Remembering Jeju 4.3 incident

A while back we highlighted the inclusion of a painful chapter in Jeju's history in UNESCO's documentary heritage.

Well today we expand on that event by sharing with you the journey from loss to healing.

My colleague Ahn Sung-jin reports from the southern island.

The search for answers still continues nearly 80 years after the Jeju April 3rd incident.

Mr. Yang's grandfather was one of the missing from the incident.

Only around ten years ago did he find out his grandfather had died in prison.

"I still get emotional every time I talk about it, but the older I get, the more I understand the hardships of what my grandpa went through. I work on understanding the pain of those who have passed away."

Mr. Yang works for the association of victim's families from the Jeju 4.3 incident.

There are some 4-thousand tombstones of the missing victims that the families still mourn.

The Jeju 4.3 incident traces back to an uprising on the island in the late 1940s, at a time when South Korea was still working on forming its own government.

Following discontent over the election process and economic hardships, the Worker's Party of South Korea launched an armed uprising, which the government violently suppressed.

Many were killed by the government forces and others allegedly involved in the uprising were sent to prison and tortured. Many like Mr. Yang's grandfather died in prison.

"The reason this stone can't be placed is because this still doesn't have a name to it. Some call it a massacre, some say it's a revolt, but there has been no name given to it."

Around 30-thousand people are thought to have died.

More than 30 percent of them were elderly, children or women who were not affiliated with any of the combatants.

"Those who know the past and the story behind it, work on raising awareness so more people recognize the value and significance of what happened here."

The Jeju April 3rd incident became the background for Nobel Prize literature winner Han Kang's book "We do not part", discussing humanity and the survivors of the incident.

"I read testimonies from massacre survivors, pored over materials, and then, in as restrained a manner as I could without looking away from the brutal details that felt almost impossible to put into words, I wrote what became 'We Do Not Part'."

To make sure the incident and the victims are not forgotten, the Jeju 4.3 archives have been designated as a UNESCO Memory of the World.

The documents in the archives illustrated the underlying human stories of Jeju.

Time passes but what remains important is that people continue to remember.

Ahn Sung-jin, Arirang News, Jeju.