JEJU, South Korea — His grandfather fled, his father was executed, his mother was tortured, his village was burned — and for decades, his memories were suppressed.
Now, Song Seung-moon wants answers. “I believe the U.S. is responsible,” he told The Washington Times as he recounted his story.
Mr. Song, born in 1949 amid one of the Cold War’s bloodiest but lesser-known maelstroms, is not alone. As officials in Washington and Seoul hail the 70th anniversary of their alliance this year, a rising chorus in South Korea is demanding that America explain its hushed role in the brutal, bloody events of 1948 and 1949, now known as the “Jeju incident.”
It’s a rare discordant note in an increasingly close alliance, which South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hopes to foster as Seoul faces mounting challenges from North Korea and China.
A vacation isle set amid sparkling seas off South Korea’s southern coast, Jeju is sometimes dubbed “Korea’s Hawaii.” Trendy cafes and boutique hotels dot the island’s volcanic hills and dramatic cliff tops. Tourists, surfers and haenyeo — female free divers — colonize its beaches.
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: Ghosts of the Jeju incident
Within living memory, local residents say, this island paradise was once a deathscape.
Few outside visitors — some 13.6 million in 2022 alone — know that the wheels of their arriving planes are rolling over mass graves under the tarmac of Jeju International Airport, that the island’s scenic waterfalls were once used as execution chutes or that multiple developments have risen on the ruins of torched villages.
In one sense, the U.S. does not face direct responsibility for the violence. All killings were Korean-on-Korean. In another sense, it’s not so clear: Jeju’s harrowing clashes took place under American governance and U.S. military control.
Island of blood and fire
Sociopolitical tensions were simmering on the island, measuring just 714 square miles, when Korean police shot dead six protesters on March 1, 1947. When May 1948 constitutional elections were called, many islanders declined to vote. A plebiscite enabled the creation of the South Korean state, but opponents feared it would cement the peninsula’s Cold War division between the north and south.
On April 3, 1948, anti-election communist guerrillas stormed police posts across Jeju. A paramilitary of fanatically anti-communist North Korean refugees and other mainland reinforcements arrived to support the local island forces. A “red hunt” began.
Communist fighters were driven into Jeju’s mountainous interior. Their leader escaped but was killed in a firefight on the mainland in 1950, just before the Korean War. Meanwhile, the island was pacified, but the methods used were considered extremely harsh.
Jeju’s villages were liquidated, except those in a 3-mile-wide coastal strip. The interior became a wasteland. Terrified islanders hid from troops in claustrophobic lava tunnels. Those whom authorities deemed suspects, including women and children, were massacred.
Males were executed by gunfire or dropped, weighted with rocks, into the sea. Others were deported to mainland prisons, where they disappeared.
Mr. Song spoke to The Times at a museum on the site of a distillery that government forces used as a concentration camp. He pointed out a cave where victims were shot. Others, he said, were hurled off cliffs.
His grandfather fled to Japan, never to return. His father, whom he had never met, was executed. Paramilitaries lay his pregnant mother over a seesaw and were set to abort her baby when local police intervened.
Mr. Song and his mother subsequently suffered from malnourishment during a hardscrabble existence. Their burned home was one of Jeju’s 109 “lost villages.”
Jeju fell into the dark shadow of the 1950-1953 Korean War. For almost half a century, talk of the violence and the estimated tens of thousands of deaths was suppressed. Thousands feared guilt by association.
The silence broke only after South Korea embraced democratic rule in 1987, and researchers were allowed to investigate the incident. In 2003, President Roh Moo-hyun officially apologized to victims of the Jeju incident. Reparations have been paid, and reconciliation has been undertaken. A trauma center for survivors was established, and retrials for those unjustly executed were conducted.
One burning question remains unanswered: the extent of U.S. involvement and responsibility.
The U.S. role
South Korean rights activists and victims groups have long pressed for Washington to acknowledge its role in the bloodshed and its failure to restrain the Korean security forces under their command.
“It happened during the U.S. Military Government. This is not something we can neglect,” said Jeju Gov. Oh Young-hun. “The U.S. government should take measures to be more accountable for their responsibility for this tragic incident.”
After defeating Japan, U.S. troops occupied southern Korea in September 1945 and formed the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea, or USAMGIK. A domestic government took power in Seoul in August 1948, but the U.S. military retained command of Korean forces under a September agreement.
Hence, the Jeju slaughter occurred first under U.S. governance and then under U.S. command.
Mr. Oh was speaking at the Jeju Forum earlier this month, amid sessions covering political, economic and environmental matters. The most heavily attended session covered the violent events of 1948-1949. Not enough translation devices were available for the hall jammed with elderly islanders.
“We can argue about the extent of [U.S.] responsibility … but the evidence is there,” former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said at the forum. An act of contrition by President Biden, he said, “would do wonders not only to consolidate the strength of the bilateral relationship … it would also do wonders for America’s reputation in the wider region and world.”
“The USAMGIK was apprised of the brutality,” Sue Mi Terry, who directs the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told The Times. “It condoned it in the name of quelling communism.”
America “bears moral responsibility,” she said. “It was not a mere bystander.”
After a 1950 Korean War massacre of civilians by GIs was unearthed, President Clinton offered regrets to the villagers of No Gun Ri in 2001.
Alexis Dudden, an Asian history scholar at the University of Connecticut, suggested that Congress offer a formal apology to Jeju residents, preceded by smaller gestures such as a presidential visit to the island’s memorial museum.
American officials are terse when questioned about the painful episode.
Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, mentioned the issue at the forum only when questioned by The Times. “It was a very sad event in the late 1940s — the loss of life was a tragic situation,” he said. “That’s all I am prepared to say at this moment.”
Even retired officials tread carefully.
Former U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens said in December at a Jeju symposium at the Wilson Center that America’s role in South Korea has been “mostly for good [but] sometimes it’s been a very complicated and difficult relationship. … We have some work ahead.”
Jeju’s searing memories reflect U.S. Cold War alliances with brutal regimes, including in Argentina, Chile, South Korea, Spain and Taiwan. Retroactively, U.S. policymakers take pride because those regimes transitioned into liberal democracies.
Some Jeju brochures feature leftist bias, calling, for example, for South Korea’s defense budget to be slashed to fund welfare.
Yet with 14,363 dead identified through 2021 and body count estimates rising to 30,000, scholars say, Jeju’s carnage cannot be dismissed entirely on political grounds.
“Over 800 kids under the age of 10 were killed, over 3,000 women were killed,” said Sung-yoon Lee, a Korean studies scholar at Tufts University. “How do you justify that?”
A gravestone without an inscription
Once residents could tell their stories openly, multiple memorials spread across the island. The flagship is the Jeju 4.3 Peace Memorial Hall. Along with displays of ongoing research, the site encompasses a vast graveyard of black stones to showcase the cruelty and violence in a series of troubling exhibits.
Many ghosts have been laid to rest, but Mr. Song said two tasks remain: a full U.S. accounting and a rebrand.
In Korean, Jeju’s ordeal is blandly referred to as “4.3” — the April 1948 date of the initial communist attack that set off the violent campaign. In English, the default phrase is the equally banal “Jeju incident.”
Peace foundation Chairman Ko Hee-bum maintains a blank gravestone in the memorial hall. It will be inscribed, he said, only when an agreement is reached for a more appropriate descriptor for the hell that descended on Jeju.
Hear more on the History As It Happens podcast.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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