Following the shooting incident that occurred at the end of the March 1 Protest and Parade on March 1, 1947, the South Korean Labor Party Jeju branch held a meeting to discuss what should be done. The police had already come out and pushed the responsibility of the shooting on the crowd, defending the polices' actions as being in self-defense.

The executives for the Jeju branch met on March 5 to plan and discuss what to do. Reportedly the idea for a general strike came from the Daejeong branch. The Daejeong branch had already held a meeting discussing what type of response to launch. They had discussed a more forceful fight with the police, but that idea was not feasible as they did not have any weapons to fight with. So, the idea of a general strike - forceful but not violent - was agreed upon. The Daejeong branch had sent a young teacher named Lee Seungjin (이승진) to the Jeju branch meeting to propose this idea. Lee Seungjin is much more well-known by his other name - Kim Dalsam (김달삼) as he would go on to be the overall commander of the armed resistance.

The idea was agreed on and the strike began on March 10 all around Jeju Island. Six demands were issued in order for the strike to end:

1. All police must disarm and agree to stop torturing people.

2. The officer in charge during the 3.1 shooting incident and all the police officers who fired on the crowd should be executed.

3. All the police administrators should resign.

4. Families of the victims and injured should receive financial guarantees.

5. People protesting the incident are not to be arrested.

6. All pro-Japanese police officers are fired immediately.

The strike was quite large. In total, 41,211 people from 166 organizations and offices took part in the strike. They ranged from local government officials to school teachers to police officers (from Jeju) to private business workers. The committee also managed to raise over 300,000KRW from around the country, a considerable size of money at the time.

USAMGIK initially did very little, but they did send a team down to Jeju to investigate the cause of the 3.1 shooting incident. Their report placed the blame on the general mistrust and dislike the Jeju people had towards the police as well as the South Korea Labor Party who they argued had taken advantage of the mood and environment on the island and enflamed it. This decision allowed Korean police officials to focus on the South Korea Labor Party.

Arrests became widespread from mid-March to early April as the police arrested hundreds of people connected to the strike. Reportedly by April 10, a month after the strike had begun (and was already winding down), 500 people had been arrested. Reports of police torture from those who had been arrested began to emerge prompting more outrage from people.

Leftwing groups nationwide began their own strikes in response to the 3.1 shooting incident and subsequent arrests leading to a huge number of arrests nationwide (over 2,000).