‘Lives were sacrificed’: South Korean police apologise for massacres in Jeju sparked by armed uprising in 1948
- In 1948 on April 3, members of the communist Workers’ Party of Southern Korea – an ally of the organisation that still rules North Korea – launched an armed uprising on Jeju Island
- The revolt was quickly put down, but sporadic clashes continued, with more than 10,000 civilians killed by South Korean security forces over the next six years
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South Korean police apologised for the first time on Wednesday over massacres that killed 10,000 people some seven decades ago, as President Moon Jae-in seeks to re-examine history.
At the time, the division of the peninsula had yet to be formalised and the Korean war was still two years away, but the US-supported South was ideologically split following the end of World War II and Japanese colonial rule.
The revolt was quickly put down, but sporadic clashes continued, with more than 10,000 civilians killed by South Korean security forces over the next six years.
“We apologise to the innocent people whose lives were sacrificed,” said Min Gap-ryong, the commissioner general of the Korean National Police Agency, at a commemoration of the uprising’s 71st anniversary.
“We promise to be an organisation that only thinks about and works for Korean citizens so that a tragedy like this will never repeat in our future,” Min said.
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The country’s defence ministry also expressed “deep regret” to the victims, while stopping short of a full apology.
Some Jeju-based research and NGOs have claimed the uprising was “Jeju people’s resistance against national division and ‘American Imperialism’”.
The police apology and ministry’s expression of regret come after left-leaning President Moon has repeatedly spoken on the importance of “setting our history right”.
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Moon, who brokered talks between Washington and Pyongyang, has stressed the independence struggle against Japan’s colonial rule is at the heart of national identity in both Koreas, while framing the South’s right-wing – who say the victims of Jeju were all communist rebels – as descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators.
Last year, Moon became the first South Korean president in more than a decade to attend the annual memorial ceremony on Jeju.
At the event he said: “Young people who were falsely accused of being communists during the April 3 Incident defended their country in the face of death. Ideology was nothing more than a cause that justified the massacre.”
In 2003, then-President Roh Moo-hyun – whom Moon served as chief of staff – offered an apology to the victims of the Jeju incident.
