Heo Ho-joon

Senior Correspondent with The Hankyoreh

[Koh Hee-bum, chairman of the Jeju 4·3 Peace Foundation, gives a congratulatory speech at the Jeju 4·3 Memorial Lecture and Concert in Japan.]

Jeju 4·3 Memorial Lecture and Concert held on June 20 in Arakawa-gu in Tokyo, Japan

“Bones covered in mud / start talking quietly / Deep sorrow / as if inhaling the earth / tries to revive / from under the humid ground / Why the sound / didn’t reach / and disappeared / Mud-covered / shoes / how far did you / try to walk / Broken eyeglasses / what did you / try to see there / God / if you exist / why our souls / why our brothers and sisters / were not saved / Jeju Island cries / I’m alive / it screams”

[Park Bo (left) and Ha Young-su, second-generation Koreans in Japan, are presenting a memorial music performance for Jeju 4·3.]

Park Bo, a second-generation Korean musician in Japan, filled the stage with his performance as if he were screaming. The audience that packed the event hall held their breath and focused on his singing. When Park first performed his own song “Jeju 4·3,” applause erupted from the stands.

At 6 p.m. on June 20, “A Memorial Lecture and Concert on the 74^th Anniversary of Jeju 4·3” (hereinafter called the Jeju 4·3 Memorial Lecture and Concert) was held at ART HOTEL Nippori Lungwood in Arakawa-gu in Tokyo, Japan. The event was hosted by the Tokyo Society for Jeju 4·3 (hereinafter called the Tokyo 4·3 Society). Although it had been suspended for three years since the outbreak of the COVID-19, the stands were full of people just like in previous years. Since 1998, the Tokyo 4·3 Society has held a memorial service, lectures, and concerts every April to let Japanese society know about Jeju 4·3. While the Osaka Society for Jeju 4·3 commemorates the anniversary of Jeju 4·3 with a focus on the memorial service, the Tokyo 4·3 Society places more weight on public events such as lectures and concerts. The events hosted by the Tokyo 4·3 Society are widely recognized by Japanese citizens, attracting more Japanese participants than Koreans living in Japan.

According to officials of the Tokyo 4·3 Society, they took lots of issues into consideration before making the last-minute decision to hold a face-to-face event this year, and had to prepare and promote the event with less than two months left left. However, the visitors showed keen interest in the memorial event, which was held for the first time in a while. The program lasted more than three hours, but few people left before the closing of the event.

It was in 1988 on the 40^th anniversary of Jeju 4·3 when Jeju 4·3 was publicly addressed for the first time in history. The first public events were held under the theme of Jeju 4·3, not just in Jeju and Seoul but also in Tokyo, Japan. With this event as momentum, the memorial service for the victims of Jeju 4·3 came to be established in Japan.

[At the entrance of the venue, a display stand was prepared to sell books and other materials related to Jeju 4·3.]

[The audience danced to the music during the Jeju 4·3 Memorial Ceremony and Concert.]

350 people visit the hall with 250 seats, mostly Japanese willing to learn about Jeju 4·3

The display stand for Jeju 4·3-related books and music albums at the entrance of the venue was crowded with visitors as the event was about to start. Some met for the first time in a while and asked after each other, and some welcomed the group of visitors from Jeju.

Oshio Takeshi, an activist at the Arakawa-gu Research Society for the Protection of the Peace Constitution, said, “I learned about this memorial event when I was invited to a research meeting led by Ko Yi-sam, who runs the publishing company Shinkan Sha. This is my second time to attend the memorial service. It is impressive that many Japanese came even during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Another participant named Hatori Mari said with a smile, “I have attended several memorial events on Jeju 4·3. I’m glad to see that the discovery of truth and the restoration of honor proceed steadily.”

The organizers initially expected some 250 visitors, but the number of participants surpassed 350 people by the end. The attendees of the memorial event included Koh Hee-bum, chairman of the Jeju 4·3 Peace Foundation, and other officials of the foundation, as well as those participants representing the Association of the Bereaved Families of Jeju 4·3 Victims and the Jeju provincial government.

The steering committee members of the Tokyo 4·3 Society, including chairman Cho Dong-hyun, play a big role in the success of the annual memorial event in Tokyo. More than half of the steering committee members are Japanese scholars and experts, who have actively engaged in publicizing Jeju 4·3 in Japanese society.

The ceremony began with the recital of a memorial poem by Kim Soon-ae, a Korean residing in Japan, in order to bring the spirits of the deceased victims into the venue. Kim’s recital of the Japanese poem calmed the memorial hall with the accompaniment of Geomungo.

“Who on earth ordered the killing of Jeju residents? It was a crazy time. Your voices collected from under the sea are ringing in the sky after 74 years have passed. The spirits that could not sleep, the years that they had to wander, the noble hearts that had to be exchanged for lives! May the god of wind on Mt. Halla bring them all to gather here.”

The poem recital was followed by the remarks by Cho Dong-hyun, chairman of the Tokyo 4·3 Society. As always, his speech was simple and concise. Cho stated, “The memorial event, which used to be held every year for more than 20 years, has been resumed after three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The leadership of the resistance forces, who rose in the space of liberation against national division and longed for the reunification of Korea, remain excluded from the victims. There also remains a challenging task to put pressure on the United States to make an official apology.” Concluding his remarks, he said, “I am happy that the door to the right path of resolving Jeju 4·3 is now open as the statutory compensation for the victims and exoneration for the wrongfully convicted have become available.

Lecture on the relationship between Jeju 4·3 and post-war Japan given by Prof. Nakano Toshio

Nakano Toshio, a professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and a steering committee member of the Tokyo 4·3 Society, gave a lecture on “Jeju 4·3 Resistance and Japan’s Post-War History. As he spent two years for the paper, the lecture was highly appraised as an insightful examination of Jeju 4·3 and the post-war issues in Japan. Nakano is an expert in the history of Japanese thought and has studied the “continued colonialism” in post-war Japanese society. He approached Jeju 4·3 by looking into the Japanese colonialism that encompasses the Japanese colonial period, the migration of Jeju people to Japan, the liberation of Korea and the subsequent issues, the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty signed during the Korean War, Japan’s postwar reparations, and the Indonesian genocide in the 1960s. His lecture was easy to understand with the analysis of Jeju 4·3 from a new perspective, and received applause from the audience. “We cannot understand Jeju 4·3 if overlooking Japan’s post-war history,” he pointed out. He added: “Considering Jeju 4·3 in Japan is to remember the victims and to demand justice, as well as considering and guaranteeing the dignity of life of Koreans in Japan who are related to Jeju 4·3. It is also to hold Japan accountable for its history of colonialism, to question the ongoing colonialism in Asia, and to realize a fair, decolonized world.” According to his lecture, “Jeju 4·3 was the first massive violence that took place at the turning point of the liberation of Korea toward division and war, and behind it was the invasion of Japan as a modernized colonizing empire, the dissolution of East Asia and reorganization into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere through the colonial rule by the Great Japanese Empire, and the concurrent fight for hegemony staged by the great powers.

[The event hall is filled with the participants in the memorial ceremony and the concert.]

ROK Ambassador to Japan reminisces on commemorating the 40^th anniversary of Jeju 4·3 while studying in Tokyo

Kang Chang-il, ROK Ambassador to Japan, was the first ambassador to attend the Japanese memorial event. The former director and chairman of the Jeju 4·3 Research Institute and a third-term lawmaker reminisced his taking the initiative in organizing a memorial event while studying in Japan. Ambassador Kang, who arrived later than planned this year, said he organized a memorial ceremony marking the 40^th anniversary of Jeju 4·3 in 1988 while studying in Tokyo, in collaboration with novelist Kim Sok-pom and other like-minded friends. According to Kang, people in Japan were introduced to Jeju 4·3 through novels authored by Kim Sok-pom and Kim Si-jong. “In fact, the movement to discover the truth of Jeju 4·3 and restore honor to the victims began in Japan,” he recalled.

He also appraised the movement as a globally recognized example of liquidating the past as well as a movement for peace and mutual prosperity. “Let us make concerted efforts to create a world where people can live in harmony,” he added.

Singer Park Bo, a second-generation Korean living in Japan, performs “Jeju 4·3”

The second part featured a stage performance by Park Bo, a second-generation Korean-Japanese singer. The audience lapsed into silence when he began to sing “Jeju 4·3,” as if letting out a wailing cry from the rough sea. Park’s other song, “I Really Love It,” reversed the atmosphere, warming the hall with amusement. While the singer sang two songs as an encore, the audience stood up and danced to his music.

Kobayashi Yukie, who was invited to the memorial event by a friend, took a Korean language course at Nishogakusha University two years ago when she encountered Jeju 4·3 through “Jiseul,” a film about the historic event. She said it is her understanding that Jeju 4·3 was a case in which residents were slaughtered due to the government’s three-year crackdown. “I heard that the movement to discover the truth and restore honor to the victims led to many achievements, and there is a need to investigate the damage caused to the Korean residents in Japan,” she stressed.

Kim Sok-pom, a 96-year-old novelist, also briefly attended the after-party. Kim could not make it to the ceremony and concert during the day, but took a taxi to the party late in the evening, despite his difficulties with mobility. Kim shared a pleasant conversation with his old friends, including Ambassador Kang Chang-il and Chairman Koh Hee-bum, and encouraged the event organizers.

Kim Minhwan

Professor, Hanshin University

An associate professor at the Peace and Liberal Arts College of Hanshin University, Kim earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology at Seoul National University. The title of his doctoral dissertation is “Comparative Research on the Formation of Peace Memorial Park in East Asia – Focusing on the Cases of Okinawa, Taipei and Jeju Islands”. In the thesis, he identified the war and violence that had occurred in East Asia during the dissolution of the Japanese Empire from the perspective of “violence that gave birth to a state”, not from the perspective of “state violence”. Kim co-authored “Besieged Peace, Refracted War Memory: A Study of Kure, the Naval Port of Hiroshima Bay”, “Road to Okinawa”, and “Border Island, Okinawa: Memory and Identity”. He also participated in the compilation of “Rebirth of Cold War Island, Jinmen” and in the translation of “Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line”. During years of research, he released numerous articles, such as “The Geopolitics of East Asian Border Islands and the Structural Causes of State Violence in the Establishment Phases of the Cold War”, “The Paradox of Postwar Japanese Historiography and the History of Okinawa Prefecture: From Nationalized History to Denationalized History”, and “Controlled Movement and Boundary Adjustment: Focused on Films of Imjin River Bridges”.

After analyzing the “peace parks” (memorial parks) in Jeju, Okinawa, and Taipei for my doctoral dissertation, I wanted to analyze what occurred to visitors to these parks after touring the sites. Although the stories of those who planned and executed memorial exhibitions and the materials that they left behind formed the core of my doctoral paper, I failed to contain the thoughts of the ordinary audiences, which I considered as the limit of my dissertation. For the so-called “audience analysis”, I have looked through the two-month guestbook messages at the Jeju 4·3 Archives Hall of the Jeju 4·3 Peace Park. Unlike my expectation that the substantial amount of the messages would enable a statistical analysis to some extent, I was bewildered as I checked and organized the contents. This is because the messages were mostly filled with the same statement “I will remember.” In particular, there was hardly any exception in the case of the messages left by students. I even wondered if they were told to write the given statement as the right answer when taking a group tour of the Jeju 4·3 Archives Hall.

Having no choice but to give up statistical analysis, I became curious about what the “object” of the sentence was. As the guestbook authors were visitors to the Jeju 4·3 Archives Hall, the statement would naturally be intended to mean “I will remember Jeju 4·3.” However, it clearly lacks specificity, that is, it failed to specify the things, events, people, or periods related to Jeju 4·3. As is well known, Jeju 4·3 features exceptional complexity and multidimensional aspects as it broadly spans Jeju’s chaotic situation after the 1945 national liberation, the protests and firing on March 1, 1947, the subsequent general strike and suppression by the U.S. Army Military Government, the armed uprising on April 3, 1949, the May 10 general election in the previous year, the collision between the armed forces and the counterinsurgency forces, the assassination of Col. Park Jin-kyung, the merciless suppression and massacres committed after the inauguration of the South Korean government, the preliminary arrests and the Korean War, and the lifting of the ban on trespassing Mt. Halla. It would be difficult to remember all the different moments and related figures or to make a quick comment on all of the above. Therefore, it is understandable to simply note “I will remember,” omitting the object of the sentence.

However, specifying the object of “I will remember.” is related to the post-event generations’ search for an opportunity to remember the historical event with a focus on something. It is the process of constituting a framework for interpreting and elucidating the event in their own language; and above all, it is the starting point for the act of “remembering their own selves,” who decided to remember the event. Accordingly, it should be considered serious if the sentence “I will remember” without the object means the absence of the process where the post-event generations relate themselves to the event. This is because it could be another expression that they simply accept Jeju 4·3 as “something to study for a school test and common sense to be aware of”.

It is unclear whether the memo-type sentence and the time constraints resulted in the absence of the details and the simple expression of the author’s determination, or whether the author merely perceived the past event as “common sense” without relating himself or herself to it. The reason could be understood as either of them depending on who wrote the message; but what arouses my curiosity is the ratio of the two. Which would account for a higher rate? And what about the ratio of those students who didn’t even leave the note “I will remember”? Although it would be difficult to find the correct answers to these questions, it would be the most problematic point from the perspective of “postmemory”. “Postmemory” is a concept proposed by Holocaust researcher Marianne Hirsch to refer to the memories of the generation after the Holocaust, distinguishing them from those of the generation who experienced the event firsthand, in dealing with trauma history. According to Hirsch, “postmemory describes the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before — to experiences they ‘remember’ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up.” In other words, postmemory, postmemory is a problem consciousness introduced to deal with secondary memories, the memories of the “generation after”, which are distinguished from the traumatic memories of the preceding generation due to generational and historical distances.

Scholars including Hirsch have conducted research focusing mainly on how postmemory is formed in kinship or other close relationships through media such as family photos. A family member of a Jeju 4·3 victim named Jeong Hyang-shin turned the memorial ceremony into a sea of tears by giving a speech titled “My grandmother doesn’t eat fish”. This is a good example of how postmemory concerning Jeju 4·3 is built and what power it holds in relationships that presuppose family intimacy. In fact, Jeju has a plentiful resource that can serve as materials of postmemory.

[Letters of wishes in the Permanent Exhibition Room of the Jeju 4·3 Peace Memorial Hall]

However, what is more important in relation to postmemory is how to transfer memories and gain empathy in a relationship that does not presuppose intimacy. This issue has become increasingly important concerning not only Jeju 4·3 but also other various historical issues of Korea such as the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement and the April 19 Revolution, where statutory and institutional methods have been employed for the “liquidation of the past”. How on earth can a person remember an event that he or she has not experienced? The issues related to postmemory in a non-intimacy-based relationship continue to form a ‘battleground’. There is a fierce competition in progress for the coming generations’ memory and empathy, and the competition will be even more severe in the future.

In fact, the trend of concern is not limited to Korea. This is because “fake news” or “post-truth” issues are spreading simultaneously around the globe. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “post truth” is a term defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Those living in the era of post truth receive information first depending on whether or not such news or information is consistent with their worldview, rather than considering the objectivity or reality of the information.

What we have to consider regarding postmemory and post truth issues is that this weapon on the battlefield may not correspond to the “historical truth” itself. Historical events subject to the liquidation of the past have already been officially interpreted in the past by those that held power at the time. Jeju 4·3 was interpreted as a “communist riot,” the civilians killed in the Korean War were as “reds,” and the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement as a “riot” or “situation.” It was extensive data and evidence on the “facts” or “truth” that were employed as weapons to challenge this official interpretation. And based on this, the existing historical interpretation has been corrected. Therefore, the “truth” based on these data and evidence is undeniably critical.

However, those who refuse to acknowledge this “truth” based on data and evidence and attempt to revert to historical interpretations before the liquidation of the past have run a long-term project to dominate the “hegemony” of civil society, and the attempt is still in progress. They believe that the first step in this long-term project is to make their argument equivalent to the new “official” interpretation of history which came to be socially recognized as a result of the liquidation of the past, that is, establishing their argument as a competing one. This tactic seems to have been somewhat successful in some cases including the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, and may have been more successful than has been ostensibly revealed.

The arguments supported by the evidence they manipulated and fabricated have been repeatedly refuted through the correct evidence, testimony, and authority. However, the effect of the iteration is, ironically, to socially strengthen the competence of their arguments. This is because, be they objective facts or not, the form where arguments and rebuttals are made looks like a controversy itself. This effect helps create an illusion that the historical interpretation agreed upon as a result of the liquidation of the past in the discourse is an “official history” and that claims based on manipulation and fabrication appear to be “alternative history.”

Currently, this is not a marked trend in relation to Jeju 4·3. That does not mean, however, that the trend seen in the Japanese military sexual slavery issue and the May 18 issue will not occur in the case of the Jeju 4·3 issue in the future. How will this environment affect the generations to come, especially after the institutional resolution of Jeju 4·3 is completed based on the Jeju 4·3 Special Act; that is, when Jeju 4·3 is firmly established as an “official history”? I believe that this is what we should deeply ruminate on at this point. Is there any possibility that future generations will happen to feel a sense of duty and oppression concerning the “official history” and feel “liberated” after encountering the so-called “alternative history”? It is as important to have an emotional and affective understanding of this aspect as to organize accurate facts about past events and discover the truth without wavering. Generations who have not experienced Jeju 4·3 and the subsequent process of discovering the truth and exonerating the victims should be able to speak of the historical event in their own words so that they can naturally fight against the “historical negationist” forces. To this end, it is necessary to divert from using language that has been officially “agreed-upon” or “reached through compromise” to enable history to resonate with the current problems of the generations after. As Bae Juyeon puts it, “What is more important is the implication of the ‘present’ memory politics surrounding the ‘past’ and how to build solidarity with those who directly experienced the past and not lapse into party-centeredness.” The task of passing down the memory of Jeju 4·3 to the coming generations is to allow them various opportunities in their daily lives to remember using “their own selves who will remember Jeju 4·3,” not to didactically inform them of the historical truth based on the data and evidence organized by the generations before them. To reiterate, the task strongly features emotional and affective aspects.

A four-act masterpiece delivering excellent music, production, and cast

 

Lee Eun-yeong, Publisher of The Seoul Culture Today

 

[Kang Hye-myeong, a general director of the creative opera, “Sun-i Samch’on”, and the soprano for the role of Sun-i Samch’on]

‘On April 3^rd, or March 18^th by the lunar calendar, camellia flowers were filled with dark red blood in their yellowish stamens. Tragic events happened over many days, and in many places, throughout the island of Jeju.’ This was an awakening phrase after viewing “Sun-i Samch’on,” a creative opera about Jeju 4·3. From Sept. 3 to 4, the opera, which originated from the same-name novel by Hyun Ki-young, transferred the pains of the Jeju 4·3 incident to the audience. It was when the painful, inconvenient facts of Jeju 4·3, which had been treated as no more than inevitable collateral damage caused by ideological war, were artistically described to the audience. Viewers left the concert hall with tears in their eyes. Some reported that the performance was a moving experience.

The four-act opera is about the sadness of a mother who lost her son in a mass killing that was committed by counterinsurgency forces that overran the village of Bukchon-ri, Jocheon-myeon, Jeju, in 1948. Including the Jeju Philharmonic Symphony, the Jeju Choir, the Jeju 4·3 Peace Choir (comprised of family members of Jeju 4·3 victims, Garam (theater company), Milmulhyeon (dance company), Club Jaja (children’s club), and more joined. About 230 people participated in the performance. Major arias including, ‘Eojina,’ ‘We Strive to Live Anyway,’ ‘Dead Village, Now and Then,’ and the choir sang the prologue ‘Song of the Nameless’.

The artworks of painter Kang, Yo-bae, who is famous for informing about the resistant history of Jeju 4·3 and who is a representative painter of Jeju, were also inserted in the background and intermissions of the opera. In the 1980s, Kang first read Hyun Ki-young’s novel when the artist began drawing the illustrations of the novelist’s series, ‘The Island in the Wind,’ in the Hankyoreh. In an interview, Kang told me several years ago that “The Jeju 4·3 resistance came to me as a shock.” Kang advertised Jeju 4·3 by opening serial exhibitions about the incident in 1995. It was meaningful that Kang participated in this opera as well.

 

[Jeju 4·3 Peace Foundation successfully held the production presentation for the opera, “Sun-i Samch’on,” at Seodaemun Prison History Hall on August 10 before its earnest performance at Sejong Center for Performing Arts in Seoul. The presentation event, with the major press, magazines, and eminent critics in Korea invited, began with a pre-ceremonial performance by cast members. On the outdoor field of the history hall, three major arias, ‘Dead Village, Now and Then,’ ‘Eojina,’ and the ‘Song of the Nameless,’ were sung.]

 

A solo sung by Lee Jeong-won, a tenor, went, ‘A horrible pain that cannot be understood.’ The song, ‘The Memory of the Day,’ showed the concentrated pain of Jeju 4·3. The host of the performance said it was a devotion to the novelist Hyun Ki-young. It was Hyun’s efforts that made Jeju 4·3 visible when no one dared speak or write about the incident. The novelist had to suffer imprisonment, and the novel was banned. The song included the writer’s pain, agony, and desperation to inform about what the people of Jeju have suffered so far.

The novel “Sun-i Samch’on” itself holds great value in literature. The opera being faithful to the original guarantees more than half of the success. The opera reflects the novel well. It describes Jeju dialect in the script, the nature, and the life of Jeju residents at the time all contributed thanks to the arias and the setting.

 

[Scenes in the opera, where the counterinsurgency forces drive the villagers in Bukchon Primary School and commit a massacre at Ompangbat.]

The opera informs about the tragic beginning as Hyun gives a narration in a gentle tone. The clauses in the novel serve as an entrance into the opera.

Act I, ‘Setting Foot on the Sunny Land,’ begins with Sang-soo, the protagonist, singing the aria, ‘Dead Village, Now and Then.’ The tenor, Kim Shin-gyu, assuming the role of Sang-soo, seemed even sadder, considering that he was a member of a bereaved family himself. His aria maintained a sense of stability from Act I through Act IV. The bass, Shim Gi-bok, who assumed the role of Sang-soo’s uncle, sang, ‘A Person Dead, Long Ago,’ expressing a deep grievance.

Act II, ‘Bukchon, Between this World and the Other,’ is about the time of ordeal. The cawing of crows continues. It is an omen that the Northwest Korean Youth Association will storm the place and bring forth relentless massacres. Crows here mean the counterinsurgency forces as well. The cawing was no more than an opening to the tragedy on ‘that day.’ Children’s innocent laughter turns into a nightmare all of a sudden. The stark difference amplified the twist. In the gunfire at Ompangbat, the flapping wings of numerous crows looking for prey were chilling.

 

[Sun-i Samch’on, who survived the massacre, is singing the ‘Aria of frenzy.’]

The ‘Aria of Frenzy’ sung by Sun-i Samch’on as she finds her dead children, starts with a screaming tone. She could not cry out loud after seeing her children lying dead. Kang Hye-myeong, the general director who assumed the role of Sun-i Samch’on herself, demanded the songwriter tenaciously to begin performing the song from last year. The song was a masterpiece in terms of its melody and expression.

At the end of Act II, the dire aria by Choi Seung-hyeon, who assumed the role of the grandmother, sang, ‘We strive to live anyway.’ The song is about the longing and grievance to the dead and the pains of those who survived, which was also touching.

Act III, ‘The evacuation finally lifted in 1948,’ is described by two children in the beginning. Just as in the aria, ‘We Strive to Live Anyway,’ the children who survived had to move on in life. They forget the moments of terror and chant the names of their favorite food to forget about hunger, too. It was also meaningful that the opera introduced the traditional food of Jeju while simultaneously changing the dark atmosphere for a short moment. The scene leads to Ompangbat. Withstanding the whispers of the villagers, Sun-i Samch’on attends to farming while taking care of the child that had been conceived inside her. The scene describes she had to hold on to the life of her new child. The clues have been gathered as to the things Sun-i Samch’on could not understand up to the point, while she kept suffering from hallucinations. In this scene, the dance performance of the spirits who died in pain and the emergence of a flock of crows showed symbolization of the counterinsurgency forces.

[‘Song of the Nameless’ was sung by all the full cast of the opera. The names of victims are displayed here as subtitles.]

Act IV, ‘Rest Your Spirit and Soul,’ paradoxically describes that the soul of Sun-i Samch’on, already dead 30 years before, on the very day of the incident, when actually it is she takes the pill. The scene rings her death with a gunfire. The scene was connected to Moon Seok-beom’s performance, which shouts ‘wheeer—- wheeer—-’ like an animal, hanging Gimae, a symbol of one’s soul, on a blue bamboo stick. The solid representation of soul, which was combined with the dance of exorcism, was no doubt fit for expressing the resentment of the living. With the choir singing the ‘Song of the Nameless,’ the victims’ names were displayed as a backdrop in commemoration.

The opera was excellent in every aspect: the story, the development, the singers, the actors, and the music. Arias did much in presenting touching moments to the audience. The music, sound effects, ensemble, dance, and soulful performance three-dimensionally expressed terror, pain, and resentment from the forced silence. The acting and the singing were profound and had details. Sun-i Samch’on is an opera, but the musical and dramatic features were combined and stood out. In the scenes of the massacre, the singer who assumed the officer’s role was replaced by an actor, and the change worked. The acting of the officer was as cunning as it was marvelous. The baritone, Kim Seong-gook, who assumed the role of the uncle-in-law, used both the Jeju and the North Korean dialects alternately. The fact that the North Korean dialect was a traumatic to the victims’ families was well delivered in the acting. Children also played their roles well to the end. The background and set pieces were elaborately prepared. The hackberry tree at the back of Ompangbat was exemplary work. The tree represents Jeju, as it is commonly seen across the island. The sound effects and lighting raised tension and made the space look more realistic.

Nevertheless, there were some parts amiss. The use of microphones and music recorded, which are not commonly adopted in operas, and the distracting scenes in Act III were some things to be frowned upon. Also, in the lyrics of one of the arias of Sun-i Samch’on, it would have been better to explicitly say ‘my precious babies’ rather than just ‘children.’ That way, it would have been more persuasive in explaining her feeling. The same goes for the lines. There might have been other methods to deliver historic lessons. With these suggested improvements, the play would succeed as a more complete work. As was hoped by Hyeon, one can imagine the work being performed in Japan and in the United States.

When we look back at the history of the world, some places suffer similar scars. Modern history holds several incidents. It is the power of arts that reflect and remind people of events we should never forget about. I would like to root for Sun-i Samch’on on a work made through the willg of the bereaved families of the Jeju 4·3, who wish to move on to reconciliation, healing, and peace through arts. I give my sincerest respect to Hyeon Ki-young, the original writer, and all the members of the staff and cast who have done so much for the work.