The Birth of the Republic of Korea — 4-part series

• Part 1: Losing a Nation, Building a Nation (1897–1945)
• Part 2: The Joy of Liberation and the Shadow of Division (1945–1947)
• Part 3: The Establishment of Government and the Tragedy of Jeju 4.3 (1948)
• Part 4: Success and Forgotten Voices (current)

The Birth of the Republic of Korea Part 4: Success and Forgotten Voices

In the Jeju April 3rd Peace Park, there stands a stele with not a single character engraved on it. This horizontally laid stone bears no name, no date, no inscription of any kind. It is called the Baekbi — the blank stele — because Korean society has yet to reach a consensus on what to call the events it commemorates. Was it an uprising? A resistance? A riot? An incident? Decades have passed since the stone was erected, yet it remains empty.^[1]

This blank stele is a symbol of how the Republic of Korea has confronted — and struggled to confront — its own past. Since the establishment of the government in 1948, this nation accomplished remarkable things in a remarkably short time. Yet in that process, certain voices were erased. Part 4 examines both sides of that story together.

Land Reform: Reordering the Ownership of the Earth

In June 1949, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea passed the Agricultural Land Reform Act. At the time of liberation, two-thirds of the cultivated land in South Korea was owned by landlords who made up barely three percent of the total population. Eighty percent of farmers lived as tenant cultivators without a single plot of land to their name.^[2]

Land reform overturned this structure. The government purchased land from landlords and distributed it to farmers; in return, farmers repaid the cost over five years in annual installments equal to thirty percent of the land’s yield. The maximum landholding allowed per household was capped at three jeongbo — approximately 30,000 square meters. By around 1957, some eighty-eight percent of the rural population had come to own their own land.^[2]

The effects of this reform went beyond the simple fact that farmers gained land. The compensation paid to landlords was converted into industrial capital, forming an early foundation for Korean capitalism.^[3] There is also an argument that when North Korea used the promise of free land distribution as propaganda in territories it occupied during the Korean War, South Korean farmers were largely unmoved — because they had already received their land.^[3]

It should be noted, however, that this reform was not an achievement driven solely by Syngman Rhee. Historical records indicate that progressive lawmakers within the Constitutional Assembly actively led the push for land reform, and that Rhee’s government actually sought to slow its implementation.^[3] Attributing any historical achievement to a single individual always carries the risk of oversimplification.

The ROK-US Mutual Defense Treaty: Security Won Through Defiance

When armistice negotiations to end the Korean War entered their final stages in July 1953, Syngman Rhee took an unexpected action. On June 18, without consulting the United States, he unilaterally released approximately 25,000 anti-communist prisoners of war.^[4] It was a dangerous gambit that threatened to unravel negotiations that were on the verge of conclusion.

Rhee’s intent was clear. His judgment was that if the United States disengaged from the Korean Peninsula and ended the war, South Korea would once again be left in a position of military vulnerability. He had been demanding a mutual defense treaty since the Truman administration, but the United States had consistently refused.

Following the prisoner release, the Eisenhower administration came to the negotiating table, and on October 1, 1953, the Republic of Korea-United States Mutual Defense Treaty was signed.^[4] This treaty continues to function as a cornerstone of the security architecture on the Korean Peninsula to this day. The method bordered on coercion, but the outcome brought a structural transformation to South Korea’s security.

The Shadow of Anti-Communism: The Bodo League and the Massacre of Civilians

In the early hours of June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel. Seoul fell within three days, and Rhee’s government fled south. And amid that chaos, the state turned its weapons against its own people.

The National Guidance League — known in Korean as the Gungmin Bodo Yeonmaeng — had been established in 1949 under the pretext of managing ideological converts from the left. In practice, however, farmers, students, and workers with no connection to leftist activities were forcibly enrolled; some were signed up simply because they were promised a bowl of rice wine. By the eve of the war, membership nationwide was estimated at anywhere between 300,000 and as many as 800,000 people.^[5]

When war broke out, the military and police carried out mass executions of these individuals. Between July and August 1950, tens of thousands were shot in mountain valleys and at coastal cliffs. According to investigations by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Past Affairs, the officially confirmed death toll stands at 4,934 — but the total number of victims is estimated at a minimum of 100,000 and possibly as many as 200,000.^[5]

These were not the enemy. They were citizens administered by the government itself. People executed without trial, solely on the suspicion that they might be communists. The structure of state violence that began in Jeju in April 1948 was repeated on a far wider scale under the cover of wartime chaos.

Bending the Constitution: The Patchwork Amendment and the Round-Down Amendment

When the government was first established, the president was to be elected indirectly by the National Assembly. By 1952, with Rhee’s reelection approaching, he was losing support in the legislature. He chose a different path.

With the government operating from the wartime capital of Busan, Rhee declared martial law and had opposition lawmakers detained. Under this duress, a constitutional amendment introducing direct presidential elections was pushed through. Known as the Balchwe Gaeheon — the “patchwork amendment” — this episode was the first instance in which the normal constitutional process was bypassed by force.^[6]

In 1954, something even more brazen occurred. A constitutional amendment was put to a vote that would eliminate term limits for the inaugural president. The tally came in at 135 votes in favor, 60 against, and 7 abstentions. Two-thirds of the total membership of 203 legislators — the threshold required for a constitutional amendment — worked out to exactly 135.33 members. The amendment was declared defeated. Two days later, however, the government and the ruling Liberal Party declared it passed, arguing that “since 0.33 rounds down to zero, the required quorum is 135.”^[6] This arithmetic contortion entered history as the Sasaoi-ip Gaeheon — the “round-down amendment.”

This episode of rewriting the constitution through mathematical gymnastics was an extreme illustration of how the rule of law can be bent before the force of power.

The April Revolution: An Ending Written by the People

On March 15, 1960, the fourth presidential election was held. When the votes were counted, Syngman Rhee had received 88.7 percent of the valid ballots. Vice-presidential candidate Yi Ki-bung received 79 percent. But these figures had been manufactured before the election even took place. Pre-stuffed ballot boxes, group voting in the presence of overseers, and the forced expulsion of opposition observers had all been deployed.^[7]

On April 11, the body of Kim Ju-yeol — a high school student who had gone missing during a protest in the southern city of Masan — was discovered floating in the harbor, a tear gas canister lodged in his eye socket. The image spread across the country, and outrage erupted.

On April 19, police opened fire on demonstrators in front of the Gyeongmudae presidential residence in Seoul. Over 100 people were killed in Seoul alone that day.^[7] Still the protests did not stop. On April 25, university professors took to the streets. Rhee could hold on no longer. On the morning of April 26, a statement of resignation was broadcast over the radio, and on April 27 his letter of resignation was submitted to the National Assembly.^[7]

Twelve years of rule ended by the power of the people.

Lessons from the World: Ways of Confronting the Past

South Korea is not alone in carrying this burden. Nations that experienced authoritarian rule in the twentieth century each had to confront their past in their own way.

Germany went through two stages. After 1945, the denazification process led by the Allied forces produced the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi war criminals were held accountable before an international tribunal.^[8] Then, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the vast surveillance records kept by East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, were made public. Under legislation enacted in 1991, citizens were granted the right to view their own surveillance files directly, and these records became a foundation for academic research.^[8]

South Africa chose a different path. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 1996, operated on the principle that perpetrators who confessed the truth would be granted amnesty. Over two years, 160 hearings were held, and more than 21,000 people gave testimony.^[9] This model of reconciliation through confession rather than punishment has influenced transitional justice debates around the world.

Argentina required even more time. Between 1976 and 1983, the military junta kidnapped and murdered between 22,000 and 30,000 people. Beginning in 1977, the mothers of the disappeared gathered every week to protest in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.^[10] After the return of democracy, military leaders were brought to trial, but amnesty laws were overturned multiple times, and the process of reckoning stretched on for decades.^[10] The Argentine case shows that confronting the past cannot be resolved by a single decisive act.

What these three countries share is a common lesson: what matters is not the completion of reckoning, but the will to reckon. The very process of keeping records, naming the dead, and tracing accountability is what gives democracy its power to function.

South Korea’s Reckoning: Slowly, But Without Stopping

South Korea’s confrontation with its own past has not been swift. For decades after the April Revolution, the Bodo League massacre remained a taboo that could scarcely be mentioned in public. The Jeju April 3rd Incident had been erased from the official historical record.

The turning point came gradually after democratization. The Jeju April 3rd Incident became the subject of an official government investigation through the enactment of a special law in 2000, and in 2003 President Roh Moo-hyun issued an official state apology on behalf of the nation.^[11] The Roh administration was also the first to acknowledge state responsibility for the Bodo League massacre.^[5]

In 2005, with agreement across party lines, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Past Affairs in the Republic of Korea was established. Over four years, the Commission investigated 10,860 submitted cases and documented civilian massacres around the time of the Korean War, as well as human rights violations under authoritarian rule following liberation.^[12] In 2020, revised legislation was passed and the Commission’s activities were resumed.^[12]

In March 2026, President Lee Jae-myung visited Jeju and announced his intention to pursue the abolition of criminal statutes of limitations for state violence crimes. Alongside the statement that perpetrators would “be held accountable until death, just like Nazi war criminals,” he also mentioned plans to pursue the abolition of civil statutes of limitations.^[13] This statement, which explicitly identified the Jeju April 3rd Incident as “the first starting point of large-scale state violence,” demonstrates that the reckoning with the past is expanding beyond the realm of memory into that of legal and institutional accountability.

Around the same time, the Jeju April 3rd Incident is being brought to the world’s attention through the arts. Director Jung Ji-young’s film My Name Is — a work about a mother and son living with the memory of April 3rd — was officially selected for the Forum section of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival.^[14] The festival described the film as “a work that sensitively illuminates the trauma of a tragic history across generations, evoking the importance of breaking a long silence.”^[14] It is also worth noting that the film was produced through crowdfunding by Jeju residents, raising approximately 400 million won — nearly ten times its target — a record for crowdfunding for a Korean feature film.^[14] The film, set for domestic release in April 2026, demonstrates that the Jeju April 3rd Incident is no longer the tragedy of a single region, but is becoming a shared narrative for the world.

It cannot be said that this process is complete. Debate continues to this day over what to call the events, how widely to define the victims, and how to assign responsibility. But the very fact that this debate persists — that it has not disappeared — is itself evidence that democracy is alive.

How Should We Evaluate the Syngman Rhee Administration?

Assessments of the Syngman Rhee administration continue to divide into two directions. One view holds that land reform dismantled the feudal landowning structure, and that the ROK-US Mutual Defense Treaty created the framework for national security. The opposing view holds that the patchwork amendment and the round-down amendment damaged the rule of law, and that the state bears responsibility for the killing of civilians, including the Bodo League massacre.

Both assessments are grounded in fact. And that is precisely what makes the question so difficult.

What matters is not arriving at a final verdict on a single individual. It is remembering, simultaneously, that no policy achievement can offset the act of killing innocent citizens without trial — and that both of these things happened under the same era, under the same power. Documenting both achievement and failure is the role of history.

This balanced perspective applies not only to the evaluation of an individual, but to the nation itself. The achievements South Korea has accomplished are the result of the efforts of the people who made them. And refusing to erase the names of those who were sacrificed in that process is the way to remember those achievements more fully.

Closing the Tetralogy: Words for the Blank Stele

Part 2 began with the scene of the 38th Parallel being drawn — the moment when the fate of the people living on the Korean Peninsula was decided without them. Part 3 told of the coexistence between the dawn of a beacon of fire and a day when the Taegukgi was unfurled. And Part 4 has traced how that coexistence continued.

A nation carries both its achievements and its failures. This is not a story unique to South Korea. Germany, Argentina, and South Africa all lived through the same. The difference, if there is one, is how unflinchingly a nation can look at its own failures.

The blank stele in the Jeju April 3rd Peace Park remains empty. Whether characters will ever be engraved on it, and if so, what words they will be — that is not a question of the past. It is a question of the present. Because what a society chooses to remember determines the character of that society.

The blank stele is not evidence of failure. It is a signal that the conversation is not yet over.

Previous: Part 3: The Establishment of Government and the Tragedy of Jeju 4.3 (1948)