제주평화연구원

The Women of The Jeju April 3rd Incident

  [caption id="" align="alignright" width="145"] Yu Jin-eui
Council Member of Health, Welfare and Safety Committee, Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Council[/caption] On March 19 the Jeju District Court interrogated an old lady, who had served time in jail on charges of violating a border security law during the April 3rd Incident on Jeju Island 70 years ago. The testimony of the women in her late 80s was so touching that lumps formed in the throats of those in the court’s audience that day. The proceedings of the case’s retrial laid bare her ordeal while imprisoned after being arrested and tortured by police when she was in her prime, at 19. In the court hearing, she gave the first testimony of a police officer who has never been reported by any news media. Her story is summarized as follows: She was approached by a policeman who tried to take advantage of her. She refused, and her refusal cost her dearly. She was locked up at the police station and subjected to torture before being sent to prison on the mainland. However, the judge, prosecutor and lawyer at the court then seemed to be only interested in whether she had undergone a fair and public trial. With this trial, we cannot but look back on the women of Jeju during the unprecedented tragedy on the island, the Jeju April 3rd Incident.   Women as Minority   A minority can be defined as a group that is discriminated against by the political disposition of the time. It does not only mean a “smaller number of people” but semantically functions as an antonym to the majority of a powerful political atmosphere. During the April 3rd Incident, the police and military forces numbered fewer than the residents of the island but those two groups should be regarded as the political majority. Then, who were the minority at that time? There are many criteria to call a group of people a minority: race, religion, place of birth, gender, age, and political ideology. Whether they were from the mainland or natives of the island or whether they spoke standard Korean or dialects may also be criteria. Taken overall, the entire people on the island could be viewed as the minority during the incident. Particularly, women constitute the minority.   The Cases of Victimized Women   The April 3rd Incident, which occurred amid the Cold War order dominated by the U.S and Soviet after the Second World War, might be called an attempt of the political majority of the time to try and eliminate the minority. According to the Fact Finding Report on the Jeju April 3rd Incident published in 2003, a total of 14,028 people were killed, with male victims accounting for 78.7 percent (11,043) and females 21.3 percent (2,985).   • The Case of a Pregnant Woman: The police killed a pregnant woman. They stabbed her to death with bayonets after undressing and hanging her from a hackberry tree. The reason was her husband had fled from the police. (The Fact Finding Report on the Jeju April 3rd Incident)   • Sexual Abuse: “Brutal beatings and other unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated on the people detained in a warehouse. They forced men and women to have sexual intercourse and seared the private parts of the women. At night, I could not sleep due to the putrid smell from the scars. I couldn’t think they were sane people.” (Testimony by Hong Gyeong-to in the Fact Finding Report on the Jeju April 3rd Incident)   • The Family of a Guerilla: The five-year-old son of Yi Deog-gu (commander of the guerilla forces), Jin-u, and his two-year-old daughter were killed by the police. According to the residents, when Jin-u pleaded crying for mercy, the policeman told him to run away to the mountain where his dad was hiding. As he ran toward the mountain, the policeman shot him in the back. (The Hankyoreh on April 6, 1990)   • Family Register: The woman known as Lady Yang wanted nothing more than to put her son and grandchildren on her husband’s family register. She didn’t care if she remained a spinster on the register of her parents’ family, she only wanted to put their names in the register of their patrilineal family. Failing to do so, she could not claim her right to her property, houses and farms, now owned by others. (The White Paper on the Jeju April 3rd Incident published by the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province) • Naked Dead Woman: There is a giant rock in the shape of a bird’s beak on the way to Monjugial along the steep northwestern slope of Seou Peak. It is called “Saengi bongoji’ hill. A woman from Seonheul was found dead, stripped of her clothes, on the rock there. (Historical Sites of Jeju April 3rd Incident – the Jeju City edition)   Numerous cases like those above were reported to have occurred during and after the Jeju April 3rd Incident. The massacre of civilians, forbidden even during war, were nevertheless repeated, and many more civilians remain missing after being sent to prisons without proper trials on the mainland. Judging by this, the residents of the island might well be called a minority.   The Jeju people who suffered from the April 3rd Incident have repeatedly called for fact-finding efforts and the reinstatement of the victims’ honor. Marking the 70th anniversary of the incident this year, the new government has pledged to resolve these cases. The government should fulfill its promises and take measures to help the bereaved find closure. I wish for Jeju Island to become the starting point for disseminating the universal values of human rights and peace to the Korean Peninsula, East Asia and, ultimately, the whole world.