제주평화연구원

Violence and the state of nature: Jeju April 3rd Massacre   Nature was the crucible for unimaginable violence as ideologies of the mind were branded upon the landscape [caption id="" align="alignright" width="149"] Darren Southcott
Visiting Professor in the English Education Department, Jeju National University of Education[/caption] The slaughter of up to 30,000 people, predominantly by state forces, in what is known as the April 3rd Massacre has been called a genocide. The fledgling Korean state, aided and abetted by the US military, implemented a scorched-earth policy that left thousands of innocents dead in a brutal counter-insurgency against alleged communist guerillas. The bands of guerillas also visited slaughter upon island villages, leaving death and destruction in their wake as the period of violence extended from 1947 to 1954.     Although humanity is at the heart of this conflict, forcing us to confront the horrors of unchecked ideology, and the duality of victim and victimizer within, the theatre of the conflict was Jeju’s haunting natural beauty     The dark shadow of the conflict still stalks the land, menacing the landscape like the fine dust that hangs silently in the sky, gathering in our lungs year after year. The ideologies that drove the conflict — the legitimacy of state power and how that power should be used to remake society — penetrate deep into the lungs of Jeju, the gotjawal woodlands, ripping families in two, and the nation asunder.     Reflecting the ancient cultural division of the island between the coast and upland interior, on October 17, 1948, Jeju Defense Headquarters declared that anyone caught without a permit beyond 5km of the coast was to be executed. Carl Schmitt famously declared, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” and the insecure state, not yet fully formed below the 38th Parallel, was exercising its absolute power in declaring the land, and the subjects therein, a State of Exception beyond the law.     Adapting Schmitt’s concept, philosopher Giorgio Agamben saw the State of Exception as the extension of state power during crisis. The sovereign exempts the subject from legal protection, leaving it as bare life. Then, over time, this bare life becomes one with the state, which Agamben terms (with a touch of irony) the good life     State power was thus injected deep into Jeju’s heart as barely clothed villagers huddled together for protection in its deep valleys, dank caves, and dark woodlands. Often unaware of the scale (or nature) of the conflict outside, villagers fled to the island’s natural sanctuaries. Although some surely saw hope in Hallasan’s vastness as they resisted the state, for those caught in the confusion of the bloody conflict, the erstwhile sanctuary had become a prison, and often a tomb.     Looking upon Jeju today, an environment designated by UNESCO for its outstanding universal values, the dread of the dark interior between 1947 and 1954 is almost unimaginable. It would not be until September 21, 1954, that islanders were allowed to scale Mt. Hallasan’s slopes again as the cloak of ideological division was slowly lifted.     Agamben also speaks of homo sacer, the figure of Roman law who must be cleansed from the body politic so the state can preserve its sanctity. Another form of bare life, homo sacer is driven to the margins, “ultimately to be recodified into a new national identity.” Caught up in the violent birth of a new nation, their own nation, villagers were laid bare in the stark beauty of the volcanic landscape. Propaganda was soon produced declaring the island “Red,” a color it would soon run with that very bare life.     Unfortunately, such state violence is not unusual in recent history, nor is the role of nature as an ideological frame for conflict. Particularly throughout the Cold War period, of which the April 3rd Massacre was one of the first flashpoints, nature represented the unknown, both harboring danger and providing sanctuary.     Across East and Southeast Asia, nature was the crucible of conflict. As colonial powers slunk away, distant forests and mountains were pulled closer to emerging state power, their peripheral beauty suddenly a curse. Nature embodied the fantasies of Utopia, or an untamed wilderness to be brought to heel. State violence is almost intrinsic to natural beauty — from the Scottish Highlands to Yellowstone and the Serengeti, the deeper the beauty, the darker the secrets of the landscape.     The tragedy of the Jeju April 3rd Massacre is similarly etched into the landscape the beauty of the land we behold today thinly veils the unknown tombs which remain undisclosed. Yet we can perhaps take hope from Jeju’s transformation from Agamben’s bare life to the good life which fulfills so many dreams today. Even though many stories of April 3rd bloodshed remain untold, the slopes of Hallasan strive to rise above conflict to represent national hope and unity against all the odds.     This is the hope of a unified Korea, from Hallasan to Baekdusan, what many of the sacrificed Jeju Islanders all those years ago were surely fighting for. Yet the nature that now provides such hope does not represent Utopia but pragmatic compromise — the ominous DMZ, where nature thrives despite the choke of ideological conflict. Although it remains a State of Exception, there are signs that Agamben’s bare life is thriving as red-crowned cranes, black bears, musk deer, and perhaps even Amur tigers stalk the land alongside homo sacer.     At the limits of sovereign power, and caught between the same ideologies that linger at massacre sites on Jeju, Korean people dare to see hope in the DMZ’s rare landscape and flourishing ecosystem, seeds of peace sprouting from conflict. And just as today we must gaze deep into Jeju’s beauty to perceive history’s sacrifice, one day our children might similarly gaze into a pan-national peace park along the 38th Parallel, a landscape whose cragged peaks evoke awe, yet forever hold the secrets of history’s deadly State of Exception.     By Darren Southcott (darrensouthcott@gmail.com)     Born in London, Mr. Southcott is a visiting professor in the English Education Department, Jeju National University of Education. He has an M.A. in Human Rights and is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Leicester, UK, researching Jeju environmental policy. He has spent eight years on Jeju Island including three years in his previous role as the editor-in-chief of The Jeju Weekly newspaper.