76th Anniversary of Jeju Island People’s Uprising

Historic Affirmation of Korean Sovereignty Lives On in Militant Opposition to U.S. Imperialists Today

“Jeju Uprising” by artist Kang Yobae, born in Jeju in 1952.

Seventy-six years ago, on April 3, 1948, the people of Jeju Island rose up heroically against the U.S. occupation and division of their country to affirm their right to sovereignty, independence and peace. Jeju Island is the largest island of Korea, located 80 kilometres off the southeast coast of the Korean Peninsula. This event lives on in the historical memory of the entire Korean people and continues to inspire their firm resolve to expel the U.S. military occupiers from south Korea (Republic of Korea), put an end to the U.S.-led war exercises against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and to achieve peace and the reunification of their divided nation.

The Korean people, who played a role second to none in the defeat of Japan and the Axis forces at the end of the Second World War, were brutally deprived by the U.S. of their right as victors to enjoy the fruits of their victory. The Korean people militantly resisted the 35-year occupation of their country (1910-1945) by the Japanese militarists who had turned Korea into their colony and enslaved the Korean people.

Prior to the liberation of Korea on August 15, 1945, the U.S. imperialists unilaterally divided Korea in two in order to establish their base on the mainland of the Asian continent to achieve their dream of world domination after World War Two. At the time, a joint U.S. Army-Navy intelligence study reported that the vast majority of Koreans expressed a strong desire for independence and self-rule, and were vehemently opposed to control by any successor to the hated Japanese who had ruled them since 1910. A subsequent U.S. study reported that nearly 80 per cent of Koreans wanted a system of governance based on socialist principles, rather than capitalism.

“The People’s Committee” by Kang Yobae

Following their victory over the Japanese on August 15, 1945, the Korean people, organized in People’s Committees across the country, wasted no time in organizing themselves to consolidate their victory by establishing the Korean People’s Republic which they proclaimed in Seoul on September 6, 1945. This nascent republic was dismantled by force by the U.S. imperialists who arrived in south Korea two days later to officially receive the Japanese surrender. They proceeded to unilaterally impose a government deemed “democratic” that would be subservient to U.S. interests in Korea. In the north, where the Japanese surrender was received by the Soviet Red Army which had participated in the liberation of Korea from Japanese occupation at the latter stages of the war, the Red Army assisted the People’s Committees and their elected leaders to put in place a provisional government that implemented wide scale reforms such as land redistribution, a system of public health and education and other measures. By 1948, the last of the Red Army withdrew from Korean territory.

In the south the Korean people resisted the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) which ruled over the people with an iron fist. One of the first things the USAMGIK did was to put former Japanese officers and Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese military occupiers of Korea in positions of power. It outlawed gatherings of Koreans protesting the U.S. occupation, persecuted and massacred civilians who were deemed communist or socialists, and imprisoned tens of thousands of Korean patriots.

In an attempt to legitimize their rule, the U.S. organized the UN Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), with Canada playing a prominent role, to organize “free and fair” elections throughout the country in May 1948, which the Korean people rejected. It was only when it became clear that the unification of the country was not immediately possible because of the U.S. military occupation that Kim Il Sung, the leader of the Korean people’s resistance to Japanese occupation, declared the founding of the DPRK on September 9, 1948 to ensure that the Korean people had a revolutionary base to achieve their total independence and sovereignty.

U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, after the U.S. had divided Korea, imposes Syngman Rhee as “president” of the southern part. Rhee in turn holds bogus elections in May 1948 to codify the division.

According to information from the April 3 Research Institute, the Jeju People’s Uprising began April 3, 1948, and raged for almost two years island-wide, continuing in various forms till September 1954.

The event that triggered the Jeju People’s Uprising took place on March 1, 1948 when the islanders not only marked Independence Movement Day but also protested the fraudulent elections planned for May 10 by the U.S. with the support of the UNTCOK.

The Jeju island protest was met with brutal force when police, under direct orders from the USAMGIK, killing six and wounding several others. In response, the people attacked local police stations, burned polling stations being readied for the May 10 elections and attacked reactionary government and military officials. The U.S. military government and their local paramilitary forces retaliated with great force, killing and imprisoning suspected “leftists” and “communists” and other patriotic forces on the island. By April 3, a full-scale rebellion had begun. From then on the people organized themselves into guerilla bands, calling themselves the “People’s Army” and resisted across the island against the most savage repression of the U.S. and the newly installed puppet government of Syngman Rhee.

Mass imprisonment of suspected communists begins on Jeju Island in 1948, to quell the people’s refusal to submit to foreign dictate.

Depiction of the beginning of the Jeju Massacre on April 3, 1948, by Kang Yobae based on witness statements.

Of the 250,000 people living on Jeju Island, it is estimated that up to 80,000 people were killed. Upwards of 5,000 people fled to Japan as refugees. Countless others were “disappeared.” Over 40,000 homes were destroyed and of 400 villages only 170 were left standing. The bodies of people killed and buried in mass graves are still being discovered today.

For more than 50 years it was forbidden for Jeju Islanders or anyone in south Korea to speak openly about the Jeju People’s Uprising. Those who did faced imprisonment. In January 2000, under the Presidency of Kim Dae-jung in the Republic of Korea (ROK) a special law was passed that required the government to look into the truth of what is called the 4.3 Incident. The Jeju People’s Uprising and the bloody repression that followed has also been investigated through various Korea Truth Commission War Crimes Tribunals which have found U.S. and its allies guilty of crimes against the Korean people, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and war crimes. The government of ROK president Moon Jae-in in 2017 made a public apology to the victims of the Jeju Island massacre and their families and inaugurated the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park where the remains of the victims recovered so far have been interred. Each year the people of Korea hold vigils and other events to mark April 3 and to honour the people who gave their lives for Korea’s freedom.

Some of the legion of children orphaned by the Jeju Massacre, shown here attempting to flee to safety.

Today the spirit of the Jeju People’s Uprising lives on in daily protests taking place on the island at the U.S. naval base in Gangjeong Village, to demand that the naval base be closed and the U.S. military leave the island and Korea. The base, which took 23 years to build, was imposed on the people of Jeju who seven times stopped its construction. The base serves the U.S. Indo-Pacific military strategy to contain and threaten China and control the waters around the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea. It is noteworthy that Canadian warships involved in U.S.-military exercises targeting the DPRK have docked at the base as well.

Today the people of Jeju Island are in the forefront of demanding that U.S. troops leave Korea and an end to the U.S.-south Korean military exercises which threaten the very being of the Korean people and peoples of the region.

Press conference and picket in Seoul, March 7, 2023, calls for end to U.S.-ROK annual Freedom Shield military exercises.

Activists protest at the U.S. naval base on Jeju Island, south Korea, June 20, 2017, to oppose the arrival of warships from the U.S., Canada and south Korea for military exercises.