TIME magazine on the 1948 Yosu-Sunchon Incident.

The TIME magazine website has two little articles about the Yosu-Sunchon Incident, both from November, 1948.

First is an article from November 1, 1948, titled "From One Source."

One day last week, Radio Moscow announced that Russian troops had begun to pull out of North Korea. On the same day, a Communist-inspired revolt broke out in Korea's southern tip.

The Russian withdrawal in the north worried South Koreans more than did the vest-pocket southern uprising. The Russians were leaving behind them a firmly installed Communist regime with a well-trained army of 150,000. The departure of the Red army was intended to bring pressure on the U.S. to withdraw its troops, leaving a South Korean constabulary and militia totaling about 60,000 to face the far stronger northern force.

Dr. Syngman Rhee, President of the two-month-old South Korean Republic, was in Tokyo visiting Douglas MacArthur at the time. Said MacArthur: "I will defend Korea as I would my own country—just as I would California."

With MacArthur's words to encourage them, the South Korean army energetically set about crushing the revolt. It had begun one morning before dawn, when 40 Communist members of a brigade stationed in the far southern port of Yosu shot their officers and bullied their sleepy comrades into attacking the city police station. They took over all of Yosu, then headed north, picking up confused recruits along the way. By the time they reached Sunchon, a city of 75,000, their force had grown to
around 2,000.

Brigadier General Song Ho's loyal troops quickly drove the rebels out of Sunchon, and chased them back into the rough, hilly country to the south. It was hard to tell friend from foe. Both loyal and rebel troops wore U.S. uniforms and carried U.S. weapons. Loyal troops finally put on white armbands. Said young Lieut. Colonel Kang Yung Noon: "What sadness that we had to fire our first bullets against our own brothers."

At week's end government forces had retaken most of the territory won by the rebels; they expected to recover Yosu soon. Asked who was responsible for the revolt, President Rhee said: "We really do not know." Then he pointed a finger to the north and added: "But all of our troubles come from one source."

Next is a report from November 8, 1948, filed by Carl Mydans, who was accompanying the government troops.

The pretty little valley of Sunchon ("Peaceful Heaven") rests neatly at the bottom of the rugged Chiri Mountains, twelve miles north of the port of Yosu. On the morning of Oct. 20, Sunchon's farmers were harvesting their rice, when they heard a siren and the rattle of small arms from the railroad station. They looked up to see 2,000 rebel soldiers and 400 civilians swarming off a train from Yosu.

The rebels approached Sunchon city peacefully; but as soon as they entered the city, police opened fire. Joined by a company of soldiers guarding the city bridge, the rebels fired back. After a short, sharp battle they were in full control. The hundred or so cops who surrendered were lined up against the wall of the police compound and riddled. Then the rebels, joined by part of the citizenry, paraded through the city under North Korea's Communist banner, singing "Ten thousand years to the North Korean People's Republic!"

Star-Spangled Shirt. When darkness came, Communist execution squads went from house to house, shooting "rightists" in their beds or marching them to collection points where they were mowed down. In 2-3-days, 500 civilians were slaughtered. U.S. Lieuts. Stewart M. Greenbaum and Gordon Mohr, Army observers in Sunchon, narrowly escaped death. The rebel sergeant assigned to kill them was an old friend, who had drunk beer with them in their billet many times. He took the two officers into a field, fired into the ground and then led them to the Presbyterian Mission of Dr. John Curtis Crane, who was barricaded in with his wife and four other missionaries.

From one of the doctor's shirts and a few colored rags the ladies made a 16-star, eleven-stripe U.S. flag and put it up. The rebels began pounding at the compound gate, yelling: "Let's kill the Americans!" Suddenly one shouted: "No, no, not them; they are my friends." It was the lieutenants' friend, the sergeant. The rebels went away.

For the first few hours the loyal troops who retook Sunchon were as savage as the Communists had been. On the big compound of the Sunchon Agricultural and Forestry School we found what was left of the entire population of Sunchon. Women with babies on their backs watched without expression as their husbands and sons were beaten with clubs, rifle butts and steel helmets. They saw 22 of them marched away to the primary school nearby, and heard the volley of rifles which killed them.

"Get the Americans Out." Two days later, entering Yosu, the town where the revolt began, the government troops were much better behaved. The Communists' occupation of Yosu revealed the pattern they would like to impose on all South Korea. After arrest and murder of police and loyal leaders, the rebels took over all communications, banks, schools and food distribution. They established a "People's Committee" as the new government. The "People's Committee" announced: "Our two-point program: 1) to oppose, to the death the killing of our brothers, and 2) to get the Americans out of here."

Though the recapture of Yosu has temporarily stalled the revolt, most of the rebel troops have, melted off into the countryside and mountains with their weapons. Yosu's fall was not the end of a war; it was only the beginning. The general civilian point of view was expressed by one woman we found squatting in a shack on the outskirts of Yosu just after the fight had gone by her door. When we asked her whom she was for she replied: "I'm for you. You are the strongest."

The Suncheon Agricultural and Forestry School is present-day Suncheon National University. A few days ago I posted about the placards around Suncheon that mark notable sites during the rebellion. The one on the campus reads:

At the time of the Yosun Incident, the quell force, made up of police and defense guard troops, used the Suncheon Middle School of Farming and Forestry (the predecessor of the present Sunchon National University) as their camp and headquarter when they attacked the insurgent forces in downtown Suncheon on Oct. 22th. The nearby Suncheon Northern Elementary School was the site of questioning and executing of civilians who were suspected of taking sides with the insurgents. The victims were executed without trial on the levee of a rice paddy behind the school's auditorium.

There are a few articles on the rebellion from the New York Times. I thought their archives were free, but since they're not, I can't get to them. Anyone interested can comb through these search results.