Unspeakable to Speakable Truth : Transitional Justice Process of April 3 Events

Abstract

How does an institutionalized permanent truth commission influence the social discourse? The unspeakable truth of the April 3 Events had long been buried under South Korea’s authoritarian regimes, but the state’s democratization brought momentum for a new socio-political environment. This paper provides empirical findings of the truth commission’s contribution to promoting an open discussion of the April 3 Events in society by capturing the overall discourse transformation of the events through content analysis of newspapers, dated between 1997 and 2020 at the national and local level. It argues that the long-term transitional justice process, mainly led by the Truth Commission, was effective in promoting the open discussion of diverse aspects of the April 3 Events, a previously unspeakable topic to the speakable. However, the social discourses eventually developed into distinctive patterns at each level: the local level demonstrated a narrow approach and institutionalized aspect of transitional justice, taking up 88 percent of the entire newspaper coverage, while the national level displayed a broader approach.