On South Korean island paradise, residents ponder U.S. position in long-ago tragedy

JEJU, South Korea – His grandfather fled, his father was executed, his mom was tortured, his village was burned — and for many years, his reminiscences have been suppressed.

Now, Song Seung-moon desires solutions. “I believe the U.S. is responsible,” he instructed The Washington Times as he recounted his story.

Mr. Song, born in 1949 amid one of many Cold War’s bloodiest however lesser-known maelstroms, isn’t alone. In 2023, at the same time as officers in Washington and Seoul hail the seventieth anniversary of their alliance, a rising refrain right here is demanding America clarify its hushed position within the brutal, bloody occasions of 1948 and 1949 now often known as the “Jeju Incident.”

It’s a uncommon discordant be aware in an more and more shut alliance, one which South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hopes to foster as Seoul faces mounting challenges from each North Korea and China.

A trip isle set amid glowing seas off South Korea’s southern coast, Jeju is typically dubbed “Korea’s Hawaii.” Its volcanic hills and dramatic cliff tops are dotted with stylish cafes and boutique lodges. Tourists, surfers and haenyo — feminine free divers — colonize its seashores.

But inside dwelling reminiscence, native residents say, this island paradise was as soon as a deathscape.

Few exterior guests — some 13.6 million in 2022 alone — know that the wheels of their arriving planes are rolling over mass graves underneath the tarmac of Jeju Airport. Or that the island’s scenic waterfalls have been as soon as used as execution chutes. Or that a number of developments have risen on the ruins of torched villages.

In one sense, the U.S. doesn’t face direct duty for the violence: All killings have been Korean-on-Korean. But in one other sense, it’s not so clear: Jeju’s harrowing clashes befell underneath American governance and U.S. army management.

Island of blood and hearth

Socio-political tensions have been simmering on the small island — it measures simply 714 sq. miles in whole — when on March 1, 1947, Korean police shot useless six protesters. When May 1948 constitutional elections have been known as — a plebiscite that enabled the creation of the South Korean state, however which opponents feared would cement the peninsula’s Cold War division between the north and south — many islanders declined to vote.

On April 3, 1948, anti-election Communist guerillas stormed police posts throughout Jeju. Mainland reinforcements — together with a paramilitary of fanatically anti-communist North Korean refugees — arrived to help the native island forces. A “red hunt” started.

Communist fighters have been pushed into Jeju’s mountainous inside. Though their chief escaped — he was killed in a firefight on the mainland in 1950, simply previous to the Korean War — the island was efficiently pacified. But the strategies used have been extensively thought-about to be extraordinarily harsh.

All of Jeju’s villages, save these in a three-mile large coastal strip, have been liquidated. Jeju’s inside turned a wasteland. Terrified islanders hid from troops in claustrophobic lava tunnels, whereas these the authorities deemed as suspects, together with girls and youngsters, have been massacred.

Males have been executed by gunfire or dropped, weighted with rocks, into the ocean. Others have been deported to mainland prisons. There, they disappeared.

Mr. Song spoke to The Washington Times at a museum on the positioning of a distillery utilized by authorities forces as a focus camp. He identified a cave the place victims have been shot; others, he mentioned, have been hurled off cliffs.

His grandfather fled to Japan, by no means to return. His father, whom he by no means met, was executed. Paramilitaries lay his pregnant mom over a see-saw and have been set to abort her child when native police intervened.

Subsequently, Mr. Song and his mom suffered malnourishment throughout a hardscrabble existence. Their burned house was one among Jeju’s 109 “lost villages.”

Historically, Jeju fell into the darkish shadow of the 1950-53 Korean War. For virtually half a century, discuss of the violence and the estimated tens of hundreds of deaths on each side was suppressed. Thousands feared guilt by affiliation.

The silence solely broke after South Korea started to embrace democratic rule in 1987. Researchers have been allowed to probe the incident and in 2003, President Roh Moo-hyun delivered an official apology to victims of the Jeju Incident. Reparations have since been paid, reconciliation undertaken. A trauma heart for survivors was established, and retrials for these unjustly executed have been performed.

But one burning query stays unanswered: the extent of U.S. involvement and U.S. duty.

The U.S. position

South Korean rights activists and victims’ teams have lengthy pressed for Washington to acknowledge its position within the bloodshed and its failure to restrain the Korean safety forces underneath their command.

“It happened during the U.S. Military Government, this is not something we can neglect,” mentioned Jeju Governor 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, forming the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea, or USAMGIK. A brand new home authorities took energy in Seoul in August 1948, however underneath a September settlement, the U.S. army retained command of Korean forces.

Hence, the Jeju slaughter befell first underneath U.S. governance, then underneath U.S command.

Mr. Oh was talking on the Jeju Forum earlier this month after periods protecting political, financial and environmental issues. The most closely attended session coated the violent occasions of 1948-1949 — the corridor was so jammed with aged islanders that translation units ran out.

“We can argue about the extent of [U.S.] responsibility…..but the evidence is there,” mentioned one other discussion board attendee, ex-Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. An admission of guilt by President Joe Biden, he mentioned, “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,” Su Mi Terry, who directs the Asia Program at DC’s Woodrow Wilson Center instructed Washington Times. “It condoned it in the name of quelling Communism.”

America “bears moral responsibility,” she continued. “It was not a mere bystander.”

A precedent for contrition exists. After a 1950 Korean War bloodbath of civilians by GIs was unearthed, President Bill Clinton provided regrets to villagers of No Gun Ri in 2001.

University of Connecticut Asian historical past scholar Alexis Dudden suggests the Congress may supply a proper apology to Jeju residents, preceded by smaller gestures, resembling a go to to the island’s memorial museum by a U.S. president.

American officers are terse when questioned in regards to the painful episode.

U.S. Ambassador to Korea Philip Goldberg, who visited the discussion board, solely talked about the difficulty when questioned by The Washington Times. “It was a very sad event in the late 1940s — the loss of life was a tragic situation,” he mentioned. “That’s all I am prepared to say at this moment.”

Even retired officers tread fastidiously.

Ex-U.S. Ambassador to Korea Kathleen Stephens mentioned final December at a Jeju symposium on the Wilson Center that, whereas America’s position in South Korea has been, “mostly for good, … sometimes it’s been a very complicated and difficult relationship. … We have some work ahead.”

Jeju’s searing reminiscences replicate U.S. Cold War alliances with brutal regimes throughout the globe, in Argentina, Chile, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan and elsewhere. Retroactively, U.S. policymakers can take delight: Those regimes transitioned into liberal democracies.

And actually, some Jeju brochures function leftist bias, calling, for instance, for South Korea’s protection finances to be slashed to fund welfare.

Yet with 14,363 useless recognized by 2021, and body-count estimates rising to 30,000, students say Jeju’s carnage can’t be dismissed completely on political grounds.

“Over 800 kids under the age of 10 were killed, over 3,000 women were killed,” mentioned Lee Sung-yoon, a Korea Studies scholar at Tufts University. “How do you justify that?”

A headstone with out an inscription

Once residents have been allowed to inform their tales overtly, a number of memorials rose island-wide. The flagship is the Jeju 4:3 Peace Memorial Hall. Along with displaying ongoing analysis, the positioning encompasses an unlimited graveyard of black stones, showcasing the cruelty and violence in a collection of troubling reveals.

Many ghosts have been laid to relaxation, however Mr. Song says two duties stay: a full U.S. accounting and a rebrand.

In Korean, Jeju’s ordeal is blandly known as “4:3” — the April 1948 date of the preliminary Communist assault that set off the violent marketing campaign to come back. In English, the default phrase is the equally banal “Jeju Incident.”