The poet-journalist sibling duo dedicating their lives to telling the story of the April 3 Incident

Heo Younger-sun and Heo Ho-Joon pay their respects to these killed within the Jeju April 3 Incident on the entrance to Darangswi Cave, within the northeast a part of Jeju Island, on March 23, 2026, with an providing of their just lately revealed books on the bloody interval of Korean historical past. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

It was a transparent spring day after we visited Darangswi Cave, within the northeast a part of Jeju Island, on March 23. From our automotive, Darangswi Oreum — thought-about the queen of Jeju’s parasitic cones — might be seen in its full magnificence.

“The primary time I got here right here, I needed to hack by way of the underbrush,” recalled Heo Ho-joon, who drove us alongside a well-paved street.

Heo Younger-sun, his older sister, purchased a bottle of water and a field of youngsters’s cookies at a comfort retailer close by. “The individuals in that cave should have been parched,” she stated.

After reaching the cave entrance, Ho-joon and Younger-sun lay their newly revealed books on the bottom.

“It took me 34 years to supply up these books,” Ho-joon stated, a conflicted look flashing throughout his face. 

“I wrote these poems for the ladies and kids [killed during the Jeju April 3 Incident],” Younger-sun stated.

Beside the straightforward providing of tangerines, water and cookies bloomed a single white wildflower, which regarded misplaced, virtually synthetic.

“Are there flowers over there? I see a flower coming into bloom right here,” Younger-sun stated, her offhand comment each a witness of spring and a poetic tribute to the victims of the incident.

Subsequent to their providing of a mandarin orange, water and a snack, a small white wild flower was blooming. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

It was Ho-joon who entered Darangswi Collapse April 1992 as a part of a reporting venture. His articles introduced public consideration to the 11 our bodies discovered within the cave, which included girls and kids.

They have been victims of the Korean authorities’s brutal crackdown on communist guerrillas in the course of the Jeju April 3 Incident, a bloody interval often called the Jeju Rebellion or Jeju Bloodbath, which was triggered in 1947 and started in earnest in 1948. 

When Jeju islanders taking refuge within the cafe refused to return out, troopers first threw in grenades after which set straw on fireplace, suffocating them to dying.

The bloodbath at Darangswi Cave introduced the horrors of the Jeju April 3 Incident to most people’s consciousness and galvanized a motion for a full accounting of what had occurred on the island.

The our bodies found within the cave have been cremated and their ashes scattered over the ocean regardless of the opposition of bereaved relations.

Younger-sun learn a couple of traces of poetry inscribed on a memorial stone. “There have been individuals right here. / There was life. / We’re the lifeless. We died, however didn’t die. / We’re those who wander within the smoke, trapped within the smoke at nighttime cave, / those who don’t disappear.”

The writer, I realized, was Younger-sun herself.

Younger-sun and Ho-joon every revealed two books on the anniversary of the Jeju April 3 Incident. Born and raised on Jeju Island, the siblings are self-styled scribes of the rebellion and bloodbath.

Younger-sun was born in Jeju in 1957. She debuted as a poet by successful a contest by Simsang, {a magazine} of poetry and criticism, in 1980. She turned a reporter in 1981 and spent 22 years in that discipline, together with a stint as a senior editor on the Jemin Ilbo newspaper. Later, she served as director of the Jeju 4·3 Analysis Institute.

As a poet and ally, Younger-sun has sought to present literary expression to the incident whereas “taking into consideration the struggling of the ladies and kids who have been most weak to the perils of the struggle that males have been waging.”

As a researcher, she organized the publication of a five-volume sequence referred to as “The Jeju April 3 Incident By way of Girls’s Eyes” between 2019 and 2024.

The quilt of “The Jeju April 3 Incident: Into the Storm of Reminiscence” by Heo Ho-joon, revealed by Hyehwa1117.

Ho-joon, her youthful brother, was born in 1963. After becoming a member of the Hankyoreh in 1989, he spent 36 years looking for the information of the Jeju April 3 Incident. In his profession, he was each a journalist and a scholar, with a doctorate in political science. Since retiring from the Hankyoreh, he has been a visiting researcher on the Ritsumeikan Heart for Korean Research at Ritsumeikan College in Japan.

His new e book, “The Jeju April 3 Incident: Into the Storm of Reminiscence,” is an edited model of a textual content that gained the nonfiction class within the thirteenth Jeju 4·3 Peace Literature Awards final yr.

The e book, which focuses on the Darangswi Cave incident, takes the dual views of 1 determine kidnapped by guerrillas from the Staff’ Get together of South Korea and one other who joined the guerrillas of his personal free will. It gives recent perception into the lives of the guerrillas and state violence and doubles as a meditation on human nature.

“Whereas working as a reporter in Jeju, it was my future to confront the Jeju April 3 Incident. That has been my life’s mission ever since I reported on Darangswi Cave. After all, I had no thought I’d spend greater than 30 years doing that,” Ho-joon noticed.

In “The Jeju April 3 Incident: Historical past Seen By way of the Archive,” revealed on the identical time, Ho-joon organizes the day-to-day historical past from Sept. 23, 1945, to Aug. 9, 1957, into 100 separate scenes. The e book is grounded in his meticulous examination of a variety of sources discovered by way of persevering with analysis in Korea, Japan and the US over the previous 37 years.

The quilt of “The Jeju April 3 Incident: Historical past Seen By way of the Archive” by Heo Ho-joon, revealed by Hyehwa1117.

Now that the incident has been delivered to international consideration by “We Do Not Half,” the most recent novel by Nobel laureate Han Kang, international media from the UK and Taiwan, amongst different locations, have been getting in contact with Ho-joon.

“There have been between 25,000 and 30,000 individuals killed within the Jeju April 3 Incident. Day by day life on the island again then was all historical past — it was one ‘scene’ after one other,” he remarked.

“There are nonetheless so many points of the reality that must be revealed. We’re conscious of the violence dedicated by punitive forces from the police and army and by the Northwest Youth Affiliation, however we nonetheless don’t know the perpetrators of the massacres or the chain of command,” he went on.

One of many e book’s revelations is that 2nd Regiment commander Ham Byeong-seon, one of many foremost figures behind the rebellion’s suppression, was nicknamed “the tiger of Mt. Halla” by the Jeju populace. One other is that the US army was concerned in planning the mop-up operation in opposition to the final guerrilla unit in the course of the Korean Struggle.

The e book additionally makes clear that the ravenous survivors of the massacres have been compelled to make “donations” even heavier than their taxes and to offer labor for the state.

The Jeju 4·3 Peace Park options hundreds of tombstones for victims of the violence who went lacking. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

At a time of excessive tensions in Northeast Asia, Jeju was a spot of geopolitical peril.

“In 1949, China’s Chiang Kai-shek authorities requested that Jeju Island grow to be an air drive base for bomber fleets. When the worldwide order of East Asia was being restructured at first of the Chilly Struggle, Jeju Island garnered a lot strategic curiosity from exterior forces,” he stated. 
 
Whereas Ho-joon located Jeju throughout the context of world historical past, his sister Younger-sun requested survivors to offer oral accounts of what they lived by way of, and listened to individuals testify in court docket. In Room 201 of Jeju District Courtroom, on March 16, 2021, a full-day retrial listening to was held relating to the 333 people who went lacking following unlawful court-martials in the course of the April 3 Incident, in addition to two surviving convicts. Charged with riot and conspiracy to sedition, these individuals lived within the shadows for over 70 years.
 
Younger-sun revealed two collections of poetry portraying the tales of people that had waited 70 years to listen to the phrases, “The defendants are discovered not responsible.” Her assortment “Standing in Entrance of the Unjust Regulation” will be described as a courtroom diary intent on restoring the honour of victims, whereas “We, the Folks Who Weathered Stormy Nights” is a requiem that mourns them.

“Standing in Entrance of the Unjust Regulation” by Heo Younger-sun, revealed by Maumsup.

 
“Witnessing these aged girls, who have been utterly oblivious, standing in entrance of the choose to present their testimonies felt like a historic second, one present in literature and dramatic scenes,” she stated.  

“These individuals of their 70s and 80s, who had at all times been informed by their grandparents and moms to ‘maintain quiet’ for worry of being implicated by affiliation, lined their faces in frustration, sitting there for extended durations. They might additionally touch upon how right this moment was their ‘father’s birthday’ and the way they’d provide the ‘acquittal’ to their father by way of his memorial altar,” she went on. 
 
Younger-sun’s first introduction to the Jeju April 3 Incident was by way of Hyun Ki-young’s 1978 novella “Aunt Suni” (also called “Suni Samchon”), which led her to put in writing, “I really feel an odd premonition,” in her diary. 

“I believe that was the second I understood my life would eternally be certain to that incident,” she informed me. 

“We, the Folks Who Weathered Stormy Nights” by Heo Younger-sun, revealed by Maumsup.

 
Ho-joon slowly turned immersed within the rebellion and bloodbath in Jeju after finishing his necessary army service in Busan and returning to high school in 1987. After turning into a journalist in 1989, he began investigating and researching in earnest in an effort to create an official historic report of the Jeju April 3 Incident.
 
In 2001, he used his trip days and private funds to go to the US to seek for categorized paperwork. Whereas tracing the steps of US army advisers assigned to the Korea Constabulary (the predecessor of the ROK Military) in Jeju in the course of the suppression of the 1948 rebellion that occurred below US army rule, he finally met the previous advisers in particular person and, by way of dogged questioning, obtained their testimonies. 

Lastly, in 2024, the US Division of State issued an official response when requested about its place on the Jeju April 3 Incident. This was the primary time it had issued a touch upon the rebellion and bloodbath. The US State Division characterised the incident as a “horrible tragedy” and one which “we should always always remember.” 
 
“There was by no means an official identify for what occurred on April 3. Everybody referred to it as ‘that incident,’ ‘that occasion,’ ‘these occasions,’ or ‘method again when.’ I believe this drawback was rooted in ideological points,” Ho-joon stated. 

“As Koreans lived by way of the army dictatorship, the assumption that the April 3 Incident was a communist rebellion turned so deeply ingrained within the collective reminiscence. On the time, journalists lacked historic consciousness, too. The 1987 democratization motion and the Could 18 hearings [on the 1980 massacre in Gwangju] have been what modified the tide,” he stated.

Heo Ho-joon factors to a memorial stone bearing the names and particulars of victims killed within the Jeju April 3 Incident at Jeju 4·3 Peace Park. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

For the Heo household, the painful historical past of the incident is private. Their father’s siblings died, and their father additionally spent round a yr behind bars in a detention camp on Jeju, in addition to in a jail on the mainland. Their maternal grandfather served a one-year jail sentence, and their uncle on their mom’s facet served a whopping seven years and 6 months.
 
Though many members of each side of the household have been victims within the April 3 Incident, the occasion itself was not often mentioned. “Hold quiet” was a categorical crucial from the army dictatorship, one which needed to be heeded by everybody in any respect prices.
 
“The neighborhood itself was demolished, and Jeju Island was stained with blood from the April 3 Incident,” Younger-sun stated. “What harm essentially the most was the silence. Everybody at residence stayed quiet, telling everybody to ‘maintain quiet.’ Each family had some hyperlink to the April 3 Incident.”
 
Younger-sun sought to search out the reality with “A Single Fragment.” She wrote the poem after listening to the tales of somebody whose grandfather was imprisoned after working in his fields, somebody whose elder brother went lacking after protesting in opposition to police who have been threatening youngsters, and the spouse of a person whose stays have been discovered at Jeongtteureu Airfield, a web site of civilian massacres. “The Youngsters Who Might Shed Tears” is a chunk of labor that can depart lasting impressions on readers.

Heo Ho-joon and Heo Younger-sun pause for a second at a memorial statue for victims of the Jeju April 3 Incident at Jeju 4·3 Peace Park. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

 
“In case you ask an aged girl in her 90s to speak concerning the April 3 Incident, she is going to say one thing alongside the traces of, ‘It is sort of a star twinkling within the night time sky.’ By way of her harmless, naïve eyes as a younger baby in search of refuge at a shelter, the star should’ve been lovely,” Younger-sun stated. 

“Though 80 years have handed, that sight stays etched in her reminiscence. One out of ten individuals who have been killed within the April 3 Incident have been youngsters. This demonstrates how indiscriminate the bloodbath was, and the dimensions of youngsters slaughtered,” the poet went on.
 
In her second poetry assortment, “The Track of Roots,” revealed in 2004, Heo Younger-sun started to explain the sacrifices and ache endured by the ladies and kids who suffered from the incident. Probably the most well-known poem from that assortment, “The Grandmother in Cotton-cloth — Jin Ah-young of Wolryeong-ri,” describes the lifetime of Ms. Jin, who, in January 1949, misplaced her jaw to a bullet fired by the police and spend the remainder of her life in ache, overlaying what was left of her jaw with a fabric till she died on the age of 90.
 
“I heard the ‘muffled sounds from her throat,’ in addition to her ache and the cries emitting from her physique. I additionally heard her exclaim, ‘Huh, actually?’ within the courtroom after listening to the state’s official response to the April 3 Incident, 70 years after the occasion. That voice hit me like a crashing wave,” Younger-sun stated. 
 
Whereas conversing, the siblings and I walked towards the Jeju 4·3 Peace Park simply across the time the solar was setting. 4,138 memorial stones for the lacking stand on this web site, which opened on March 28, 2008, representing victims whose our bodies have been by no means discovered. The stones bear witness to the dimensions of the bloodbath. 

“On April 3, individuals from each village go to this park to supply meals, carry out rituals, and wipe the names on the stones clear,” Younger-sun stated. 
 
As we walked towards the “Biseol” sculpture — a chunk that greatest represents the spirit of the park — the melancholy melody of the normal Jeju lullaby “Wong-I Jarang” flowed from the basalt partitions surrounding the sculpture.
 
The statue represents the story of Byeon Byeong-saeng (also called Byeon Byeong-ok), who was struck down by gunfire within the mid-mountain area of Mot. Halla within the hamlet of Bonggae, on the snowy day of Jan. 6, 1949. She was holding her toddler daughter in her arms. The unit accountable was the aforementioned regiment of Ham Byeong-seon, the “tiger of Mt. Halla.”

Heo Ho-joon and Heo Younger-sun pause for a second at a sculpture titled “Biseol” at Jeju 4·3 Peace Park honoring a girl named Byeon Byeong-ok and her daughter, who died in the course of the Jeju April 3 Incident. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

 
A newspaper from that day procured by Ho-joon was utterly full of articles on the “heroic battles of Ham Byeong-seon.” Data point out that 153 individuals have been massacred in not more than 4 hours, making it extremely seemingly that Byeon and her daughter have been amongst these killed.
 
“Even now, the kind of atrocities represented by ‘Biseol’ are taking place within the Gaza Strip. We must always not deal with the Jeju April 3 Incident as a historic occasion, however as a query we should proceed to ask ourselves to today,” Heo Ho-joon stated.
 
“I imagine that it’s our obligation to cling to the voices of life which might be disappearing and report them earlier than they fade away solely,” stated Heo Younger-sun.

Heo Ho-joon and Heo Younger-sun pose for photograph on the Jeju 4·3 Peace Park. (Lee You-jin/Hankyoreh)

By Lee You-jin, senior employees author

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