The North-West Youth Association was established on November 30, 1946, by refugees escaping Soviet-occupied North Korea.
Murals in the Jeju April 3 Peace Park Museum state that North-West Youth Association members fought Soviets and Korean communists because “members of their family had been imprisoned, raped or murdered in North Korea, and that their property had been confiscated.”[1] The Association conducted vigilante justice against suspected communists with no legal basis.
The Association was supported by Syngman Rhee, the ardent, anti-communist, US-backed autocrat of South Korea.
What began as an anti-communist movement, quickly became a force to crush anyone who opposed President Rhee and the Korea Democratic Party.
A decade after the Korean War, Rhee was forced into exile after the April Revolution in South Korea.