Three Jeju uprising victims who were never even listed in the family registry will be entered into family relation records after 77 years

[Financial News, Jeju = Reporter Jung Yong-bok] Three victims of the Jeju uprising, who were never even registered at birth and therefore did not appear in any official family records, will be entered into the family relation register for the first time. This is the first case in which the state has legally recognized family ties for victims who had existed only in the memories and testimony of their families.
According to Jeju Special Self-Governing Province on the 25th, the Jeju 4.3 Truth and Reconciliation and Victims’ Honor Restoration Committee, chaired by the Prime Minister, held its 38th meeting the previous day and decided to add 349 people, including 75 victims and 274 bereaved family members.
The 75 victims include 35 confirmed dead, 26 missing persons, and 14 prisoners. Among the bereaved family members, 270 were newly recognized and four were approved after a review. The committee also revoked earlier decisions for seven victims and one bereaved family member after confirming duplicate rulings and other issues.
With this decision, the number of Jeju uprising victims officially recognized by the state since 2002 has increased to 15,286, and the number of bereaved family members has reached 128,295. Combined, the total stands at 143,581.
The most notable decision was the creation of family relation registers for three victims with no family registry record. This term refers to people whose births were never registered during their lifetime, leaving them absent from the old family registry and the current family relation register.
The individuals are Park Young-sim and her two daughters, Yoon Ok-sun and Yoon Ok-hee. The three women were taken with other villagers to the playground of Bukchon Elementary School in 1949 and were killed there. They were recognized as victims of the Jeju uprising, but because their names were missing from the family registry, they did not exist in the family relation register.
Another child of Park, who was taken at the same time but survived, applied to have the family relation registers for her mother and two sisters created. Jeju Province investigated the applicant’s testimony, statements from neighbors, public records, and photos of memorial stones, and confirmed the existence of the three women and their family ties.
This is the first time the Jeju 4.3 committee has decided to create family relation registers for victims with no family registry record. The scope of honor restoration has become more concrete, as the state is not only recognizing them as victims but also restoring their family ties in legal records.
At the meeting, family relations for 36 people were also newly recognized. These included 31 cases confirming a biological parent-child relationship with a victim, two cases recording or correcting a victim’s death, and three cases involving the creation of family relation registers for victims with no family registry record.
Kim In-saeng, who survived after being hit by bullets during the Jeju uprising, was also newly recognized as a victim. Kim, who lived in Iho-ri, Jeju-eup at the time, was taken to Iho Elementary School after her husband was shot dead by the suppression forces and she was mistaken for a family member of an armed rebel group. She survived after being hit by three bullets in the schoolyard, but later suffered trauma and aftereffects for the rest of her life and died in 1997.
Fourteen prisoners were also newly designated as victims. They include 10 people tried by military court, two people tried in ordinary court, and two detainees.
Although no separate prison records were found for Shin Won-hong and Lee Tae-seok, it was confirmed that they had been held at the Former Distillery Site in Jeju-eup. This is the first case in which detention alone led to a decision to recognize someone as a Jeju uprising victim.
This review was the fifth decision on applications submitted in the eighth round of additional victim and bereaved family reports, which took place in the first half of 2023. Of the 19,559 people who filed reports at the time, 419 withdrew, and the Jeju 4.3 Working Committee has completed its review of the remaining 19,140 cases.
As of the 24th, the Jeju 4.3 committee had completed decisions on 18,933 cases. Another 207 cases are still pending review.
The memorial tablets for the newly recognized victims will be placed in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park memorial hall in the second half of this year. Separate markers will also be prepared for the 26 missing victims.
Newly recognized victims may apply for compensation 90 days after the decision date. Information on applying for living assistance will also be provided to surviving victims, spouses of victims, and elderly first-generation bereaved family members aged 75 or older. Jeju Province plans to accept the ninth round of additional victim and bereaved family reports in 2027.
Byun Young-geun, director of the Special Self-Governing Administration Bureau of Jeju Province, said, "We will do our utmost to promote the program and prepare for applications so that those who were unable to file reports are not left in blind spots."


[email protected] Jung Yong-bok Reporter