenagers, by mobilizing far-rightists," Yang said.

He also called out the U.S. for its part. "Though massacres were committed under Rhee, the U.S. military provided weapons, as shown by the carbines used. General William Lynn Roberts, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory Group to the ROK, lauded the killings in a letter sent to the Korean government in December 1948."

Two holes show mass graves where 210 bodies were dumped after a massacre in August 1950. The authorities banned bereaved families from collecting their remains until 1956.

Dark Tourism

Mount Halla, with forests to feed people and caves to hide them, provided refuge. Those who boycotted the May 10 elections headed for the volcano, while government officials in charge of the elections also went to the mountain to defend the electoral register. This means every corner of the mountain could be the site of past atrocities.

Traces of Japanese imperialism also linger at Seotal Oreum in Seogwipo. Imperial Japan used to operate an anti-aircraft emplacement there to bomb mainland China. "In 1937, 36 aircraft left here to bomb China," said Kim Eun-hee, chief researcher of Jeju 4.3 Research Institute.

After those aircraft were all scuttled by the U.S. military after the collapse of imperial Japan, yet another tragedy swept the area on Aug. 20, 1950. Right by the aircraft shelters, you can find a memorial to commemorate 210 people who were shot dead in the wake of "preventive custody" during the 1950-53 Korean War. Preventive custody refers to detention without legal procedure under the pretext of countering acts benefiting the enemy.

"The assailants were the ROK Marine Corps," Kim told reporters. "on Jeju, those who took part in the 1947 March 1 protest were blacklisted for preventive custody and those who boycotted the 1948 general elections were added to the list."

The victims' bodies, which were retrieved in May 1956, are now buried nearby. The bereaved families failed to identify the bodies, so they decided to establish collective graves, named "Bagjo Ilson Jiji," which means "tombs of descendants of grandparents who are buried together." The bereaved families still gather every July 7 to perform ancestral rites.

A tombstone erected at Bagjo Ilson Jiji. Pieces of the tombstone vandalized during the Park Chung-hee era are kept in a plastic box, left.

On top of the tombstone, a large Taegukgi, the national flag of Korea, catches visitors' eyes. "Bereaved families always hope to carve national symbols," Kim said, which he said was part of a struggle to break away from the label of "commies." During the Korean War, many Jeju youths voluntarily joined the ROK army ― which destroyed their families ― to prove they aren't communists.

But Cold War sentiments and anti-communist accusations linger over the incident and its victims. A revision bill of the Special Act for April 3 incident, sponsored by 60 lawmakers, is pending in the National Assembly. No conservative lawmakers signed the bill, which overshadows the bill's passage. Rep. Oh Young-hun of the Democratic Party of Korea, whose grandfather was killed in the massacre, appealed to conservatives to join hands, but ended in failure.

The bill features compensation for victims as well as an invalidity declaration of unlawful military trials. "In 2000, the special act was enacted, but compensation has not yet been implemented. Those who were detained without legal ground remain as criminals," Oh said.

The lawmaker, who represents an electoral district on the island, believes the revision bill could spur compensation for lesser-known state violence. Without a legal basis for financial compensation, each victim must file a lawsuit against the government to receive compensation. "Jeju islanders have taken an initiating role in resolving ideological conflict," Oh noted.

"The islanders are set to harmonize. To facilitate their future-oriented moves, the government should provide legal basis for victims ― compensation and rehabilitation ― on the occasion of the 70th anniversary."