The Dawn of War in South Korea (1947-1950) - The South Korean Workers' Party and the April Third Massacre

This book offers an analytical account of the April Third Massacre in Korea, a bloody confrontation between supporters of the Syngman Rhee Administration and those suspected (largely incorrectly) of being Communists, or members of the South Korean Workers' Party-the second largest Communist Party after Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule. As a result, some 80,000 villagers, fishermen, and policemen were killed. The book, drawing from a wide array of primary sources, ranging from South Korean governmental records, memoranda, memoirs, and recently unclassified documents, examines the role of the South Korean Workers' Party in the April Third Massacre on Jeju and how it shaped the origins of the Korean War. The author maps these origins of the Korean War from the outbreak of the April Third Massacre and through the ensuing chain of violence which included the Yo-su and Sun-ch'on Massacres of October 1948, engulfing the peninsula until 1949. Of interest to all scholars studying modern Korea, it is particularly relevant to historians focused on the Korean War, as well as political scientists and international relations experts interested in East Asian conflicts.

Kyu-hyun Jo received his Ph.D. in Modern Korean and East Asian History from the University of Chicago in June 2019. His research interests are in Korea-US relations, US-East Asia relations, the Cold War, decolonization, and the Korean War. He is also interested in using social science theories for historical analysis. Dr. Jo is currently a lecturer in Political Science at Yonsei University, where he teaches East Asian International Relations and its connection to Korea. From 2020 to 2021, he was a research associate at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, a nationally endowed research institute in Korea dedicated to studying Korea's international relations in connection with maritime issues, where he studied and researched on Dokdo's history and the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the San Francisco System. He was also a lecturer in world history at George Mason University Korea, where he taught world history from1500 with a focus on trade, disease, and globalization. He has published articles in the Journal of Territorial and Maritime Studies, Territory, Governance, Politics, Acta Koreana, and the Brown University Journal of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics among others. He is also the author of Japanese Judicial Imperialism and the Origins of the Coercive Illegality of Japan's Annexation of Korea: A Study of Unequal Treaties Between Korea and Japan, 1876-1910 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023).