The Jeju Incident

In the early years of the Cold War, as the Korean peninsula was divided and then embroiled in a hot war, an orgy of killing took place on a small island off the southern tip of present-day South Korea. Villages were liquidated. Civilians were massacred. And it began while the U.S. military government still ruled over post-war southern Korea. But the Jeju Incident, known as 4/3 in native tradition, and its bloody aftermath were memory-holed for decades. Today, however, South Koreans want the U.S. to acknowledge its alleged complicity in the suppression of a left-wing uprising that began on April 3, 1948. Rebels attacked police posts across Jeju, provoking a ferocious response from Seoul. In this episode, Washington Times Asia bureau chief Andrew Salmon discusses his reporting on the ghosts of Jeju.