제주평화연구원

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150"] Yang Jo-hoon
Chairman of the Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation[/caption] The root cause of the Jeju April 3rd Incident, which led to the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians, can be traced back to the division of the Korean Peninsula and the Cold War order. The nation was bisected with the decision of the U.S. and Soviet to divide the country along the 38th parallel. This line was drawn up to disarm the Japanese forces in accordance with international laws. Therefore, the division line at the 38th parallel was supposed to be lifted once the disarmament of the Japanese forces was actualized at the end of 1945.   However, the U.S. and Soviet utilized the 38th parallel as their border line without withdrawing their forces from the Korean Peninsula. As the two superpowers engaged in intense confrontation over the post-World War order, the Korean Peninsula was dragged into this ideological Cold War.   The residents of Jeju Island were also embroiled in the Cold War. After they staged a general strike in protest against the police shooting into a crowd that occurred on March 1, 1947, they were subjected to harsh crackdowns by the U.S. military government. In 1948, their campaign against national division also led to massive bloodshed and civilian casualties.   The South held general elections on May 10, 1948, separately from the North. In the elections, voting on Jeju Island was nullified for its failure to meet the required voter turnout amid the communists’ boycott and sabotage of the elections. Shocked by the boycott, the U.S. military government in the South staged an intensive crackdown to hold re-elections by appointing an American colonel as the commander-in-chief of the island. However, the June 23rd re-elections also failed to materialize, and thus Jeju Island went down in history as the sole region of the nation to reject the elections held under the oversight of the U.S. military government.   The Syngman Rhee government, which took office in August 1948, started a joint military operation with the U.S. forces to reduce to ruins the hamlets in the mountainous regions on the island. The government forces massacred civilians and burned to ash around 40,000 houses and more than 95 percent of the villages on the mountain. They took the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, including children and the elderly.   Jeju Island has been called the “island of three absences (三無)” – no thieves, no beggars and no gates before houses. Though poor and on barren soil, the residents of Jeju lived through helping one another but the massacre destroyed the communal spirit of the island, as well.   The most tragic aspect of the history of Jeju Island is that the Jeju April 3rd Incident has been a taboo subject not only for the nation but for Jeju Island for half a century. In many ways it is as if “it had never happened.” The Syngman Rhee government and subsequent military governments stigmatized the incident as a “communist revolt,” burying it away. The bereaved could say nothing about the deaths of their innocent family members. They were even forced to hold secret memorial rites for the victims.   Writers who published poems or novels about the incident were arrested. Nevertheless, fact-finding efforts continued. In 2000, a special law to investigate the Jeju April 3rd Incident was enacted. The government investigative commission headed by the prime minister completed the fact-finding report on the abuses of human rights by the state. It estimated the number of victims at 25,000-30,000.   Based on the report, then President Roh Moo-hyun made a public apology to the bereaved and residents of the island. The first ever fact-finding report and apology made by the president for the April 3rd Incident served as momentum to reinstate the honor of the victims and to raise national awareness of human rights.   The designation of Jeju as the Island of World Peace by the government in 2005 is related to the incident. The preamble of the Declaration of the Island of World Peace states: “The government designates Jeju Island as the Island of World Peace to contribute to building world peace by creatively carrying on the tradition of the three absences, sublimating the tragic April 3rd Incident into a cause of reconciliation and coexistence and living up to the principle of summit diplomacy to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula.”   President Roh Moo-hyun attached significant meaning to the fact-finding effort, saying that it has made “an exemplary model of overcoming the historical pain of the April 3rd Incident in the universally righteous principle to discover the truth and reconcile with the past.” He also emphasized truth and reconciliation as the keys to resolving the historical issue of the Jeju April 3rd Incident.   “Come here and pay silent tribute. We erected this monument to forgive all who were victims, too. Let the deceased rest in peace and the survivors join hands,” says the inscription on the memorial monument at the graveyard in Hagwi-ri village of the island where the tombs of the patriots (military servicemen and police) and the victims of the Jeju April 3rd Incident are gathered. It calls for wisdom to open a new future for reconciliation.   The bereaved society of the Jeju April 3rd victims and the Jeju Police Veterans Association, which have long harbored animosity toward each other, finally declared unconditional reconciliation in 2013. It brought down the wall between the progressives and conservatives on the island and united the officialdom and civil society by overcoming the ideological confrontation and healing the scars of the Jeju April 3rd Incident.   Regarding this, Prof. Bak Myeong-rim of Yonsei University observed: “There has been no case of conflict in the world such as that of Jeju in which the assailants and victims, the oppressors and the oppressed and the officialdom and civil society are united. Now, Jeju Island is becoming the world’s best school for learning about the principles of forgiveness, reconciliation, and coexistence.”   We are now at a crossroads to dissolve the old Cold War order on the Korean Peninsula. The imminent inter-Korean and the U.S.-North Korea summit meetings attract scrutiny from across the world. Never should the residents of the South and North be left to suffer from the national division any longer.   It must be a single fatherland, a unified country, I believe, that those who perished on this island 70 years ago most ardently longed for. What we have to pursue right now is peace on the Korean Peninsula. To achieve this, it is more important for the two Koreas to restore trust in each other with patience.   I wish that the spirit of reconciliation over the Jeju April 3rd Incident would help unravel the inter-Korean tensions. On the 70th anniversary of the Jeju April 3rd Incident, today, I dream of the day when the victims’ ardent wish for a unified Korea would be realized, so that this incident may become a history worthy of remembrance.