Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2014. viii, 223 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8014-5239-0.
The disastrous events of 1947 to 1954 on Jeju Island are still little known to those outside of Korea. The story of the protracted quest for truth and justice that followed them are even less so. Hun Joon Kim recounts the history of this quest in his informative and well-written new book The Massacres at Mt. Halla. It is an important case study for scholars of the transitional justice process to learn from, and is also relevant for our understanding of the contemporary politics of truth commissions in South Korea.
The beginning of Kim’s book consists of a description of the events themselves. In short, a leftist uprising on Jeju Island was brutally suppressed by the authorities (first, the US military government and, after 1948, the Republic of Korea), with thousands of locals brutally abused despite little or no connection to the initial uprising. During these years, an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 civilians were killed or wounded, with state agents responsible for 84.4 percent of the casualties (12).
Kim then proceeds to relate the story of the local activists’ quest for truth and justice. During the period of 1954 to 1987, when Korea was ruled by a succession of authoritarian presidents, remembrance of the Jeju events was effectively suppressed, with an aborted attempt at truth-seeking only occurring during a brief period of liberalization in 1960. With the beginning of Korea’s transition to democracy in 1987, local activists gradually began to find more room for action. While political conditions remained unfavourable at the national level, courageous students and journalists began to investigate the long-ignored memories of abuse, and local civil society groups began to engage in memorialization and press the government for truth-seeking and rehabilitation.
The third section describes the establishment and operation of the Jeju Commission (2000–2003). The Commission is, in Kim’s narrative, the truth-finding climax, reached after years of work by local activists. Kim relates the political challenges that the Commission faced at all stages from military and police representatives, but argues that these challenges were overcome through the persistence of activists and the power of the truth, as strategically uncovered by local investigators. In Kim’s telling, Kim Dae-jung and the Seoul authorities were indispensable to the Commission’s establishment but were not the most important driving forces; rather, local activists were at all times critical in maintaining forward progress. This section culminates with a discussion of the Commission’s impact. In brief, Kim sees the Commission as a success, at least judging by the implementation of most of its recommendations (158). Kim also argues that the Jeju Commission succeeded where the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed because the Jeju Commission “had a single and historical story to tell” while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported on individual truth without a strong narrative (161). I found this argument relatively unconvincing, however; there were other political reasons for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s comparative lack of success, mostly due to the simple fact that its final report was issued during the Lee Myung-bak administration, while the Jeju Commission’s report was issued under the far more receptive Roh Moo-hyun administration.
In the concluding chapter, Kim claims that his research “suggest[s] that social movement theory and transnational advocacy networks provide useful conceptual frameworks for capturing the process of delayed truth commission establishment” (163), while rightfully noting that although transnational advocacy networks theory stresses the importance of both international and domestic pressure, in the Jeju case, pressure came mainly from local sources (165). Next, he relates that many of the local activists believe that ghosts helped them successfully press for truth and justice. The discussion of ghosts is interesting but out of place in his conclusion chapter. Finally, Kim comes up with a suggestion and two lessons that can be drawn from his research. His suggestion is that the experience of the Jeju Commission should be internationalized by, for example, translating key documents (170–172). The first lesson Kim draws is that despite its political setbacks, there is still hope for a successful legacy for the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission because of the continuing advocacy of passionate and devoted activists (172–173). The second lesson is that there are both limitations and advantages to the delayed establishment of a truth commission, and that belated truth commissions can be helped by cultural activism and indisputable evidence (174–175).
Overall, Kim’s book works well as a case study of a little-researched but fascinating quest for justice, and will be of interest to both historians of Korea’s recent past and political scientists studying how truth commissions can successfully be established even decades after the commission of atrocities. Kim’s (convincing) conclusion that local activists played the critical role in establishing the Jeju Commission also represents an important contribution to the ongoing academic debate on the reasons for the spread of truth commissions around the world. The suggestions and implications that Kim draws from his research are largely sensible, and provide the basis for further research. Upon finishing reading Kim’s book, I was left wanting to learn more about this aspect of Korea’s modern history, which is surely one sign of a successful text.
Andrew Wolman
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea
pp. 913-915