The Kwangju Uprising: A Miracle of Asian Democracy as Seen by the Western and the Korean Press

A Miracle of Asian Democracy as Seen by the Western and the Korean Press

Henry Scott Stokes, Lily Xiao Hong Lee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315291758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Kwangju Uprising that occurred in May 1980 is burned into the minds of South Koreans in much the same way that Tiananmen is burned into the minds of contemporary Chinese. As the world watched in horror following the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, student protesters were brutally suppressed by the military and police led by strongman Chun Doo Hwan. Kim Dae Jung, the current president of South Korea, was imprisoned and sentenced to death during this period.

This book recreates those earth-shaking events through eyewitness reports of leading Western correspondents on the scene as well as Korean participants and observers. Photographs, detailed street maps, and dramatic woodblock prints further illuminate the day-to-day drama to keep this atrocity alive in the conscience of the world.

Part One
Two Korean Voices

Introduction

Major news stories have a way of drawing the most competitive journalists in any country. Kim Chung Keun of Dong-A Ilbo, a leading Korean daily, was one of the first Seoul-based reporters to arrive in Kwangju. In his account he discloses how his editors in Seoul sent him into action as early as the afternoon of May 17, 1980, hours before South Korea's new military ruler, General Chun Doo Hwan, declared full martial law. Either Mr. Kim's editors had been tipped off that the military intended to crack down on Kwangju, the home base of Kim Dae Jung, South Korea's chief opposition politician—then blame "DJ" for any riots and try him for treason; or the Dong-A Ilbo editors had an uncanny premonition of what would happen. In any event, the newspaper packed off its streetwise reporter to Kwangju.

The eventual result, though the newspaper could not publish one line of Kim's reporting at the time because of military censorship, is perhaps the most vivid piece ever written on the Kwangju uprising in terms of what it was like to be on the streets of the city then, day and night, in the thick of the action. Kim, then just thirty, was close to the age of Kwangju's student leaders. He saw instantly what the military were up to. Chun's paratroop commanders had developed a new form of bloodsport, which the Korean press dubbed "hunting for humans"—i.e., beating the daylights out of anything that moved on the street, male or female, young or old. After seven days and nights of watching this degradation, which culminated in soldiers' opening fire on citizens at the end of a gathering held on Buddha's birthday on Wednesday, May 21, Kim quit the city and returned to Seoul. He left before the denouement—die military's triumphal reentry into Kwangju in the early hours of Tuesday, May 27. Kim's terse description of his departure from Kwangju, with the disembodied voice of a powerless president (Choi Gyu Ha, a puppet of General Chun) floating from a helicopter above his head, is the culminating touch of his piece.

A second writer featured in this section is Lee Jai Eui, a coeditor of this book. Lee, then a third-year student at Chonnam National University, Kwangju's premier university, was just twenty-five at the time of the uprising. He is the best-known Korean writer on the Kwangju uprising, as the author of Kwangju Diary (UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 1999, published by the University of California, Los Angeles). This short book, originally published in Korean as a clandestine work of record, was compiled by Lee and others at great personal risk in the mid-1980s, when Chun was still president of South Korea. In a newly prepared text Lee looks at two matters that play little part in other Korean reporters' writings here. These two topics are U.S. responsibility for the atrocities at Kwangju, whether indirect or direct, moral or military, perceived or not; and the student leadership in Kwangju during May 18—27, in particular the role played by Yun Sang Won, a born leader.

Lee was in the thick of events. A sensitive and inexperienced youth, he was confronted by violent death. He saw horrific incidents—a soldier stabbing a civilian to death with a bayonet; a young woman, caught in an alley and stripped and attacked by two young soldiers, who grinned as they finished their work and lugged the woman's unconscious body toward a waiting truck. Lee was moving, meanwhile, toward a turning point in his life; close to the end of the uprising, he "sneaked" out of Kwangju, abandoning his comrades in the Provincial Hall, the symbolic center of the province of South Cholla. Lee's confession of how he fled is followed by a description of a city battered by an insane violence that was all the more frightening because it was indiscriminate. The bizarre code name chosen for this operation by the Korean armed forces' leaders was "Fascinating Vacations."

Chapter One
Days and Nights on the Street

Kim Chung Keun

Blood and Tears 3

It was about 4 P.M. on Saturday, May 17, 1980. National politics were at fever pitch in Seoul. Everyone on the city desk was on duty that day, even though it was a weekend.

I was outside the office. I had been assigned to cover a student leaders' gathering at Ewha Womans University in central Seoul. The meeting was going on, interminably, in the student-union hall. The presidents of student councils of universities from all over the country, the top student leaders in South Korea, had gathered that weekend to debate strategy. The government, meanwhile, was insisting on continuing martial law despite the fact that North Korea, a perennial concern, was not stirring things up. For the time being, in Seoul the student leaders had taken a decision just the day before to refrain from further demonstrations to avoid provoking the South Korean military.

(On that same evening, unknown to us, martial law was to be suddenly expanded. From then on, South Korea was covered by martial law prohibitions—the universities were closed, the National Assembly was dissolved, and military censorship was asserted. At one stroke, the original intention of the military—to crack down under full martial law—was made manifest. This was in the cards by late that afternoon. Outside the university gates, police and military intelligence were poised to arrest the students in one fell swoop.)

Just then, when I was concentrating on events at Ewha, I got a call from my office. It was from Lee Sang Ha, the head of the provincial news desk.

"Something's happening in Kwangju! Please go down there straightaway."

Kwangju: Saturday, May 17 (9 P.M.)

The entire city was under curfew. You had to be indoors unless you had a pass.

There were checkpoints on the streets. No matter, I had accreditation. I headed for the police department of South Cholla province, having arrived in Kwangiu, the provincial capital. I found the detectives standing around or sitting at their desks drinking soju (cheap spirits).

"It's all over, f—hell. That was the army plot all along!"

"Why couldn't the three Kims and the students have predicted this!"

(The reference was to Kim Jong Pil, Kim Young Sam, and Kim Dae Jung, the three prospective candidates in planned forthcoming direct presidential elections—planned until that point.)

"So? And what could they have done even if they had smelled a rat?"

"The whole thing was planned in advance from the word go! S—. Now what are we going to do? There's a rumor that everyone will gather on Gumnam-ro and spread all over."

The street he referred to, Gumnam-ro, is the traditional rallying spot for demonstrators in Kwangju.

"Then what do we do?"

"God! Kwangju of all places! S—!"

These guys knew. There were plans for a heavy crackdown on and in the city. They'd got wind of something—violent suppression. Something bad, if not ghastly, was coming up, I sensed.

I read their faces. Self-contempt, sadness and lamentation, reproaches of the hostile variety, resentment and anger, despair—the whole gamut of emotion was there to read in their faces as they talked on.

Kwangju: Sunday, May 18 (early morning)

The next morning, I was up and about near the Provincial Hall, the traditional and symbolic center of the city as well as the actual administrative center of the province of South Cholla. I was uncomfortable just going into the restaurants, even without hearing a word. People were uneasy. Some customers saw that we—I, a cameraman, and our driver from Seoul—were press from Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, a big paper. They started needling us at once.

"How come they stepped up martial law, even when the student demonstrations had stopped, eh?"

"What's this about beating up students at Chonnam University last night?"

Word of some unwonted violence up there at the main university in Kwangju just the night before had spread like wildfire in the city.

"If we had foreseen this situation..." they said, they would have risen in support of demonstrations at Pusan and Masan six months earlier—-just before the assassination of President Park Chung Hee by his KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency) chief in Seoul on October 26, 1979.

"What a situation! The Park military dictatorship finally collapses ... finally after 18 years . . . and out come the soldiers with their guns and bayonets at the ready! What kind of f— logic is that?"

Then the punchline: "So Chun Doo Hwan is planning to swallow the whole government for breakfast... Yep, yep."

More and more people gathered. Soon, there were twenty, including the owner of the restaurant. Customers were there, plus the storekeeper from next door, plus some passersby.

They were primed, alerted: "Gumnam-ro, 10 A.M."

The word had gone round. People were learning of the gathering by word of mouth.

"Something is happening" all right, I thought, recalling the words of my city editor. Holy Christ.

Kwangju: Sunday, May 18 (10 A.M.)

It was a Sunday. All the same, people were gathering in groups on Gumnam-ro. Looking into their eyes I saw tension, resolve, and determination, and of these three tension was the strongest. Someone shouted.

"End martial law!"

It was like a gunshot.

People poured out of shops, side streets and buildings. They had been waiting for the word, and a demonstration was forming. Leaders shouted slogans.

"Let the prisoners go. Let them go."

"Let Kim Dae Jung go!"

"Announce the nation's political timetable. ANNOUNCE!"

That was not all. The people demanded to know who was responsible for the violence at Chonnam University the day before (when the military had broken in on students studying for their exams and beaten them indiscriminately).

"Apologize, Apologize!"

That was how the demonstrations began in downtown Kwangju that morning. Out came the riot police, of course. They chased after the demonstrators, doing their best to catch them, but still numbers were limited. It was close on lunchtime when the whole streetview changed. People in business suits came out for lunch and mingled with the demonstrators as they came. The riot police got pushed back, lacking numbers. Steadily and then suddenly, the whole of Gumnam-ro was inundated with people. A sit-down demonstration commenced.

What followed is all but impossible to describe: an army attack—a pincer attack on civilians. Military trucks crammed with heavily armed paratroopers with fixed bayonets lurched into sight at both ends of Gumnam-ro simultaneously. The paras jumped out and waded into the crowd from both ends of the street, working toward the middle—striking out with heavy-duty clubs, left, right, left, right... with no regard to who was there, male or female, young or old. The soldiers went for headshots with their big clubs. Gumnam-ro—moments before the scene of a peaceful sitdown demo—was transformed in a matter of seconds into a hell on earth.

It was terribly one-sided. Some bold spirits threw stones. Others had bottles full of petrol—Molotov cocktails—prepared. But the soldiers reacted quickly. They chased after anyone young, beat them with their rifle butts and kicked them with their heavy army boots. If they caught them...

The outcome? The Kwangju citizens' idea—to demonstrate peacefully against martial law and to protest violence—was blown away. The exorbitant violence of the troops was what did it. The reaction was: "What the hell is the military up to?" "How could a (Korean) national army do this to fellow Koreans?" Rank incomprehension was overtaken by a sense of outrage.

Hunting Humans

Covering the Kwangju uprising—and writing of it in the aftermath—I was stuck for words. A reporter is supposed to be able to write. I couldn't get down on paper, for myself even, what I had seen.

Some events, some actions resist words: they beggar description.

The original outrages by the troops, remember, took place in broad daylight, with thousands of people present. Afterward? "Massacre" is the word, the only word to begin to describe what followed.

More than that I cannot say. Here and there in the city, in different spots, I encountered situations that boggled the mind and left me numb, left me without the faculty of cognition, over on the other side of the mind.

Typically—in other places, in other situations—the authorities put down demos following a standard pattern that I was deeply familiar with. The way to quell a demo, usually, was to threaten the crowd of demostrators or to make a limited, controlled attack on that crowd. The military used a totally different quelling model at Kwangju, not at all like the usual one I had seen at other times.

At Kwangju, once the soldiers showed up on Gumnam-ro, they ran headlong into the demonstrators. The boundary that had existed between the soldiers and the crowd was eliminated. It vanished in the midst of a melee, a free-for-all with no holds barred and no rules. The soldiers smashed out with their clubs at all and sundry, regardless of age, sex or anything else. Worst of all were the attacks on young women and office workers—identifiable by their regulation dark suits. If a soldier found himself facing a young male, he lit into that man, got him down and kicked the shit out of the guy. The soldiers had a trampling routine that...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Works of Art, Photos, and Maps
• Foreword
• Introduction and Acknowledgments
• Maps
• Part One: Two Korean Voices
• Part Two: The Foreign Press
• Part Three: The Korean Press
• Index
• About the Editors