Jeju Uprising - American Involvement

American Involvement

By spring of 1949, however, four South Korean army battalions arrived and joined the local constabulary, police forces and Youth Association partisans. The combined forces quickly finished off most of the remaining rebel forces. On August 17, 1949, the leadership of the movement fell apart following the killing of major rebel leader Yi Tuk-ku.

There was only a small number of Americans on the island during the uprising.. Jimmie Leach, then a captain in the American military, was an adviser to the South Korean Constabulary. He claims that there were six Americans on the island, including himself. They could call on two small L-4 single engine, fabric covered scout planes, and two old, wooden-bottomed minesweepers converted to coastal cutters and manned by Korean crews. It was only after the outbreak of the Korean War that the U.S. assumed command of the South Korean armed forces.

Reporters from Stars and Stripes provided vivid and uncensored accounts of the South Korean Army’s brutal suppression of the rebellion, the local popular support of the rebels as well as the rebels' retaliation against local “rightist” opponents. The Koreans committed these atrocities in front of the U.S. military. The Americans documented the massacre, but never intervened. On May 13, 1949 the American ambassador to South Korea wired Washington that the Jeju rebels and their sympathizers had been, "killed, captured, or converted."