hankyoreh

On Mar. 21

For 71 years, the history of the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident (a series of rebellions resulting from opposition to the far-right, anti-communist Syngman Rhee regime) has been subordinated to ideological concerns, but civilians who were executed for complicity in the rebellion are finally getting a retrial. A favorable outcome in the retrial is expected to boost support for four bills currently pending at the National Assembly that would seek to investigate the incident and restore the reputation of the victims.

On Mar. 21, the full bench of the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Kim Myeong-soo, accepted a petition for a retrial filed by the surviving family members of three individuals (surnamed Jang, then 28; Shin, then 31; and Lee, then 21) who were arrested by the authorities for cooperating with the rebels during the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident and executed by firing squad on the charges of insurrection and disruption of the government’s authority. Hon. Kim Jae-hyung presided over the Supreme Court’s review of the petition.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that the three individuals had been illegally arrested and detained by the authorities without a court warrant and said that the district court had been right in its decision to open a retrial on the grounds of the police’s illegal activity. “We can conclude that civilians were being indiscriminately arrested and detained by the army and the police at this time, without any consistent investigations or review. That is also corroborated by the testimony of those who witnessed the defendants’ apprehension,” the court said.

The Yeosu-Suncheon Incident began on Oct. 19, 1948, when some 2,000 soldiers with the 14th Regiment of the South Korean army, which was stationed in Yeosu, in South Jeolla Province, refused to obey an order to move to suppress the Jeju Uprising. The following day, the rebelling residents captured Suncheon, and government forces didn’t regain control of the two cities until the end of October. Around this time, Jang, the other defendants, their coworkers and other villagers were arrested by the police, sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on a hill nearby.

Though the incident was centered in Yeosu and Suncheon, figures on both the left and the right, as well as innocent civilians, were slaughtered by government authorities throughout North and South Jeolla Province, as well as in Gyeongsang Province, for two years after the incident began, until October 1950. The primary reason was to hunt down those who’d collaborated with the rebels. There were some actual collaborators, of course, but others were killed on false charges or because they’d been forced to provide the rebels with food and shelter. There were also massacres of people who just happened to be living in the army’s area of operations.

When it released the results of its investigation in January 2009, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident had resulted either directly or indirectly in 1,340 fatalities in South Jeolla Province, 23 in North Jeolla Province, 379 in South Gyeongsang Province and 304 in North Gyeongsang Province. The commission also confirmed that more than 430 civilians had been massacred in the area of Suncheon alone. Mentioning the limits of its investigation, the commission said that “the estimated number of victims is just a tiny fraction of the civilians who were actually killed by the army and the police.” An investigation in South Jeolla Province in November 1949 estimated that as many as 11,131 lives had been lost.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings provided the families of Jang and the other defendants with the grounds for requesting a retrial. In Dec. 2014, the Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Court decided to open a retrial, but the prosecutors objected that the court had solely based its decision on the claims of the bereaved families and the historical circumstances in the absence of any records of the investigation or trial. The next July, the Gwangju High Court reaffirmed the lower court’s decision to open a retrial, observing that 15 police officers and 44 soldiers from the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident who’d been interviewed by the commission had acknowledged that civilians had been arbitrarily and unfairly arrested and killed. The prosecutors appealed the case once again, sending it to the Supreme Court in July 2015. After delaying its review for three years and eight months, the court at last upheld the decision to hold a retrial. The retrial will be held at the Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Court.

Among the 13 members of the Supreme Court, Hon. Jo Hee-de and Hon. Lee Dong-won objected to the decision to hold a retrial on the grounds that there was no proof that the police officers had committed crimes on the job, which is the reason given for a retrial. Hon. Park Sang-ok and Hon. Lee Ki-taik joined the dissent, arguing that a criminal case cannot be retried when the charges are unknown.

But the majority of the justices sided with the arguments for holding a retrial. “The fact that the executions were carried out can be ascertained from press reports at the time and from the sentence execution order, which contains information about the court’s decision and the names of the defendants. The death sentence itself has not been found, but it’s the responsibility of the state to compose and preserve judicial sentences,” the justices said in the majority decision.

By Choi Woo-ri, staff reporter

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