Jeju 4.3 Committee

"[1] Announcing 14,028 victims, the first report of the commission was published in 2003, following an official apology by President Roh Moo-hyun, and his participation in a memorial service held in commemoration of the events, in 2006.

Resulting from this, civilians not involved in the conflict were abused and murdered by perpetrators including: armed guerrillas, police, military and Paramilitary groups.

Specifically, three major debates challenging the official narratives include the characteristics of the armed uprising, the start-date of the incident, and circumstances surrounding responsibility of civilian massacres.

Before South Korean democratization in 1987, the characteristics of the armed uprising on April 3, 1948, were mostly referred to and understood as communist rebellions in all public records, including mass media, textbooks, and government documents.

As proposed by Kim, "by defining the key event as a communist rebellion, civilian massacres and human rights abuses were easily justified as collateral to, and a necessary part of, the efforts to prevent communization.

Consequently, the Revisionist perspective would argue, "the armed uprising on 3 April 1948 was one of several instances of public resistance to the US military government, which originally commenced on 1 March 1947.

Upon democratization in South Korea, public and mass movements devised to uncover the truth about the Jeju 4.3 events emerged at the local level.

In terms of media coverage, local newspapers such as the Jemin-Ilbo played a significant role in uncovering evidence of massacres and taking testimonies which would be shared publicly.

The memorial services were followed by a month-long festival that featured traditional plays, testimony hearings, films, concerts, and art as public communication tools concerning the Jeju events.

However, after a year of disappointing results, by 1999 activists began to look at advocating for the enactment of a binding special law that would legally guarantee the establishment of a truth commission for the Jeju Incident.

Consequently, Kim describes that, “It provided undeniable evidence of the execution without due process of a large number of people in a short period of time, and made it possible for the concerned lawmakers to proceed without much resistance”[1] Following the release of the official document by Choo Mi-ae, three congressmen from the opposition Grand National Party from Jeju island proposed a draft of a bill that included the establishment of an independent committee regarding the Jeju 4.3 events, under the Office of the Prime Minister.

This definition in particular was criticized by activists and victims who demanded a term that went beyond a disturbance, but rather acknowledging the 4.3 events as mass human rights violations perpetrated by the state.

The only additional transitional measures that could be guaranteed under the law beyond the establishment of the truth commission were commemoration projects (a memorial park, museum, and cemetery).

These members must include director-general level officials who are appointed by the prime minister, the vice-governor of Jeju, various representatives of the victims' families and relevant experts.

The investigation primarily focused on the "armed conflict, the suppression of it and the killing of innocent people during the process for seven years and seven months post the shooting incident by the police on March 1, 1947 to the lifting of the standstill order on Mt.

Further, the full-time investigation team collected data from organizations and institutes both domestically and abroad and recorded the testimony from witnesses on Jeju Island, in Seoul, Japan and the United States.

Once these were chosen, the task force team gave weight to securing the data from government bodies such as the records of the police and military operations, which were directly involved in the suppression of the incident, minutes of Cabinet meetings, and trial rulings.

"[2] In securing data, the investigation team sent its staff to three countries including the United States, Russia, and Japan, conducting surveys in each with the aid of resident experts.

To search for the data, the survey team visited the National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter referred to as NARA), the MacArthur Memorial and the U.S. Army Military History Institute.

Consequently, the investigation team successfully obtained research from truth commissions in Argentina, Taiwan, South Africa, and Spain.

Priority was given to witnesses with unusual backgrounds, those who underwent unique or specific incidents or came from a village that incurred severe damage, and those who were discovered by the committee's own investigation.

According to Kim, "The counterinsurgency strategy was extremely brutal; it included mass arrest and detention, forced relocation, torture, indiscriminate killing and the large-scale massacre of civilians.

"[1] Further, the report also confirmed 448 victims of systematic civilian massacres, evidence of illegal detention, indiscriminate sweeping arrests, and summary executions.

The objectives of the Jeju Foundation were to, “promote peace and human rights by, first, maintaining the museum and memorial park, and second, by conducting additional investigations.”[4] Further in 2006, the Commission launched a long-term excavation project to find the remains of the victims and discover mass graves.