this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2025
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It isn't up for debate that Rhee Syngman was slaughtering labor organizers and communists before the WPSK and other groups started resisting the fascists. Further, again, Rhee Syngman was killing labor organizers that didn't resist as well, and before slaughtering Jeju. The slaughter existed because of labor organizing, not because of resistance. I'm not incorrectly representing the timeline, you're misrepresenting it by taking Rhee Syngman's narrative of just responding to the leftists, when in fact the resistance was provoked by Rhee Syngman slaughtering people.
You've defended Rhee Syngman by taking his version of events, ie no violence, then leftists resist, then he responds, rather than Rhee Sybgman slaughters people all over Korea, parties organize and resist, then Rhee Syngman ramps up the slaughter. You then used this as an opportunity to attack leftists! The one making themselves less trustworthy here is you.
I agree that authoritarian governments' versions of events usually vary from misleading to downright false, but I used a direct quotation from the article linked in the post, so if you have issues with the veracity then take it up with the post author or Wikipedia editors.
I haven't disputed the indiscriminate slaughter post-insurgency, or that there were some instances of it before the insurgency, it's just that it wasn't a direct causation, and if you have time in the title to specify cause and effect, then you should do the most direct cause and most direct effect, not the one which makes your favoured group look the most innocent.
Addressing this first, all states are authoritarian, the difference between them lies in their class character, ie are they working class states, or capitalist states. All states are instruments of class oppression, solidifying the power of one class over the others, and in the ROK that class was the capitalist class, especially the former compradors that benefited from Japanese colonization of Korea.
Going forward, even without armed resistance, Rhee Syngman was still slaughtering labor organizers. The cause was the labor organizing, not the resistance to him. He was hand-picked by the US Empire specifically to be used as a tool to wipe out any semblance of a Korean left south of the parallel. You're putting too much of an emphasis on the resistance, and not on the root cause: leftist organizing in general was unacceptable to the US Empire and the comrador regime they installed.
The fact of the matter is that daring to organize is what caused the massacre. The headline doesn't have the full context, not even the full Wikipedia article does. I suggest you stop caping for Rhee Syngman and instead try to look at the root cause, which the OP does get closer to than what you're saying.