Transitional Justice Strategies of the National State and Its Archivization: A Study on Liquidation of the Past History of the Jeju April 3 Events

Abstract

This present study focuses on the so-called transitional justice strategies in post-genocide societies, as well as the archivization of deaths through the establishing of national monuments. There are three questions that I am going to address in this paper. Firstly, “How does the nation state that once committed a mass murder of its own people address and redress those deaths by means of so-called transitional justice strategies, and furthermore, how does the nation state integrate this into the national archives?” Secondly, “How are the deaths caused by the genocide archived in the process of transitional justice strategies?” Thirdly, “How do the families of the dead - either adopting or resisting the transitional justice strategy and the archivization of deaths - build justice in the private sphere?” To answer these three questions, I present the Jeju April 3rd Events as an example of slaughters and infringement of human rights committed by the national government in an East Asian society in the middle of the twentieth century, which took place in Jeju, the southernmost island of South Korea, between 1947 and 1954. Then I focus on the missions of the April 3rd Committee for Investigation of the Jeju April 3rd Events and Recovering the Honor of Victims that was established in 2000 as one of transitional justice strategies of South Korean government. I refer to this committee as the April 3rd Committee from now on.