Human Rights and Reparative Justice: The 2018 Reopening of the Jeju 4.3 Mass Convictions Through the Lens of the Coram Nobis Japanese American WWII Incarceration Cases
World Environment and Island Studies, Vol. 8, 2018
University of Hawai’i Richardson School of Law Research Paper No. 3488745
14 Pages Posted: 3 Dec 2019
Date Written: 2018
Abstract
2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the Jeju April Third (or South Korea Jeju 4.3) Tragedy. Initially under the U.S. military’s command, and later operational control, Jeju witnessed “the mass killing of some 30,000 Jeju residents, the torture, rape and detention of many more, the destruction of 40,000 homes and the burning of numerous villages.” Amid the 4.3 violence, wrongly labeled an initiative to put down a communist uprising, over 2,500 Jeju residents were arrested and imprisoned broadly for “rebellion,” “aiding and contacting the enemy,” and “espionage.” According to investigations and survivor testimony, these arrests were arbitrary and the confessions were often coerced through torture. Furthermore, the military tribunals that convicted the prisoners were “carried out by brute force and with a disregard tolegal protocol.” Many were then imprisoned or executed, and entire families were stigmatized for generations for perceived disloyalty.
In 2017, nearly seventy years after the Jeju 4.3 events, eighteen survivors of wrongful imprisonment petitioned the Jeju District Court to reopen and set aside their decades-old convictions as part of a previously stall but now rejuvenated South Korea 4.3 reconciliation initiative, asking the court to judicially right one of Jeju 4.3’s egregious wrongs and to help them, finally, heal. The “han” (deepest pain) persists through generations. In the context of human rights and reparative justice, this essay addresses a potential next step toward comprehensive and enduring 4.3 social healing through justice: clearing the names and judicial records of those wrongly convicted and violently imprisoned en masse during the 4.3 events. And it does so by generally comparing the Jeju 4.3 conviction reopenings to the 1980s United States courts coram nobis reopening of the wrongful World War II convictions of those resisting the mass racial incarceration, Korematsu, Hirabayashi and Yasui – cases contributing to the U.S. Civil Liberties Act’s apology and reparations.
Keywords: Jeju South Korea, Jeju 4.3, tragedy, reparative justice, reconciliation, military commission trials, reopening wrongful convictions, Korematsu, coram nobis
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