“On August 15, 1945, thirty-five years of Japanese colonial subjugation came to an end. But the euphoria of liberation was immediately confronted by an agonizing question: What should a reborn nation do with the officials, police officers, judges, and tycoons who had served the colonial oppressor?”

1. Liberation Without Catharsis: The USAMGIK and the Colonial Apparatus

When the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) assumed administrative control south of the 38th parallel in September 1945, its overriding priority was maintaining civil order and preventing communist subversion.

Lacking knowledge of Korean language, customs, or administrative records, the U.S. military government retained the vast majority of colonial-era Korean police officers, bureaucrats, and judicial officials in their existing posts. To a population that had endured decades of police brutality, forced labor, and linguistic erasure, the sight of colonial police officers continuing to wear their uniforms and patrol the streets was a profound moral shock.

2. Article 101 of the Constitution and the Mandate of the Banmin Teukwi (1948)

With the establishment of the Republic of Korea (ROK) government on August 15, 1948, the newly elected Constituent National Assembly sought to fulfill the historic mandate of transitional justice.

Under Article 101 of the First ROK Constitution, the National Assembly passed the Special Act for the Punishment of Anti-National Crimes (반민족행위처벌법 / Law No. 3) on September 22, 1948. In October, the assembly established the Special Investigation Committee for Anti-National Activities (반민족행위특별조사위원회 / Banmin Teukwi), chaired by veteran independence patriot Kim Sang-deok (金尙德).

The Scope of the Anti-National Crimes Act

The law established strict categories for investigation and prosecution: (1) Those who plotted or facilitated the annexation or accepted Japanese peerages; (2) Those who persecuted independence patriots or their families; (3) Colonial police officers, military officers, and intelligence agents who tortured or hunted freedom fighters; (4) Business magnates who manufactured war materials for Japan's imperialist aggression.

Beginning in January 1949, the Banmin Teukwi launched swift investigations, arresting high-profile figures including Park Heung-sik (magnate of Hwashin Department Store), Choi Rin (March 1st signer turned wartime propagandist), and notorious torture police officer Roh Deok-sul (盧德述).

3. The Executive Counterattack: Syngman Rhee and Cold War Polarization

The work of the Banmin Teukwi immediately collided with the political interests of President Syngman Rhee (Yi Seung-man).

Rhee's fragile governing coalition relied heavily on the established administrative expertise of former colonial bureaucrats and the armed strength of the National Police Force, headed by figures with extensive colonial policing records. Rhee publicly issued presidential statements condemning the committee's arrests, arguing that investigating the police would paralyze state security during an escalating communist insurgency in Jeju and Yeosu-Suncheon.

4. The Climax: The June 6 Police Raid on the Banmin Teukwi (1949)

The tension culminated in an unprecedented assault on constitutional rule on June 6, 1949.

Armed units of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department—many led by officers facing active warrants from the Banmin Teukwi—stormed the committee's central headquarters in Seoul. The police disarmed the committee's special investigative police, assaulted investigators, seized confidential investigative dossiers, and arrested key committee staff members.

Simultaneously, conservative lawmakers engineered the National Assembly Espionage Incident (Gukhoe Prank Incident), arresting progressive assembly members who had championed the anti-national crimes legislation. Stripped of executive cooperation, its investigative records seized, and its members intimidated, the Banmin Teukwi was formally dissolved in October 1949.

5. The Eighty-Year Echo: Why 1949 Defines Modern South Korean Politics

Of the 682 individuals investigated by the Banmin Teukwi, only a handful received token sentences, and nearly all were pardoned or had their sentences suspended by 1950.

The violent dissolution of the 1948 Banmin Teukwi meant that South Korea never experienced a systematic post-war denazification or transitional purge. Former colonial administrators, military officers, and economic elites continued to lead the military, the police, the academy, and the corporate conglomerates (*Chaebol*) throughout the authoritarian era (1948–1987).

Because transitional justice was aborted in 1949, the question of colonial collaboration remained an unresolved wound—explaining why disputes over school textbooks, national holiday commemorations, and asset confiscation continue to provoke intense political battles in South Korea today.