75Th Commemorating the Victims of the Jeju April 3 Incident

Date and Time:

Thursday, April 6, 6 pm

followed by a reception at 7 pm.

Location

7th floor, Cabot Intercultural Center, Tufts Fletcher School

160 Packard Ave., Medford, MA

Host: Jeju 4.3 Memorial and Families Association of the U.S.

Support organizer: Jeju 4·3 International Network for Truth and Justice, Memorial Committee for the Jeju April 3rd Uprising and Massacre, Fletcher School North Korea Working Group

Sponsor: Jeju Special Self-Governing Province

RSVP: info@waldenkorea.org

Tel) 617-849-8433

The Boston-based Jeju 4.3 Memorial and Families Association of the U.S. strives to raise awareness on the tragic historical event known as the Jeju Massacre, urge the United States to uncover the truth and issue an apology, prevent future generations from repeating the same mistakes, and contribute to the development of a society that respects and protects justice, human rights, and peace.

The Jeju 4.3 Incident, a tragedy in modern Korean history, resulted in the killings of 30,000 people by the military and police during seven years and seven months of unrest from March 1947 until September 1954. Some scholars consider the Jeju 4.3 Incident as the starting point of the Cold War in Northeast Asia. In 2021, South Korea’s ruling and opposition parties passed the amendment to the Jeju 4.3 Special Act, making some progress in restoring the honor of the victims. However, the bereaved families of the Jeju 4.3 victims still face a challenging path amid ideological conflicts.

The U.S. military government, which held operational control of the Korean military during the most intense period of the crackdown,1948-1949, provided weapons to the Korean military and was directly and indirectly involved in the slaughter of Jeju residents, branding them as communists. In December 2022, our organization held the Jeju 4.3 Conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a U.S. Congressional think tank, and visited the U.S. Congress to urge them to uncover the truth about the Jeju 4.3 Incident.

Each year, the Commemoration of the Victims of the Jeju April 3 Incident is held on April 3 in Jeju, Korea. This date is the official memorial day of the Republic of Korea's government. It has now been 75 years since the Jeju 4.3 Incident.

In the United States, the Jeju 4.3 Victims Memorial Ceremony officially began last year. We invite you to attend this event to commemorate the victims of the Jeju 4.3 Incident and strengthen our bonds of friendship in the name of human rights that transcend ideology. A reception will follow the event from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. Please RSVP to confirm your attendance.

Walden Korea signs Agreement with Koryo People's Cultural Center, Incheon, Korea

Ms.Suyeon Yang and President SON JUNG JIN at Nomo Inchon Koryoin Cultural Center

Walden Korea signed a business agree­ment with the Korea Support Center/ Koryo People's Cultural Center <Beyond Incheon> in Hambak Village, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, Korea, with the view toward promoting the history of Primorsky, Manchuria, and the Korean Peninsula to the world. Hambak Village is Korea's largest single ethnric village, where 7,000 Goryeo (Koryo) people live together as a community.

The term "Goryeo people" refers to the Korean people living in the entire Union of Independent States (Uzbekistan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, etc.) after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

In the spring of 2019, which marked the 100th an­niversary of the March 1st Independence Movement and the establishment of the Korean Provisional Gov­ernment, President Moon Jae-In visited Uzbekistan and said, "The first generation of Goryeo people are all independence fighters and patriots:'

In 1863, the Korean people who crossed the Tumen River and moved to Primorsky Land formed a Korean village, which became the main stage of the indepen­dence movement, including, later on, the base of the Korean Liberation Army. The flames ofindependence activists, such as the Maritime Movement, the April disaster, and the Goryeo Revolutionary Armed Forces, were extinguished in 1937by the tragedy of forced mi­gration to Central Asia. Tens of thousands of Goryeo people died in the Siberian field. Abandoned in the middle of Central Asia, the Goryeo people pioneered in cultivating the barren land, settled collective farms, and labored like heroes, forming a community and fos­tering the next generation. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, they moved to various parts of Eurasia and ultimately entered South Korea in 2007.

However, although the Goryeo people are descen­dants of independence fighters, they are not recog­nized as Koreans and are not receiving proper edu­cational benefits. Ethnric Koreans tribe (Josun-jok) from China speak Korean fluently, and have widely en­tered the Korean workforce. But most Goryeo people, due to their lack of fluency in Korean, have no choice but to live within the confines of their residential towns such as Hambak Village. After 1945, the Soviet Union banned the teaching of Korean language.

Many of the Goryeo people who had resettled in South Korea were highly-educated professionals in their former countries, such as doctors and professors. But when they came to Korea, most of the jobs avail­able to them were work for minimum wage.

Walden Korea will start a modern and contempo­rary Korean history trip, bringing second generation Korean students and U.S. residents to South Korea. In the village of the Goryeo people, visitors from the U.S. will meet the descendants of the anti-Japanese move­ment and learn more about the Korean diaspora. They will also visit the truce line in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and learn about North-South relations. Finally, they will also learn about the Jeju 4.3 Massacre. ■