South Korean island invites tourists to learn about massacre after 70 years of enforced silence

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. When the shootings were over in Bukchon, South Korea, 300 bodies, clad in traditional white clothes, were strewn across a nearby farm patch and rocky pine grove, looking “like so many freshly pulled radishes”, as survivors of the attack on 17 January 1949, described it. After decades of a strictly enforced silence, Jeju Island, where this and many similar atrocities took place, is now inviting visitors to learn firsthand about one of the ugliest chapters in modern Korean history. “Jeju is no longer the tourist destination I used to know,” said Lee Hang-ran, 32, a schoolteacher from mainland South Korea, after visiting Bukchon. Conservative activists still define the island’s uprising as “riots.” “Where I come from, if you talk about things like the way the government oppressed the Jeju people, you are likely branded as a ‘red’,” said Jang Soo-kyeong, 48, who took a recent tour of the island and lives in Daegu, a conservative city in mainland South Korea.