Women on the Red Island: Women’s Memories of Violence during the Jeju April 3rd Massacres, 1947–54

The devastating years of massacre known as the Jeju 4.3 Incident (1947-1954) was conducted by punitive state forces sent to Jeju Island, South Korea, under the banner of wiping out "the Reds." The outburst of hypermasculinity that characterizes anti-communist nationalism inflicted particular forms of gendered violence on women, including rape, sexual torture, and killings. Women were also forced to stand witness or to participate in public killings of families and villagers. Such coerced forms of violence complicated the victim/victimizer dichotomy and left an irreparable trauma, which later also contributed to silencing the surviving women living in a close-knit, family-based island community.

Focusing on Jeju’s spatiality as an island, this presentation investigates the dynamics between male perpetrators dispatched from the mainland and women on the island during the 4.3 Massacres. The United States Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) and South Korean government perceived the entire island population as “the Reds.” Combined with Jeju Island’s position as a Cold War outpost, the violence on women islanders during the 4.3 Incident was a form of anticommunist violence on the female body politicized as “Red.” Even though the testimonies of sexual violence have failed to claim space in the public discourse, they survived in the form of oral history, and women stood at the forefront of reconstructing the devastated island community after the massacres. Understanding the nature of gendered violence during the 4.3 Massacres provide the gateway to examine the impacts of global Cold War and American design of the post-World War Two Asia on the island in the empire’s periphery.