What’s the point of feeling angry about what happened? You just have to make sure we never see that kind of world again-that this [Jeju 4.3 tragedy and the hardships that befell three generations of family members] never happens again. “For my grandchildren, [please help ensure] that there is no record stating that their grandmother has a criminal history and spent time in prison.” “The path we have traveled to this point has been a tremendously perilous and difficult [one]. What the 18 of us want is to be acquitted [and to receive an official apology].”

On Cheju Island something happened in ‘peacetime’ under the American Occupation-namely a major peasant war-and after decades of repression Cheju people finally have came forward to tell their stories and demand compensation, and no special pleading about the exigencies of wartime will suffice to assuage the American conscience. What formerly classified American materials document is a merciless, wholesale assault on the people of this island. No one will ever know how many died in this onslaught, but the American data, long kept secret, ranged between 30,000 and 60,000 killed, with upwards of 40,000 more people having fled to Japan (where many still live in Osaka). There were at most 300,000 people living on Cheju Island in the late 1940s.1 This happened when the U.S. was legally responsible for actions taken under its command, but as it happened, instead of punishing the criminals, American leaders directed the suppression of the rebellion and were pleased when it was crushed. The effective political leadership on Cheju until early 1948 was provided by strong leftwing people’s committees that first emerged in August 1945, and later continued under the American Occupation (1945-1948). The Occupation preferred to ignore Cheju rather than to do much about the committees; it appointed a formal mainland leadership but let the people of the island run their own affairs. The result was an entrenched leftwing, one with no important ties to the North and few to the South Korean Workers Party (SKWP) on the mainland; the island was also well and peaceably governed in 1945-47, particularly by contrast to the mainland. In early 1948 as Syngman Rhee and his American supporters moved to institute his power in a separate southern regime, however, the Cheju people responded with a strong guerrilla insurgency that soon tore the island apart.

Can awakening to planetary consciousness open pathways to personal and social healing, reconciliation and redemption in the aftermath of mass suffering like Jeju 4.3? In this article, I aim (a) to identify the characteristics of planetary consciousness using my observations on a peace pilgrimage and case examples from Jeju, and (b) to clarify how planetary consciousness is developed through transformative learning processes. Planetary consciousness is the awareness that all beings, energies and phenomena are profoundly interconnected and interdependent. The development toward planetary consciousness can be understood using models such as the Transformative Learning Process, the Radical Forgiveness Method, and the Social Healing Through Justice Model. Progressing through the stages results in openness to multidimensional thinking and knowing. Individuals and communities who have worked through transformative learning processes demonstrate the possibility of genuine healing, reconciliation and the restoration of justice and dignity. Keywords