Many civilians were massacred in the Korean War period. The incident or mass killing of Kukmin-bodoyeonmaeng(the federation for protecting and guiding the public) was the major one in scale of massacres. This federation was founded in order to protect...
Many civilians were massacred in the Korean War period. The incident or mass killing of Kukmin-bodoyeonmaeng(the federation for protecting and guiding the public) was the major one in scale of massacres. This federation was founded in order to protect and guide the converted left-wingers, but actually it was formed by the prosecution and the police as a core part of the organization. When the Korean War was broken out, the government began systematical massacre of the members of this federation. From the discursive representation, there are two different discourses. On the one hand, the victims were the left-wingers or left-related persons and, on the other hand, they are yangmin(the good people) or the innocent peasants. However, in this study shows that the victims were not simply the left-wingers nor the innocent peasants. Especially in Jinju area, among them many persons were a kind of opinion leaders and the publics who could represent or speak instead of the other fellows within a village or myeon. However, the family members of the victims have been suffered or socially stigmatized because of ‘the red’ labels which tagged onto the victims by the government and the ideology of anti-communist. Since the late of 1990’s, with the change of the social circumstance and political environment, the massacre of the members of Kukmin-boboyeonmaeng was rediscovered by several researchers and NGOs. Especially, the establishment of ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ is an important turning point for discovering the truth of the massacre and the social suffering of the family members of the victims. They were/are not ‘the reds’ but the civilians massacred by the state or its agency.