By Lee Hana 

Photos = Cheong Wa Dae Facebook

On April 3, President Moon Jae-in paid his respects to the victims of the Jeju Uprising (1948-1949), one of the greatest tragedies of modern Korean history. 

A commemorative ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Jeju Uprising was held on the day itself at the Jeju April 3 Peace Park, on Jeju Island. President Moon Jae-in, the first lady and some 15,000 bereaved family members and descendants were present at the ceremony. 

President Moon is now the second sitting president to attend the ceremony, after former President Roh Moo-hyun did so 12 years ago in 2006. 

"It is owing to Jeju`s residents, and to all those who held on to their pain to unveil the truth of the Jeju Uprising, that this tragedy came to the fore. Once again, as the president, I offer my deepest apologies for all the suffering you had to endure due to state violence," said the president. 

"I promise that we will spare no effort to make sure that issues surrounding the Jeju Uprising are fully resolved. Under no circumstances will the search for truth or the restoration of honor be stopped or put on hold any longer," he stressed. 

The president then declared the Jeju Uprising an undeniable fact of history, and said that all efforts to unearth the remains of victims would continue until the very end, and that the government would support the means to heal bereaved families and surviving victims. 

"We must all be able to face up to this tragedy and break free from outdated ideologies. The Korea of today needs to become a country where conservatives and progressives work in the name of justice," he said.

Adding that, "The desire of the Jeju Uprising to achieve lasting peace and human rights still burns bright," the president said that he hoped the day`s ceremony would "serve as a point of departure for a new history for our citizens." 

The Jeju Uprising is a civilian uprising that began as early as April 1947 on Jeju Island after Korea`s emancipation from Japanese rule. Starting with demonstrations and then riots that broke out on April 3, 1948, lasting until Sept. 21, 1954, over 30,000 Jeju residents were killed when the government used armed violence to suppress protesters. The people were rebelling against the 1948 elections, believing that the elections would make real a North-South division in Korea and render a unified, independent nation less likely. Around one third of Jeju`s population was lost in the tragedy.