Korea in 1950 National Geographic.

The same Dave's poster who brought to light this article on Korea in a 1919 National Geographic also brings us an article on South Korea from the June, 1950 issue. It's available here as a .pdf file. An interesting article and collection of photos from right before the Korean War broke out.

Of local interest is a little passage on page 21 of the file:

During my sojourn in Korea there were, paradoxically, few Communist disturbances near the border between North and South Korea. But Communist agents and troublemakers were busy on the island of Cheju and in the southern Province of Cholla.

While I was at the Hwasun coal mine near Kwangju one afternoon, the American adviser told me that Communist trouble was expected that night.

After sundown his Japanese-built home was crowded with the Korean manager's and assistant manager's families, who felt safer in an American billet because, from what I heard, the Communist policy at the time avoided as far as possible arming American citizens.

Suddenly the lights went out. Communists had thrown a chain across the high-tension power line. We passed part of the night on watch with our carbines handy.

I was given the task of watching the side of a hill close to the house. It was late June and I could see faint lights on the hillside. One excitable member of our group was certain that they were glowing cigarettes smoked by Communists while waiting for a general attack.

But the lights were only fireflies! Reassured of this everybody felt much safer, and I went to sleep. Throughout the night there was some shooting in the vicinity between Communists and Korean police.

I haven't the time to look too much into it today, but a quick google search turns up other mentions of the Hwasun mine. North Korea's news agency issued a release in 2006 that reads in part:

The Koreans will never forget the monstrous massacres committed by the U.S. imperialists but certainly force them to pay for the blood shed by them. Rodong Sinmun Monday says this in a signed commentary, 60 years since the U.S. imperialists massacred workers in Hwasun Coal Mine, South Jolla Province, the first mass-killing of Koreans after their occupation of south Korea.

On August 15, 1946 the U.S. made a surprise attack on the coal miners on their way to Kwangju to participate in the event to mark the first anniversary of the liberation of the country and killed them by mobilizing troops, planes and tanks.

Other sources are even more angry and averse to the truth, believe it or not:

Then why did the US military government scheme to disband the people’s committees? It wanted to enforce colonial rule over south Korea. It outlawed and dissolved the people’s committees. Where the people’s committees did not break up, the Americans committed atrocities of massacre with bayonets and tanks. Before the Korean war, they massacred civilians in Namwon, workers at the Hwasun Coal Mine, large numbers of people during the October resistance struggle and the participants in the Ryosun resistance struggles. These horrible butcheries were all the outcome of the US military government’s “operations for slaughtering civilians”.

The October resistance struggle of 1946 known as the Taegu disturbance was the largest people’s uprising after liberation started by about 600,000 people in the area of North Kyongsang Province in quest of new politics and a new life. The US military men fired rifles and machine guns at random at the participants in the uprising and crushed wounded people with tanks. At least 300-1,000 civilians were killed, thousands of people got lost and tens of thousands got injured.

The savagery of the GIs became more naked in the massacre of participants in the Jeju Island popular uprising. The US military government committed indiscriminate killing of people on Jeju Island with the object of disbanding the people’s committees which had struck roots in the masses of people. At that time the US military governor prattled, “The US needs the territory of Jeju Island, not its people”, and the GIs slaughtered more than 70,000 islanders. Most of them were civilians.

Anyway, there was quite a bit of "Communist trouble" in the region between the end of World War II and the start of the Korean War. TIME magazine has a couple contemporary articles on the 1948 Yosu-Sunchon Incident here, and you can learn a little about the notable sites in those two cities by reading the placards around town.