Crows, Oranges, and Graves: Jeju Island and the Contested Memory of a Massacre

In a climactic scene from Hyun Gi-young’s 1978 novel Sun-I Samch’on crows feast in a field of corpses, victims of a mass murder of unarmed civilians from Bukchon village. This fictional recounting of state violence was one of few memorial acts possible at the time: indeed, the book and author were sanctioned. From 1947 to 1954 the residents of Jeju Island were subjected to political oppression and violence at the hands of the new South Korean state, aided by the military and state apparatus of the United States. Jeju, like the rest of South Korea, was poised to enter a new phase of its history. The brutal Jeju Massacre, which lasted over a year, killed more than 14,000 people, including many unarmed villagers considered to be Communists by the mainland Korean government and its American partner. In the 1960s, the South Korean government undertook heavy investment and a rewriting of Jeju’s history, emphasizing a “Hawaii of Korea” narrative, promoting citrus cultivation, and giving rise to a heavy-traffic tourist economy that dominates the island today. The entire Jeju Massacre episode was officially suppressed by the Republic of Korea government until the democracy era began in the 1990s. Only in much more recent years, through the work of the 4.3 Peace Park, have the grim historical truths emerged. Forensic archaeology efforts underway today still lead to the identification of victims, and as such the memorialization process is ongoing—truthful crows in counterpoint to the oranges of forgetfulness, and a new economy. The intertwined national imperatives and revisions exacerbate efforts of Jeju residents to tell their stories and craft a memorial process that will lead to reconciliation. This paper examines the slow disaster of Jeju Massacre history—a contested archive made of documents, but also bones, animals, and plants.