SEOUL — The ruling People Power Party has given a warning to Rep. Tae Yong-ho for making what critics say were distorting remarks about a civilian uprising on Jeju Island in the late 1940s, officials said Thursday.
An official told Yonhap News Agency that the PPP’s committee overseeing leadership elections told the North Korean defector-turned-lawmaker Wednesday to refrain from making remarks that go against the national sentiment.
Tae has come under criticism after he said earlier this week that the Jeju uprising was obviously triggered by the instruction of North Korea’s late founder Kim Il-sung during his visit to the southern resort island as part of his ongoing campaign to become a member of the People Power Party’s (PPP) Supreme Council.
The uprising, widely known as the Jeju April 3 incident, took place on April 3, 1948, when Jeju islanders began protesting against U.S. military-led rule following Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule. The then government distorted the uprising as a communist riot and massacred up to an estimated 30,000 civilians in armed crackdowns over the subsequent years.
On Wednesday, the main opposition Democratic Party referred Tae to the parliamentary ethics committee over the remarks and urged Tae to issue an apology.
The PPP lawmaker, however, refused to apologize, saying it is the plain truth that Pyongyang had instructed a communist group in Jeju to start the movement.
Tae, Pyongyang’s former deputy ambassador to Britain, defected to South Korea in 2016 and was elected as a lawmaker here in 2020, becoming the first North Korean defector to do so.
Source: Yonhap News Agency