Jeju Uprising - Reconciliation

Reconciliation

In one of its first official acts, the South Korean National Assembly passed the National Traitors Act in 1948, which among other measures, outlawed the Workers Party of South Korea. For almost fifty years after the massacre it was an arrestable crime followed by beatings, torture and a lengthy prison sentence if any South Korean even mentioned the events of the Jeju uprising. The massacre had been largely ignored by the government. In 1992, President Roh Tae Woo's government sealed up a cave on Mount Halla where the remains of massacre victims had been discovered. But after civil rule was later reinstated in the 1990s, the government made several apologies for the suppression, and efforts are being made to reassess the scope of the incident and compensate the survivors. In April 2006, President Roh Moo-Hyun officially apologized to the people of Jeju Province for this massacre. In March 2009, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission confirmed its findings that "At least 20,000 people jailed for taking part in the popular uprisings in Jeju, Yeosu and Suncheon, or accused of being communists, were massacred in some 20 prisons across the country," when the Korean War broke out.

South Korea's Truth Commission reported 14,373 victims, 86% at the hands of the security forces and 13.9% at the hands of armed rebels, and estimated that the total death toll was as high as 30,000. Some 70 percent of the island's 230 villages were burned to the ground and over 39,000 houses were destroyed.