In October 1948, numerous civilians were killed by state forces during the uprising of South Korea’s 14th Regiment, which had refused orders to suppress the Jeju April 3 Incident, and the subsequent government crackdown. (Photo courtesy of the Yeosu Community Research Institute)
SUNCHEON, South Korea, Nov. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — The families of those killed in the 1948 Yeosu-Suncheon Incident say they are being wronged a second time—this time not by soldiers, but by lawyers.
More than seventy-five years after their parents and grandparents were branded traitors and executed during South Korea’s turbulent birth, survivors are now accusing attorneys of withholding or exploiting state compensation meant to repair decades of silence and suffering.
According to victims’ families and advocacy groups, several lawyers handling retrial and compensation cases have failed to deliver payments or charged excessive success fees. For families who have waited lifetimes for the state to acknowledge its role in the massacres, the betrayal cuts deep.
One Seoul-based attorney, identified only as “A,” is accused of holding back most of a 720 million won (about US$520,000) criminal-compensation award granted to the families of three victims recently acquitted in retrials. The families said they discovered the payment only late last year.
Despite repeated promises, only 207 million won has been paid; the rest remains in limbo. Petitions have been filed with the police and the national grievance commission, and last week relatives gathered outside the Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Court—the same place where justice was supposed to have been restored.
Family members recover the body of a loved one killed in the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident. (Photo courtesy of the Yeosu Community Research Institute)
The scene evoked painful memories. Nine years earlier, another attorney who had misused 1.8 billion won in client funds for stock speculation ended his life.
“After what happened in 2016, we swore it would never happen again,” one representative said at the press conference. “Now we find ourselves here once more, pleading for fairness.”
Some lawyers working on Yeosu-Suncheon cases have demanded success fees of 20 to 30 percent—four to five times higher than what is now typical in similar cases. Families describe being approached by self-styled “brokers” who somehow obtained their personal information, offering to “help” file lawsuits for a cut of the proceeds.
Legal scholars warn that tighter oversight is urgently needed. Many victims’ heirs, scattered or elderly, rely entirely on lawyers to navigate the tangled inheritance and paperwork that accompany state redress. Some experts are urging a new mechanism that would allow compensation to be paid directly to verified heirs rather than through attorneys’ trust accounts.
Families of Yeosu-Suncheon Incident victims hold a press conference. (Photo provided by the victims’ association)
“It’s unimaginable that a lawyer would withhold compensation awarded by the court, especially in a case tied to one of our nation’s darkest tragedies,” said attorney and former lawmaker Seo Dong-yong, who has represented Yeosu-Suncheon families. “These people already lost loved ones and lived half their lives in silence. To see their long-delayed restitution jeopardized again is cruelty beyond measure.”
The Yeosu-Suncheon Incident remains one of the most painful and complex episodes in Korea’s modern history—a violent collision of ideology and nation-building.
It began on October 19, 1948, when soldiers of the 14th Regiment stationed in Yeosu refused orders to suppress the Jeju Uprising, declaring, “We cannot kill our own people.” Their rebellion spread quickly to Suncheon and nearby towns before government troops crushed it in a brutal counteroffensive. Many rebels fled into the Jirisan Mountains, where years of guerrilla warfare followed.
A suppression group that recaptures Yeosu while wearing a white hood in bulletproof hair and left arm
From November 1948 until 1954, the Jirisan region was sealed off under military control. The army’s campaign to eradicate insurgents left thousands of civilians dead—suspected sympathizers executed without trial, villages burned, families displaced. In Gurye County, at the mountain’s edge, residents were caught between both sides: rebels demanding food by night, troops raiding homes by day.
To cut rebel supply lines, the army forcibly relocated entire villages and summarily killed residents accused of collaboration. The toll was staggering—arrests, torture, executions—and it carved an open wound in the collective memory of the region.
For decades, survivors stayed silent, fearful of being branded communist sympathizers. Only recently have courts begun overturning wrongful convictions and awarding compensation. Yet now, as that long-delayed justice reaches them, another betrayal threatens to take it away.
Jerry M. Kim (jerry_kim@koreabizwire.com)
