The Jeju April 3 Peace Park

The Jeju April 3 Peace Park was built in 2008 to commemorate the South Korean state’s atrocities toward civilians on Jeju Island before and during the Korean War. Situated in the distinctive local context of remembering, the park reveals its unique ability to manifest long-suppressed trauma through the meanings of both indigenous spirituality and materiality. A national commemorative event has activated the park even further to become a liberating theater of mourning for suppressed mourners. While it inevitably embraces the conventional aesthetics and rituals of the official commemoration, the park simultaneously facilitates the empathic recollection of the tragic event at the uncanny moments of symbolic work that have been mediated through such uncustomary media as mourners’ bodies, improvised props, and local dialects.