“Tell the truth!” Even with a gun pointed at him, “I do not know”… The lie of a father saved a village - 경향신문
This article was translated by an AI tool. Feedback Here.
On the 10th of last month, at her home in Sinheung 1-ri, Namwon-eup, Seogwipo-si, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, Kim Bok-soon (91), daughter of ‘the “I do not know” village head’ Kim Seong-hongwho saved villagers’ lives by answering “I do not know” throughout the suppression forces’ interrogations during the Jeju 4·3 Incidentspeaks with the Kyunghyang Shinmun. Cho Hae-ram
On a winter night in 1948 when snow was dumping down, thirteen-year-old Kim Bok-soon was called out of bed at midnight. That winter, it happened often.
As she slowly opened her sleepy eyes, the scene inside the house came into view. Her father, the village head (guzhang), sat facing four or five policemen. They had abruptly dropped by, saying they were hungry on patrol. Her father, Kim Seong-hong, told Kim Bok-soon to bring out a meal table. With her older sisters married off and her older brother away studying, the household chores fell to the sixth child, Bok-soon.
It was a winter night near midnight. Braving the night wind and snow, Bok-soon walked to the kitchen garden. Even on barren Jeju, the Sinheung 1 District (now Sinheung 1-ri, Namwon-eup, Seogwipo) where she lived was especially harsh. Crouching in the plot and scraping the dark soil hard with her fingers, she could barely pull up a few vegetables like young garlic shoots. She shook off the dirt, made side dishes, boiled soup, and set out a table with a few pieces of salted sandfish; the policemen wolfed it down.
“Goodness, a meal keeps you alive.”
Reawakened, the policemen headed back out on patrol. Only then did Bok-soon breathe a sigh of relief. “Whenever three showed up, we fed them; when two came, we fed them,” but no matter how often she saw them, the policemen were only frightening.
On the morning of April 2, 2021, the day before the 73rd anniversary of the Jeju 4·3 Incident, bereaved families of victims visit the stone markers for the missing in the Jeju 4·3 Peace Park in Bonggae-dong, Jeju City, to console the spirits of the dead. Kwon Do-hyun
It was a terrifying winter. All over the island, people were being killed day after day. It was the very midst of the 4·3 Incident, in which the ideological conflict between left and right exploded after Liberation and countless civilians were massacred. Elderly Jeju residents who lived through that time call it ‘the situation’. To them, there is only that one situationsomething that can neither be forgotten nor compared with anything else.
The winter when Bok-soon was gathering young garlic was when the situation raged most savagely. It was because of the evacuation order the 9th Regiment of the National Defense Guard stationed on Jeju issued on October 17 that year: the command to disperse residents to other places).
“… During the period of military operations thereafter, an unauthorized travel ban is proclaimed for all points beyond 5㎞ from the island’s coastline and for mountainous areas. Anyone who violates this proclamation, regardless of reason, shall be deemed a bandit group and will be executed by firing squad.”
It was the beginning of the ‘scorched-earth operation’ that continued into the following spring. The reins on massacre were loosed. Government forces and right-wing youth groups such as the Northwest Youth Association swept through mid-mountain villages, burning houses and killing civilians. Because they looked smart, because they answered poorly, because they were young, because they were old, because they displeased them, because they could not walk well, in place of a missing relativethey killed indiscriminately.
Soldiers of the 9th Regiment, the core of the suppression forces, were especially at the forefront of the killings. A U.S. military secret report at the time analyzed that the 9th Regiment, about to rotate with the 2nd Regiment in Daejeon, had “a desire to conduct operations at a high level and to measure up to the achievements of the 2nd Regiment (which suppressed the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident).” In other words, before dearture they were intent on maximizing their record, and so focused on massacre. According to additional fact-finding by the Jeju 4·3 Peace Foundation, 67.2% of the 14,442 victims (recognized as of 2020) of the 4·3 Incident occurred during the scorched-earth operation. Of the dead, 78.7% lost their lives to the suppression forces. The ‘mountain people (armed units of the South Korean Labor Party)’ who came down at night after the suppression forces had passed were also a source of terror.
A field investigation team from the Jeju 4·3 Research Institute examines the interior of Darangshi Cave, about 6㎞ southwest of Sehwa-ri, Gujwa-eup, Bukjeju-gun, where the remains of 11 individuals presumed to be victims of the 4·3 Incident were found. Kyunghyang Shinmun file photo
Bok-soon saw the suppression forces bind young men’s wrists with thick ropes used to load cargo on oxen and take them away. They dragged the youths near Cheonjiyeon in Seogwipo, lining them up along the seaside cliffs one by one. There was a bang, then a splash. Again a bang, again a splash. The youths who had been taken were all dead. The suppression forces also tricked some thirty people by saying, ‘If anyone who has ever given even a doe of rice to the armed units surrenders, we will spare you.’ They never returned.
Bok-soon also saw flames rise in Sumang-ri, the village up the hill. Those who were driven out built shacks along the roadside. People stabbed others to death with bamboo spears fitted with blades. At night she feared that armed units would emerge from the pitch-black darkness of Hallasan. They had killed her father’s predecessor as village head. Bok-soon and the residents gathered stones to build seongdam (stone walls) and took turns standing guard. Their teeth chattered in the winter cold of the night. The frightening policemen would be back again tonight for a free meal.
While Bok-soon worked the fields and cooked, her father, village head Kim Seong-hong, was summoned to the Namwon-eup police substation (the local police office, today’s precinct) day and night.
With guns leveled at the chest of the village head representing the 150 or so households of Sinheung 1 District, the police asked what the residents’ leanings were and where the runaways were hiding. Her father opened his mouth.
“I do not know.” Whatever the police asked, her father answered the same. Beating and torture did not change it; nor did coaxing; nor did the threat to shoot him dead. It was a time when a single careless word could get someone killed and a village burned to the ground. Perhaps he thought that if he could protect the villagers, he would gladly become an illiterate bumpkin. He would even leave official documents he had to process untouched, saying he knew nothing.
Even after the scorched-earth operation ended, the situation continued for years. Her father, too, was summoned by the police again and again. Even then, he repeated only “Do not know,” “I do not know.” Before long, the nickname ‘the “I do not know” village head’ stuck to him. Bok-soon remembers that the police coined the nickname.
On the 10th of last month, a sign stands in Sinheung 1-ri, Namwon-eup, Seogwipo-si, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, commemorating ‘the “I do not know” village head’ Kim Seong-hong. Cho Hae-ram
“Even if we threaten this old man with death no matter what, he will not speak; he only says he does not know, so let us call him the ‘I do not know’ village head.” (This grandfather would not speak no matter how much they threatened to kill him, and only said he did not know, so they said they would call him the ‘I do not know’ village head.)
The villagers spoke that nickname, coined by the police in a fit of anger, with respect. They knew that a man renowned for his learning could not really know nothing. Each time the ‘I do not know’ village head endured beatings and threats and kept saying he did not know, a villager who might have died lived.
On Jeju, stories are often told of local notables and officials who protected people from the whirlwind of massacre. The best known is former Seongsanpo Police Chief Moon Hyeong-sun. During the 4·3 Incident he protected about 100 residents from the threats of the Northwest Youth Association, and during the Korean War he refused an order from above to massacre members of the National Guidance League, stating ‘it is unjust and will not be carried out’. Sergeant Jang Seong-sun, who was dispatched in 1949 as head of the police unit to the village of the ‘I do not know’ village head, also saved many people, saying, “We will draw a line under what has passed.”
Mr. Im of Ongpo-ri in Hallim-myeon (now Hallim-eup, Jeju City) was one such notable. In November 1948, people from Geumak-ri in the mid-mountain area were coming down to the coastal Ongpo-ri under the suppression forces’ evacuation order. Twenty-three-year-old Hong Byeong-ik, who came with his father, was especially anxious. His older brother, who had studied in a night school with local youths, disappeared on his way down from the mountains. The police, suspecting that the brother had ‘gone up the mountain’ by following the South Korean Workers’ Party, put pressure on Hong Byeong-ik. With talk that he would be killed in his brother’s stead unless he brought him in, he hid on the small islet of Biyangdo across the water.
On the 10th of last month on the coast of Ongpo-ri, Hallim-eup, Jeju City, Hong Chang-bu (61) looks toward Biyangdo, where his father, Hong Byeong-ik, hid to escape massacre during the 4·3 Incident. Cho Hae-ram
Each night when the suppression forces slept, Hong Byeong-ik secretly crossed the sea by small boat to get barley rice; Mr. Im worried about him. Before the rough winter sea could swallow the young man, Mr. Im took him in as a farmhand and protected him, saying he would save him. The police came three times, but each time Mr. Im slaughtered a chicken, set out a table with drinks, and sweet-talked the policemen until they left.
Notables in Ongpo-ri like Mr. Im actively protected the villagers. Neither the suppression forces nor the armed units could easily run roughshod through the village. It was in keeping with the Ongpo people, who had poured soil over a harsh, rock-strewn land for generations to make fields at all costs. Ongpo-ri is one of the few villages with almost no victims from the 4·3 Incident.
It was not only community leaders who could save people. Ordinary rural folk, too, often took others in even amid the terror of guilt by association.
In Sinrye 1 District (now Sinrye 1-ri, Namwon-eup), a quiet mid-mountain village long known as ‘Yecheon’ because it produced many scholars, the situation was drawing closer even to a ten-year-old mountain boy, Jeong Su-hyeon, who loved playing knucklebone games. That spring day, as the children passed beneath the white blossoms of a Chinese fringetree on the way to school, they whispered the rumors they had heard at homethis village had been raided, there had been an uproar, someone had been killed….
A policeman came to stand guard at the principal’s residence. At the teachers’ command to ‘scatter’, the children would flee the classroom and hide in the school orchard. One autumn day, soldiers took all the grown men who were cutting hay at the ranch to the police station and held them for three days. And in winter, tragedy began in Sinrye 1 District as well.
On the 8th of last month at the Sinrye 1-ri office in Namwon-eup, Seogwipo-si, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, Jeong Su-hyeon (left, 88) and Yang Wan-ho (97) recount how, during the 4·3 Incident, residents of Sinrye 2-ri helped secure shelter for villagers. Cho Hae-ram
On December 12, 1948, a little later than other places, an evacuation order was issued in Sinrye 1 District as well. People ground up all the barley they had and packed it, and, following the suppression forces’ order to render the houses unusable by armed units, they stripped off every thatched roof. As residents packed to move, middle-schoolers from a right-wing student group carrying bamboo spears approached. The students picked out several residents and dragged them away. Jeong Su-hyeon’s uncle was among those targeted but was not there, so they took his aunt instead.
“Knowing nothing and trembling,” Jeong walked with the villagers toward the coast. However far they walked, the road that turned its back on home was long. As night fell on the way down, they had to sleep by the roadside. The next morning, at a lawn where the suppression forces were waiting for residents, they seated the young men separately. The forces read down some list. They beat a dozen or so villagers who were called out with clubs. “A truly wretched sound of weeping,” Jeong still remembers. They took them away to be shot or handed them over to the police.
Shaking with fear, the residents arrived in Sinrye 2 District on the coast. At the time, Sinrye 2 had some 50 households, a small village. By contrast, the older Sinrye 1 had about 200 households. Though the refugees far outnumbered the villagers, the people of Sinrye 2 opened their doors wide. Several families moved into each house and lived together. Jeong Su-hyeon’s family, too, was able to borrow the granary of a house they had known since his grandfather’s time. One family lived in the cowshed, another in the kitchen, another in the small room.
Even when those with nowhere to go built shacks on bare ground, the landowners turned a blind eye. The symbiosis of the two villages continued until spring arrived and the scorched-earth operation ended. “The owners did not treat us with the slightest contempt. Do you think they felt no inconvenience? They never showed it…. Back then, it was blessing enough just to be alive.” That is how Jeong remembers that winter.
From mid-mountain Sinrye 1-ri in Namwon-eup, Seogwipo-si, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, looking toward the coastal Sinrye 2-ri, on the 8th of last month. Cho Hae-ram
The situation passed. Time piled up and up to form a stratum. The anti-communist era, in which 4·3 could not even be uttered, also went by. Guilt by association disappeared, and a special law on 4·3 was established. Grievances held back for decades burst forth toward the world. The president visited Jeju and apologized for the violence committed by the state. Memory became history.
On March 26, 2005, some forty elders from Sinrye 1-ri and 2-ri gathered at the Sinrye 1-ri village hall. Jeong Su-hyeon, now a white-haired old man, was there too. He served food to Ms. Oh, the grandmother who had taken him and his family in as a child. At every table, faces with the same stories, only with different features, shared drinks and meals and opened their hearts. The mountain boy Jeong grew into a well-known essayist in Jeju. He also served in public office, including as secretary-general of the provincial council, but whenever time allowed he recorded his childhood memories through essays and poems.
On the 10th of last month in front of a house in Ongpo-ri, Hallim-eup, Jeju City, Hong Chang-bu (61) stands for a photo. This is the home of Mr. Im, the village notable who took in his father, Hong Byeong-ik, as a farmhand and protected him when he faced the threat of massacre by the police during the 4·3 Incident. Cho Hae-ram
Having survived thanks to Mr. Im, Hong Byeong-ik did not return to his hometown of Geumak-ri even after 4·3 ended, but remained in Ongpo-ri. He became a master at building batdam, Jeju’s traditional stone field walls that guard the village, breaking and splitting hard basalt rock. His son, Hong Chang-bu, who grew up on Mr. Im’s story, laer served as the village head who embraced his father. “We are grateful. He also risked his life, for he could easily have been implicated. Before guns and blades, could I do the same…. It is an era that calls for such courage.” Now a senior official in the 4·3 Victims’ Family Association as well, he volunteers to teach about 4·3 to elementary school students whenever he can.
On the 10th of last month, at her home in Sinheung 1-ri, Namwon-eup, Seogwipo-si, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, Kim Bok-soon (91), daughter of ‘the “I do not know” village head’ Kim Seong-hongwho saved villagers’ lives by answering “I do not know” throughout the suppression forces’ interrogations during the Jeju 4·3 Incidentspeaks with the Kyunghyang Shinmun. Cho Hae-ram
After the situation passed, people from Sinheung-ri who had survived thanks to the ‘I do not know’ village head came to see Kim Seong-hong and expressed their thanks again and again. Though he struggled with aftereffects of torture, he was so bright he read the newspaper every day; he passed away in 1982. More than forty years later, in February this year, he was officially recognized as a 4·3 victim.
In the village she helped protect with her father, Kim Bok-soon is living on past ninety. In her youth, “I was first-rate at muljil (a haenyeo’s diving work) and first-rate at banongjil (sewing).” She had a knack for diving, which she began as the situation was drawing to a close. She quickly became a sanggun haenyeo, the highest rank among the women diversone who knows how to dive the deepest and stay under the longest, and return alive. While diving, she also tilled a large field and raised her children.
From time to time, local students came to hear testimony about 4·3. Sitting in a circle before the children, Bok-soon begins her story. The fourteen-year-old Bok-soon who dug up young garlic in the dark kitchen garden that winter, the youngest daughter who helped her ‘I do not know’ father protect the village, travels back through deep, long time to find her voice.
