It’s been 26 years since the fateful events of May 18, 1980, but as recent news would indicate, the past is still with us.
(NOTE: Before you begin reading, be sure to check out Antti’s collection of photos from the Gwangju Uprising)
Uri Party lawmaker Lee Won-young was stripped of his position as head of the party’s human rights committee after he made comments that seemingly whitewashed what took place in Gwangju (see Korean here). More specifically, while explaining the differences between the government’s recent deployment of troops to Pyeongtaek and the deployment of troops to Gwangju in 1980, Lee said that troops were sent to Gwangju in order to maintain law and order:
On May 12, during a PBC radio show, he explained the difference between soldiers being deployed to Pyeongtaek, where demonstrations opposing the relocation of USFK bases are taking place, and the May 18 Gwangju democratic movement, “In Gwangju soldiers were deployed to maintain order, while soldiers are deployed to Pyeongtaek in order to protect a military facility, so both deployments are different in nature.”
Not content to let the Uri Party steal the thunder, the Grand National Party’s human rights committee chief Chung tried to outdo his colleague across the aisle by calling for a re-evaluation of the May 16, 1961 military coup that brought Major Gen. Park Chung-hee to power. Chung suggested that the April 19, 1960 revolt that overthrew Syngman Rhee and the May 16, 1961 coup allowed Korea to become the democratic and prosperous nation it is today. On the Grand National Party’s homepage, he wrote:
We must sincerely tell and confidently convince young people that today’s economic prosperity and democratization comes from the April 19 revolution and May 16 coup; that if there had been no May 16 coup, then the April 19 revolution would have been buried, and without the April 19 revolution, the May 16 coup would never have seen the light of day.”
He went on to explain that some felt those reformists who supported the April 19 democratic revolution supported the May 16 coup, and that the motivation behind both were the same.
Needless to say, some were not pleased by this, with the Uri Party spokesman slamming Chung for drawing a connection between the April 19 pro-democracy activists and the May 16 coup leaders. He also noted that generals Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo had been inspired by the events of May 16, 1961 when they suppressed the Gwangju Uprising of May 18, 1980.
At any rate, Chung later apologized for his statement and resigned from his position as head of the GNP human rights committee.
Perhaps one of the more interesting bits of Gwangju-related news is the recent release by the Kim Dae-jung Library of a 1983 dedication written by the ex-president. The dedication, read at a memorial ceremony for the victims of the Gwangju Uprising convened by Korean-Americans while Kim was living in exile in the United States, said the uprising took place “to release the han of the people,” and laid at least partial blame for the incident on the United States. DJ said:
“We are a people of han: han over the division of the fatherland, han over the politics of dictatorship, han over the politics of the military, han over the polarization of rich and poor… The Gwangju Uprising took place to release this han, and was yet another han-laden incident of frustration.”
About the United States, he said the Gwangju Uprising (or suppression thereof) was a disaster brought on by the irresponsible actions of the USFK commander who held operation command over the Korean military, and that it had brought about a decisive change in the attitude of Korean citizens toward the United States.
Anyway…
President Roh, of course, was in Gwangju today to mark the 26th anniversary of the uprising. You can read his full address (in Korean) if you like. Nothing really exciting, although in typical Roh fashion, he said enough indecipherable stuff (actually, one spot in particular) to give media companies material to spin in the worst way possible.
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“…with the Uri Party spokesman slamming Chung for drawing a connection between May 16’s pro-democracy activists and May 18’s coup leaders.”
Do you mean “a connection between April 19th’s pro-democracy activists and May 16th’s coup leaders” ?
I would have thought Park Chung-hee’s coup had influenced the December 12th, 1979 takeover of the armed forces by Chun and Roh, more than the causing of and suppression of the Kwangju uprising.
Woops, my bad. Too many dates and too little posting time.
I remember Gwangju. I warned the idiot students then that to act as an unruly mob would achieve nothing and only invite slaughter.
Now Roh is portraying Gwangju as a “democratic movement”, saying, “The blood and tears of Kwangju citizens nourished the democracy we are enjoying today…The May 18 Kwangju democratic movement is a story of progress which will live long in the world’s history.”
In fact it achieved nothing positive, invited slaughter, and became a cause of anti-Americanism due to media lies that the US supported Chun Doo Hwan (the US in fact had no advance knowlege of and criticised the Massacre).
Finally, it perpetrates the kind of lawless demonstrations that continue today.
What a huge waste
DJ sinks in my estimation every time I hear more anout his thoughts. I still say strip his bribery-stained Nobel and give him only a one-way ticket to Pyongyang next month.
about his thoughts
Mizar 5
As I’m sure you know, given your presence there at the time, the “idiot students” were, initially at least, protesting peacefully against the closure of their universities by a military junta. The heavy-handed response of the military elicited sympathy and outrage from ordinary Gwangju people, who were also among the casualties when things turned nasty.
Yes, lies were told alleging U.S.’ acquiescence in the events; and yes, many (or most) of the protestors in Pyeongtaek are self-interested thugs. But given your much-vaunted faith in American values, shouldn’t you have sympathy with what the Gwangju protestors initially set out to do? And shouldn’t you be a little more compassionate about what happened to them?
Do you also consider the protestors at Tiananmen Square in 1989 “idiot students”? Or the protestors in Burma in 1988?
Oh man, DJ’s quote, “han” this and “han” that…you can substitute “naive sense of unique victimization essentialized into one word” for “han.” It’s like Korea’s “four distinct seasons,” something common around the world that is promoted here as something unique.
I first heard about Kwanju from a Korean friend who was there when she was a young lady and it was quite terrible to hear her tale and to hear of the turmoil during that time. I only wish that we were not presently experiencing such a “han-demic” of stupidity on the part of Kim DJ and other politicians who greedily attempt to use this somber occasion for their own purposes.
Danger Mouse, you are misinformed. The students were not initally peaceful. They took the initiative themselves of burning police stations, taking over an armory and riding around in tanks waving guns. They were out of hand aned they were stupid.
And I had the greatest compassion for the young people being gunned down and young women raped by troops running amuk. One of my friends documented this in photos and was subsequently harrassed by the government.
But to pretend that their martyrdom accomplished something other than hundreds being burried in mass graves or somehow contributed to democratization is “demogogery”.
Mob violence cannot be equated with the self sacrifice of the young people who stood peaceably in front of tanks to express their convictions. Let’s not equate pointless, mindless outbursts with the eloquent protest of Gandi.
And yes, I support the right to protest – peacefully. This is precisely what democracy provides for. But in other nations, the NGOs don’t just engage in self-defeating destructive violence; they work responsibly with their elected representatives to get things done. They raise money, lobby, endorce and support candidates and raise public consciousness.
It’s time to raise the level of public discourse – no more excuses and no more pretty lies lionizing and condoning unruly mobs for political gain.
Mizar5, I’m confused. I read this on wiki supporting the inference that the US tacitly knew of what was going down in Gwangju and Chun’s plans to use lethal force. How do you know the US was completely ignorant?
Wiki quote:
Tim Shorrock, through his analysis of recently declassified U.S. government documents, has shown the following discoveries regarding U.S. involvement with the incident (Source: Tim Shorrock, “U.S. Knew of South Korean Crackdown: Ex-Leaders Go on Trial in Seoul,” Journal of Commerce 27, February 27, 1996):
* Senior officials in the Carter administration, fearing that chaos in South Korea could unravel a vital military ally and possibly tempt North Korea to intervene, approved Mr. Chun’s plans to use military units against the huge student demonstrations that rocked Korean cities in the spring of 1980.
* Two of the key decision-makers at the time were Warren Christopher, President Clinton’s secretary of state, and Richard C. Holbrooke, who retired under the Clinton Administration as chief negotiator on Bosnia and afterwards joined the New York investment banking firm of CS First Boston. Mr. Christopher was deputy secretary of state in 1980 and Mr. Holbrooke, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in Bosnia, was assistant secretary of state of East Asian and Pacific affairs.
* U.S. officials in Seoul and Washington knew Mr. Chun’s contingency plans included the deployment of Korean Special Warfare Command troops, trained to fight behind the lines in a war against North Korea. The Black Beret Special Forces, who were not under U.S. command, were modeled after the U.S. Green Berets and had a history of brutality dating back to their participation alongside American troops in the Vietnam War.
* On May 22, 1980, in the midst of the Kwangju Uprising, the Carter administration approved further use of force to retake the city and agreed to provide short-term support to Mr. Chun if he agreed to long-term political change. At a White House meeting on that date, plans were also discussed for direct U.S. military intervention if the situation got out of hand.
Sambek_ZX—Because of its nature, you need to take anything you read in Wikipedia with a grain of salt. Much as you should claims by Mizar5 that he was warning students of anything in 1980.
A deep scar in our(Korean) history.
Robert, I take everything I read on the internet with a grain of salt, especially this blog!
. However, rather than refuting Mizar5, I wanted to probe the basis of his argument, hoping he’d provide a cite to something that would refute the Wiki entry. At this point, he’s just adamantly saying everything’s a lie. Ok, show me.
Danger Mouse, you are misinformed. The students were not initally peaceful. They took the initiative themselves of burning police stations, taking over an armory and riding around in tanks waving guns. They were out of hand aned they were stupid.
You’re compressing 4 days of protests into a single sentence, and misrepresenting the uprising almost as much as it has been misrepresented here (on the other side of the political spectrum).
The special forces began beating any students they found on campuses in Kwangju as soon as they occupied them around 1 am on May 18th; they then attacked any students found approaching the school (starting around 7am) and beat the shit out of them and arrested them. This was the context in which the protests developed. Any increase in violence by the protesters was preceded by an increase in violence by the special forces. Around 3pm, despite the objections of their regional commander, the troops were sent into the city center to ‘disperse’ the demonstration that their own behavior had helped set off. Instead, they began to mercilessly beat, club, hit with rifle-butts, and even bayonet anyone who looked young, or anyone who got in their way, regardless of age or sex.
The soldiers’ unprecedented violence was what set off the uprising. The students were only the catalysts, and within hours, innocent citizens were being targeted; by the next day, Kwangju’s citizens began to outnumber the students taking part, and by the 20th, what was arguably the most radical action of the first few days – the occupation of the main streets by vehicles – was carried out by bus and taxi drivers, who were angry at the way they had been targeted by the troops. The military response was to begin shooting, first at Kwangju station that night, then throughout the city the next day (especially in front of the Provincial Hall building where they fired into a large crowd). This shooting led people to begin arming themselves, and the formation of the citizens’ army. The soldiers’ retreat from the city later that day did not end their shooting; on the outskirts of the city, they continued to fire on buses and cars (and even on their own units by mistake – 12 of the 23 soldiers killed were killed by friendly fire), which resulted in at least another 50 deaths.
During the first 3 days, more and more troops were sent to Kwangju; these reinforcements (which, arriving in two waves, brought the total of paratroopers to 3,400) were committed before the troops they were reinforcing had even engaged the protesters. The incoming reinforcements had little knowledge of what the troops preceding them had done, and so the protesters’ anger and violence seemed incomprehensible – making it even easier to consider them ‘the enemy’ and react accordingly, which in turn radicalised the citizens even further. No one is going to pretend that the way in which the protesters forced the army out of the city was ‘peaceful’, but they had been goaded to that point by the soldiers. To turn Mizar 5′s phrase around, for the soldiers to act like an unruly mob would achieve nothing and only turn an entire city against them.
As for US involvement, while I think Gleysteen’s (unofficial) approval of contingency plans to use the military to reinforce the police may have been short-sighted, he made clear to Chun the dangers of escalation if any deaths should occur, and spoke of the need for restraint. No one could have forseen what happened in Kwangju, which simply had no precedent – the military did not use ‘crowd control’ techniques there, they “hunted humans”, as one Donga-Ilbo reporter described it.
Whether the US could have done more to restrain the military after they pulled out of the city is anyone’s guess. The fact that the embassy had no real presence in Kwangju left the ambassador with a less-than-stellar understanding of the situation there, but he did try to support the citizens’ committee (which was negotiating with the military) by ‘remote control’ from Seoul. Worth remembering is that his message calling for calm on both sides was not broadcast by the military – instead they broadcast in Kwangju the “malicious distortion”, as Gleysteen put it, that the US had supported the crackdown in the first place. While Gleysteen and Wickham (unoffically, again) did support using the 20th Infantry division if the city needed to be retaken, it was because they were preferrable to using the paratroopers (whose brutality Gleysteen recognized was responsible for setting off the uprising) again. What little pressure the US did exert may have postponed the army’s retaking of the city. Those few days may have saved the lives of those who had cooled down after the heat of the first few days and decided not to take part in the defense of the ciity on the morning of the 27th.
Mizar5. Just curious. Are you Korean? American? What were you doing there in 1980? Why were you there?
If you’re American, that may make you a US expat in South Korea for more than 20 years. You mind stating what you do? Just curious.
Robert, that was a blind shot in the dark.
It’s poor form to cast apsersions on people when you don’t know the facts. As a recent college graduate at the time I was in touch with what was happening on the campuses.
Yes I was warning students about not demonstrating. Why wouldn’t I? I happened to be in Taegu at the time, not Kwangju, where similar demonstrations were taking place. Tear gas (so-called “pepper spray” was a common phenomenon on campuses at the time.
Now, let’s separate the aspersions from the facts in Kwangju.
As for “approving” the use of troops and the supposed support of Chun, five facts are certain.
First, approval was only required for use of troops against outside invasion, so such approval was technically unneccesary and merely a formality.
Second. there is no evidence that the US had any prior knowledge that the troops would go haywire and perpetrate a massacre and any statements to the contrary remain simply wild conjecture.
Third, the US’s actual influence and options were in fact limited, a friend of mine present in Kwangju did phone the US embassy to let them know what was going on but was not believed. There was no official US presence there except the USIS (US Information Service) which was worthless.
Fourth, as the paragraph cited mentions, the US was working quietly for long-term change. They intervened to save the life of dissidents including Kim Dae Joong on several occassions, for instance. Also, there was no support for Chun who had recently had himself promoted to 4 star general and enjineered a coup to become president.
Fifth, after Chun seized power, he immediately had the news print that the US supported him. In fact, the Senate was in an uproar about the coup and there was NO OFFICIAL SUPPORT until Reagon was subsequently elected and bartered recognition (in the form of approving a visit by Chun to the white house) for the life of Kim Dae Joong.
As for the events of Kwangju, they were not completely clear. At the time there was heavy censorship and I had to rely from reports of friends on the scene. One of those were two Peace Corps volunteers from the US, by the way, who were subsequently deported by the Korean government.
The facts bear that the US was NOT responsible for either the coup or the crackdown in Kwangju.
“Danger Mouse, you are misinformed. The students were not initally peaceful. They took the initiative themselves of burning police stations, taking over an armory and riding around in tanks waving guns. They were out of hand aned they were stupid.”
I don’t claim to be an expert, and I certainly don’t claim to have been in Korea at the time, but I did study Korea at graduate school, and I have never seen any serious sources that support what you say. Yes, the students, by that time backed up by Gwangju citizens, stormed armouries and police stations, but only after they had been attacked by troops.
I have seen your previous posts, and am well aware that you are highly critical of Korea. If, however, you deny things that are pretty much universally accepted as true – i.e. that the military attacked the students first – it suggests that you will always adopt the least flattering view of Korea, irrespective of the facts. This hardly lends credibility to your other arguments. Such as…
“The facts bear that the US was NOT responsible for either the coup or the crackdown in Kwangju. ”
I agree. At worst, I think you could say that, with the benefit of hindsight, the US might have done things differently. But, like I said, when you make shrill and, excuse me, inaccurate reports of what happened there, it may well lead people, such as SambekZX, to question everything you say.
“And yes, I support the right to protest – peacefully. This is precisely what democracy provides for. But in other nations, the NGOs don’t just engage in self-defeating destructive violence; they work responsibly with their elected representatives to get things done. They raise money, lobby, endorce and support candidates and raise public consciousness.”
You have no argument from me here. But first of all, you’re conflating the issue of the Gwangju protests with modern day NGOs. The Gwangju protestors, I don’t need to remind you, did not have the option of working responsibly with elected representatives. Secondly, not ALL Korean NGOs behave as reprehensibly as the loons at Pyeongtaek. I would imagine, for example, that you would not be nearly so scathing about the many Korean NGOs promoting North Korean human rights issues.
Danger Mouse:
Yes, the students, by that time backed up by Gwangju citizens, stormed armouries and police stations, but only after they had been attacked by troops.
I was not aware of that distinction, not having had access to some of the accounts you have. As I said, it was a confusing time awash with so much misinformation. But I do not “adopt the least flattering view of Korea, irrespective of the facts”. I am more than pleased to be corrected.
Danger Mouse:
You have no argument from me here. But first of all, you’re conflating the issue of the Gwangju protests with modern day NGOs. The Gwangju protestors, I don’t need to remind you, did not have the option of working responsibly with elected representatives. Secondly, not ALL Korean NGOs behave as reprehensibly as the loons at Pyeongtaek. I would imagine, for example, that you would not be nearly so scathing about the many Korean NGOs promoting North Korean human rights issues.
You would imagine wrong. My critisism is not idiological, simply factual and I am equally critical of the so-called “right wing”. As for conflating, this was not my intent. I clearly stated that the politicians are conflating the Gwangju with democratization. Regardless of the stimulus, it was a mob scene. This does not mean I don’t sympathize with them. It means simply that Kwangju should not be used as an endorsement of lawlessness.
“They took the initiative themselves of burning police stations, taking over an armory and riding around in tanks waving guns”
This is the Chun government’s version of what happened. What happened was that the troops who were putting down the riots started indiscriminately killing anyone who looked like a student – whether they were protestors or not. Here you have a perfect case of a government who is supposed to protect the citizens, chasing down and killing students. It would be very understandable if the Kwangju citizens were angry and they had the right to protect themselves. Also the Chun government tried to completely block out the international media. This was the only way for the Kwangju citizens to get the word out to the world.
For what it’s worth, Michael Breen just wrote about Kwangju:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200605/kt2006051916110454220.htm
“Yes, the students, by that time backed up by Gwangju citizens, stormed armouries and police stations, but only after they had been attacked by troops.”
That’s not technically true – though it is the version contemporary Korean society accepts.
I don’t have to go to Chun Do Hwan propaganda to know it isn’t exactly true.
I can get it out of Kwangju Uprising: Korea’s Tianamen — a book written by former journalists very much in favor of the protesters.
In the chapter written by one of the few authors of the book who was in Kwangju before the days of riots and bloodshed noted that student groups had captured and “disarmed” local police units along with taking captive top administrative officials of the university for a time.
This was days before the paratroopers came in.
I still have a lot of questions and mixed feelings about Kwangju 1980.
I do have one firm conclusion: It was not Korea’s Tianamen…..
Also, you can’t think about the context of Kwangju 1980 without looking at the violent protests that were going on in several locatoins around the nation before the bloodshed in Kwangju.
At least for me, in reading about Kwangju, especially The Kwangju Uprising — I don’t find a lot of “innocents” running around on either side….
“The Gwangju protestors, I don’t need to remind you, did not have the option of working responsibly with elected representatives.”
Also not terribly true.
Several citizens of note in Kwangju tried to negociate with the martial law figures, but the student and other hardliners took over the people’s committees and shut those advocating a reduction in tension (and potential for bloodshed) because they wanted to become martyers for the democracy movement —- and I guess their plan worked well…
Also, I don’t believe Kim Dae Jung ever advocated armed revolt against the government — chosing civil war or bloody civil disturbance against Park Chung Hee and others instead of peaceful resistance to authoritarian rule.
That is what eventually got Kim Dae Jung international recognition and the Nobel Prize –
—- not a bloody uprising by hardline-communist inspired student leaders.
what I meant was —– is not the career of Kim Dae Jung a prime example of how taking up arms to fight the government was not the “only option” available in Kwangju or elsewhere…..
Violent protests the context of which, of course, you can’t think about without looking at the violent–and illegal—seizure of power by Chun Doo-hwan and his boys, which in turn followed 18 years of very autocratic rule by Park Chung-hee, which of course was accompanied by very real neglect of the Jeolla provinces.
Which explains the very high police and army body count from the operation. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but only because this seems to run dangerously close to drawing some sort of moral equivilency between the protesters and the martial law forces, and frankly, even if we were to grant that the whole excercise was a disaster of the first magnitude (as were the Easter Uprising, Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, Hungarian Revolt of 1956 and Shia uprising against Saddam Hussein following the first Gulf War), there was absolutely NO excuse for what Chun and his forces did in that city.
“there was absolutely NO excuse for what Chun and his forces did in that city.”
You’re absolutely right there and the US had very little to do with it all, too. This was a case of Koreans killing Koreans, no help from foreigners needed.
It’s not running dangerously close to drawing some sort of moral equivilency argument from my point of view.
It is trying to salvage a concept of non-violent resistance and advocation of democracy from the dilution it is experiencing with the boomerang in South Korean society’s view of Kwangju — moving from an interpretation of Kwangju 1980 being the story of a bunch of commie bastards who were trying to overthrow the government in favor of Pyongyang — to there being nothing but peace loving heros of the type of liberal democracy South Korea eventually established.
Warping the reailty in the opposite direction still does damage to the truth —- the what gets destroyed by this specific case are cherished ideas brought forth by people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Kwangju 1980 was no Tianamen.
“which in turn followed 18 years of very autocratic rule by Park Chung-hee”
And I’ll return to a point I made that just dawned on me today…
As far as I know, Kim Dae Jung never advocated a violent uprising against the authoritarian governments even though he was for a long time the leading dissident and suffered for it.
That is to be praised.
I don’t believe the same can be said for the kinds of leaders in Kwangju as described in The Kwangju Uprising: Korea’s Tianamen.
Putting those handful of leaders who forced out the others calling for moderation and negociation (to save lives) —- on the same level as Kim Dae Jung – in my opinion – is wrong and does damage to a set of values that should be promoted.
Mizar 5:
I clearly stated that the politicians are conflating the Gwangju with democratization. Regardless of the stimulus, it was a mob scene. This does not mean I don’t sympathize with them. It means simply that Kwangju should not be used as an endorsement of lawlessness.
At what point do you refer to it as a “mob scene”? You seem to think that the entire uprising was nothing but lawlessness. You forget (or are unaware) that for five full days of the uprising the city was controlled by the citizens after the army pulled out of the city. During that time there was a great deal of solidarity among the people of the city. My comparison would be to remember how 9-11 unified Americans – an entire, vast country. Imagine what your own army committing unspeakable atrocities against the people of your own city would do to unify people, especially when that army continued to surround the city and shoot many people who approached their lines (including their own troops) and threaten to return to inflict more cruelty. The journalists who were in the city spoke of how the city had been cleaned up (after destruction like this), of how the citizen’s army was being fed and supported by the citizens, and of how tens of thousands of the city’s residents joined in rallies calling for democracy. Well worth reading are Jurgen Hinzpeter’s and Norman Thorpe‘s accounts. Some of Hinzpeter’s footage of these rallies can be found here and here (right click and ‘save target as’), while some stills of the members of this ‘mob scene’ can be found here and here.
usinkorea:
In the chapter written by one of the few authors of the book who was in Kwangju before the days of riots and bloodshed noted that student groups had captured and “disarmed” local police units along with taking captive top administrative officials of the university for a time.
This was days before the paratroopers came in.
Please provide us with the page number in that book which supports this assertion. There is nothing in that book that suggests that the protesters “disarmed” (and thus, I assume mean to suggest, “armed”) themselves before the paratroopers arrived on May 18. Chosun Ilbo reporter Suh Chung-won says, on page 159, that protesters grabbed 17 carbines from the tax office in the early morning hours of May 21, after the soldiers had fired on protesters at Kwangju station, but hours before the army opened fire on masses of protesters in front of the Provincial Hall at 1:00 pm, which led the protesters (and citizens) to arm themselves with guns obtained mostly in surrounding towns. On page 200 of Memories of May 1980: A Documentary History of the Kwangju Uprising in Korea, it is said that because the army confiscated all of the ammunition from the arms depots around the city, the weapons taken at the tax office were useless.
Non-violent resistance in Kwangju was only going to get people beaten half to death (or to death), arrested, and tortured (or eventually, shot). Being a spectator would possibly bring the same result. Going about your day in the normal fashion could possibly (and did on many occasions) bring the same result. And what do you know – when this happens in the space of a few hours, it tends to anger and radicalize people to an incredible degree – which the incoming special forces reinforcements had to deal with (having no idea what the troops already in the city had done), which only made them treat the people in Kwangju even worse, which caused the people demonstrating in Kwangju to become even more violent in their response to the increasing violence being inflicted upon them. There was no “good” or “evil”, only people defending their city after being pushed to the brink by the incomprehensibly brutal actions of their own army.
Perhaps if the army had been dispatched by a communist government, you’d be a little more disposed to look on the protesters more kindly.
Or, to put it another way, as you keep bringing it up as the way to gauge legitimate protests, what does Tiananmen Square mean to you?
My sentiments exactly.
And frankly, if we wanted to hold the Tiananmen Square demonstrations to the same standard, we’d also find a complex set of motives, bad decision making and some of the same things that apparently made the Gwangju demonstrators less “innocent.”
“there was absolutely NO excuse for what Chun and his forces did in that city.”
Yeah and you forgot to say “mean people suck” and “Hitler was a jerk”.
Nobody here has tried to excuse it. So save the platitudes. Remember, those of us who lived through it were a LOT more sympathetic than those of you who have only read about it.
Now, let’s get back to the facts, and stop the pious opining. My point to the students of the time was that wild demonstrations would only worsen things and be the excuse for dangerous crackdowns. In retrospect, I was right, as witnessed by, among others, Terry Anderson:
On May 1, several hundred students had marched in Kwangju to protest martial law and demand an end to Chun’s hard-fisted rule. The protests continued for the next two weeks, spreading to Seoul and other cities. Then Chun made a grievous error. On May 17, he extended the already wide rule of martial law, began arresting opposition figures (including Kim Dae Jung) and sent into Kwan gju units of paratroopers from the far North–highly trained, hard men who already had a regional antipathy to the southerners. The paratroopers launched a virtual army riot, chasing demonstrators through the streets, clubbing, gassing and even shooting many in front of the astonished and increasingly outraged citizens of the city. Soldiers chased young men into stores and even onto city buses to catch them and drag them away. The riots spread. Clashes with police and soldiers grew more vicious. In Seoul, we dispatched young Simon Kim to Kwangju. One the night of May 20, the telephoned dispatch was grim. Some 100,000 demonstrators, no longer just students, had besieged the provincial capital building. The army opened fire, killing many. The city rose in rage.”
The students provoked it, raised the ante and reaped the inevitable crackdown they were supposedly demonstrating against. The scene on college campuses that spring were all much the same – a reckless game of provoking the riot police with violence. The riot police were typically quite responsible and peaceful in response to the students’ bluffs, which made it all appear like some kind of ritual game – much like the pushing matches between two drunken ajussi. Their response was limited to pushing the students back onto the campus to provent them from spilling out onto the streets, and teargassing. But the kids became increasingly emboldened and increasingly violent.
A friend of mine was a 권투경찰, a student from Kyeong Buk University serving his time in the army and my heart went out to him and others who were unfairly victomized by these irresponsible students.
What I was counciling was restraint, intelligence. What was needed was a steady, quiet approach. What occured was reckless abandon. And it provoked the a regretably inhuman, and regretably preventable crackdown.
To turn a blind eye to their mistakes and laud them as bastions of democracy is less responsible as learning the lessons of the mistakes of the past.
Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re Korean. And you lived through it. And counciled restraint and intelligence. Will try to remember next time.
And excuse me, but I fail to see how the section you just cited demonstrates how the students “provoked” an army riot. Unless, of course, you’re referring to the early May protests against Chun and martial law. Which I guess would count as “provocation.”
BTW, Mizar5, I understand how you feel, because I was in Budapest in 1956, and I was counciling to people there restraint and intelligence. But of course, no one listened to me, they provoked the Soviets by revolting, and look what happened. Shame. And a friend of mine was in the Soviet Red Army, just a conscript, and my heart went out to him and all those others who were victimized by those reckless and irresponsible Hungarian revolutionaries.
“Perhaps if the army had been dispatched by a communist government, you’d be a little more disposed to look on the protesters more kindly.
My sentiments exactly.”
Oh bullshit.
What the f- in what I have written suggests I’m polluted by some political/ideological bullshit?
Turn what I said into some petty political oriented crap if you must, but I’ll stick with my point – there is a reason Gandhi is revered.
Champion the innocent civilians just defending their city because even if they did just protest peacefully or go about their business – they were going to get killed anyway if you want —- there really is no way we are ever going to come close to see eye to eye on this —- but from what I read, I sure as hell don’t place the people turning to violence in Kwangju 1980 on the same level as the the people in Tianamen.
And I could give a rat’s f-ing ass whether the authorities sending the soldiers in were rightist or leftist dictators!!!
“And frankly, if we wanted to hold the Tiananmen Square demonstrations to the same standard, we’d also find a complex set of motives, bad decision making and some of the same things that apparently made the Gwangju demonstrators less “innocent.””
Do you really believe that?
After reading the books and articles about what happened in Kwangju —- you really believe the demonstrations in Tiananmen were close enough to cabon copies of each other there is no significant difference?
“Or, to put it another way, as you keep bringing it up as the way to gauge legitimate protests, what does Tiananmen Square mean to you?”
I’ve stated my opinion about as clearly as I can:
Non-violent resistence to oppression is to be valued much more than armed resistance. And Tianamen was clearly an example of the first type and Kwangju of the second.
And as I said, I admire Kim Dae Jung for, as far as I’ve heard, never advocating the use of violent force in his years as the key dissident leader in South Korea. While the mainly student leaders who took over the people’s committees in Kwangju stifled those who did not want more blood spilt there in 1980.
“Please provide us with the page number in that book which supports this assertion”
I don’t have a copy of the book here. It was either in one of the forwards or introductory chapters. It was one of the few sections of the book written by someone who was in the city before the 2 main days of bloodshed. If you don’t want to believe me, fine.
Even if you read that part, it is obvious it won’t effect your opinion.
“During that time there was a great deal of solidarity among the people of the city. My comparison would be to remember how 9-11 unified Americans – an entire, vast country.”
I don’t think that is true.
Even the foreign coorespondents who were very favorable to the effort of the protesters in Kwangju remarked how the leadership or would be leadership of the people in the city fractured during those days after the main two of bloodshed — with the students (but also another group of what has been described as hardliners) took over the people’s committees because they did not want to negociate with outside authorities.
The way it is described by a number of people in The Kwangju Uprising, the students, especially the one main leader, wanted more bloodshed. They hoped Kwangju would inspire similar uprisings across the nation — a revolution — or that their martyerdom would inspire opposition to the authoritarian government and bring it down —– and I guess I’d have to give him credit – eventually that is what happened — and he and his fellow leaders who would not compromise are now considered martyers —
to the point that to question that interpretatoin will have the Marmot saying perhaps you are only objecting because the dictators who sent the troops in were not communists…..
I forgot —- on the unity issue —
yes – the citizens did rally behind the protesters for part of the events and helped them fight and helped by giving food and water and moral support, but by the end, the students and others who stuck with them were not joined by the common citizens.
Robert,
I’m kind of suprised at the level of which you entered this Kwangju 1980 discussion -
calling Mizar a liar and me someone with a pseudo-political blindness in favor of right wing dictators then that snide comment about Hungry….
I would expect this from a certain type of college student in the US, but I won’t have figured you would take on that role like this…..
Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re Korean. And you lived through it. And counciled restraint and intelligence. Will try to remember next time.
Yes, that’s right. And since you have no basis to question my testimony, just remember what Yogi Berra might have said if he had said it. Something like “I guess you had to see it to witness it.”
And excuse me, but I fail to see how the section you just cited demonstrates how the students “provoked” an army riot.
Well, you’re a good enough reader to be able to parse my testimony about how the student radicals were deliberately baiting the authorities through violence and unruly mob behavior, never pausing to consider the possible consequences of their actions, and how they reaped what they sewed in the form of violent reprisal. Try reading it over and I can work up a 10 question reading comprehension quiz – (don’t worry – it’ll be multiple choice).
Usainkorea:
Robert, I’m kind of suprised at the level of which you entered this Kwangju 1980 discussion – calling Mizar a liar and me someone with a pseudo-political blindness in favor of right wing dictators then that snide comment about Hungry…I would expect this from a certain type of college student in the US, but I won’t have figured you would take on that role like this…
It’s OK, we all have our bad days. Obviously calling someone a liar or a rascal is not a valid argument. Give him some time to recoup. Or see the point.
The section you cited from Terry Anderson does not say anything about “baiting the authorities through violence and unruly mob behavior.” See below:
I see “march” and “protest.” No talk of “baiting” authorities through violence and unruly mob behavior. In fact, the first time violence is mentioned is the “army riot.” As for “parsing” your testimony, well, excuse my skepticism. But just for kicks, and because I think you’ll appreciate it, let me ask what you think of Ji Man-won’s take on Gwangju?
UsinKorea—Since you brought up my snide comment about Hungary, let me ask—how would you compare the 1956 Hungary Uprising with the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, being how both were violent uprisings against unsurmountable odds that ended, predictably enough, in brutal crushings? Or the East German riots of 1953? Or the Polish strikes of 1980? I ask because if we cannot compare Gwangju with Tiananmen Square because the demonstrators eventually resorted to violence in Gwangju (although they eventually resorted to violence—ineffectively, albet—in Tiananmen as well when the military started moving in, if for no other reason than self-defense), I’d like to know whether, in your opinion, we could compare Gwangju to those failed violent Eastern European uprisings.
And let’s also compare that to the Bonus March in 1932 in Washington DC.
Btw, in the case of Tiananmen, the Chinese government clearly said that violence was to be used as a last resort. Accounts have shown that PLA transports were put to fire and PLA soldiers died during Tiananmen. This proves that there was violence commited on both sides. Now you can argue who started the violence first. But there is no denying that demonstrators did kill PLA soldiers.
One of the most striking photographs to prove the restrain of force is the Tank Man photograph. In that photograph a bystander stood in front of a tank. The Tank Man refuses to overrun the bystander with his tank. The Tank Man didn’t even try to threaten the bystander by pointing his pistol at him. Instead he tried to meneuver around the bystander several times. Finally, another bystander pulled the bystander away.
The great restrain of force shown by the Tank Man in not overruning the bystander proves that the Chinese government must have given very strict orders not to use force. The Tank Man did not even pull out his gun. In say the US, the police would have pulled out their gun and pointed at suspects and shouted, “Hands up in the air”. The Tank Man could have pulled out his gun and said “Move aside or you will be under arrest”.
To this day, we still don’t know who the Tank Man is. Some say he is still with the PLA.
“mahathir_fan”, perhaps it is easier for a soldier to fire into a faceless crowd — as was done by the PLA — than for the tank driver to look a man right in the face and run over him, thus killing him. Though this might speak well of the driver — we don’t know if the tank commander ordered the driver to run over him or not — this is hardly an example of what the PLA did that day, according to more than a few accounts.
Only Young Nam people want to portray this event in any possible way negatively and tie it to communism as much as possible. That is what I hae observed as a Choong Chung Do origin person. Pity, because it was a Young Nam President who was the culprit. Gotta defend themselves somehow I suppose. Cats and dogs. Young Nam and Ho Nam.
Robert,
I don’t know much about any of those other periods of suppression or the environment in which they took place.
I do know you did not offer your comparison between Hungray and Kwangju as some thought/discussion provoking item to further a real discussion of the issue. You offered it as a snide comment after basically calling the person you were addressing a liar though not in such harsh terms as saying, “Don’t pay attention to that guy. He’s a liar.”
And I’m going to branch this out with some trepidation, because this might be a touchy subject in a thread about a touchy subject —-
but it has to do with my idle curiosity about what seems at least a little to me to be some evolution in your thought.
And I really mean idle curiosity. I hope you will take this as some type of flattery having the most read expat blog and readers like me who have been coming here daily for a long time.
Anyway, here is the curiosity —
As mentioned before, I thought he had started omitting your opinion a good bit on most things but especially some types that might be considered tough on Korea.
And what got the curiosity going today, and led to this comment, was both how you have shown a good bit of opinion in this post — like stating in short fashion that my Kwangju thoughts are some knee-jerk reactionarism against the left or some shallow favoriticism for right-wing dictators….
…or your short comment suggesting the other commentor is a liar then the comment about Hungary.
To me, those remarks were not very Marmot-like.
The reason I have mentioned what seems like a subtle shift in your blogging approach over this long period is that —– like the comments section where some long term expats and others familiar with Korea frequently offer their opinion — I enjoyed reading your posts as a long time expat in Korea with Korean language ability who took the time to write out some longer, interesting posts.
…..another part of my deciding to get into this here —- besides the right-wing dictator favoriticism comment —— were the posts and comments about Japanese amnesia vs the hypocrisy of the Western bastard colonialists including the US who has raped the world in the 50s 60s and so on….
I don’t mean to get into a discussion of the topics in those posts —-
but, it made me start to think back about when have you offered such strong opinions on topics in the last many months and when you have just offered items up as “Whatever others might thing – this is at least worth reading” as you did again today with the letter about the resistance fighters in Pyongtaek.
I can’t remember well enough, and I don’t save posts from blogs, and it isn’t interesting enough for me to go back through the archives reading posts from a couple of years ago…….but it seems to me this is a significant change from when I first started reading the blog some time ago……
Again, take this for whatever it is worth, and it isn’t worth much……
I see “march” and “protest.” No talk of “baiting” authorities through violence and unruly mob behavior. In fact, the first time violence is mentioned is the “army riot.” As for “parsing” your testimony, well, excuse my skepticism. But just for kicks, and because I think you’ll appreciate it, let me ask what you think of Ji Man-won’s take on Gwangju?
I always encourage skepticism and believe that all assertions should be subject to strict empirical proof. Too often I read assertions that are tainted by ideological bias and this is too often the case with Gwangju. It is also the case with Hi Man-won’s commentary which is conjectural and also seems unlikely.
Because my allegance remains to accuracy rather than ideology, I mistrust and personally try to steer clear of ideological conjecture. For instance, I have never suggested that the aims of the radical student leaders were ignoble – only that the means to their intended ends were rash and irresponsible. While we can all sympathize with and support the aim of democratization, we can also agree with the wisdom of avoiding needless bloodshed, particularly when it is also pointless, and this is my point about Gwangju.
Now in confirming that the demonstrations preceded the crackdown, Anderson shows that the massacre was not simply unprovoked gratuitous slaughter. “Us vs. Them” reductionism is seldom accurate.
The operative word in your mind is “march”, and this may require explanation from the perspective of someone present at the time. These student demonstrations were occurring at college campuses all over the country (never in the streets and never involving the non-student citizenry), and had taken on the appearance of ritualized play acting. Most citizens appeared to disapprove of these demonstrations, particularly ase the students were increasingly pushing the limit and increasingly, skirting danger.
In counciling restraint at the time, I contrasted the word “rally” with “demonstration” for effect and, of course, to no avail. Had the student gatherings remained peaceful and confined to the campuses, it is hard to see any justification for heavy handed tactics. But the radical student leaders wanted to “march” out of the campus and bring it to the streets – and this is what provoked the massacre.
The troops were retaking a city in which protesters had run amok, breaking through police lines and carrying their unruly demonstration into the city – something that was unprecedented at the time.
“I ask because if we cannot compare Gwangju with Tiananmen Square because the demonstrators eventually resorted to violence in Gwangju (although they eventually resorted to violence—ineffectively, albet—in Tiananmen as well when the military started moving in, if for no other reason than self-defense)”
I was thinking about this already, because PBS had aired a long, excellent special about the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the environment in which it came about and the environment since.
But first….
I never said Kwangju shouldn’t be compared to Tiananmen. I guess it might have seemed like I implied it or perhaps I even said it kind of that way carelessly —
—-but my point was —— Kwangju was no Tiananmen.
I favor a comparison. What I am against is the tendancy for some, especially many Koreans, to equate Kwanju with Tiananmen without a comparison —- like the book Kwangju Uprising: ……Korea’s Tiananmen.
I object to that just like I object to a good number of Korean intellectuals I’ve know who get touchy if you don’t accept right away what starts out as their simple ascertion that the colonization by Japan was a Holocaust —- and especially the few times I’ve gotten into this with them when they made some rather odd comments about Israel…
Anyway………I haven’t read a whole lot about Tiananmen, so what do you mean about the Chinese protesters “eventually resorted to violence” during that period of demostrating?
In the special on PBS, it showed more about the events than I really knew much about —
—but the type of resistence it showed when the soldiers and tanks were moving into the city to begin the massacre —- after they have been stalled out on the roads leading to the city by peaceful protests for some days before and embarrassed the authorities ——–
—–were road blockades using buses and other vehicles and anything else they thought would help.
I don’t remember anything in the PBS special, or anything else I’ve heard, saying part of the effort to keep the soldiers away from the city including taking up guns or other weapons and doing battle with the soldiers.
The videos showed them setting fire to barracades as a means to block the tanks — but I don’t remember seeing even the type of use of violence like you see in common protests in Korea today —– the use of make-shift clubs to beat on the soldiers who were shooting people in the street.
And in the scenes shown from the day after the main attack took place as the military broke through to the square then into the square —–
—-they again didn’t not show so much as rock throwing. They showed masses of people, many of them parents and family, with the front lines approaching the line of policemen blocking access to the square, and showed the soldiers firing on them — the lines scattering —- only to reform and move back toward the soldiers only to be fired on again.
Now, again, I have not studied the Tiananmen Square Massacre and have only read a little on the Kwangju Massacre.
Maybe I have missed the Chinese protesters and average citizens brought out by the massacre using techiniques along the same lines as those the Koreans used in Kwangju —— and as Mizar5 has pointed out elsewhere in Korean before Kwangju in violent clashes with violent suppression by authorities ———
but if a comparison of Kwangju and Tiananmen brings out evidence the type of resistence they put foward were basically the same —-
it will not boost any favor I have for the Korean protesters —– of which I do have some significant amounts.
It would lower the value I see in the example set at Tiananmen.
Let me put this another way —-
I place much greater value on Martin Luther King Jr. than I do Malcom X —- though I do have respect for the efforts of both men.
And I think the examples set and the ideas of resistence set forward by people like King and Gandhi are valuable enough ———- to take the time to get into a discussion about Kwanju 1980 —— that can very easily piss people off or get me called a person who has no problem with right wing dicators.
It was around this time last year, I think here at Marmot’s, where I pointed out —
I have never viewed the Boston Massacre of the Boston Tea Party as great examples of American patrioticsm —- from even the time when I was a little boy, in pre-school even – when they were taught as great moments in American history.
All my thoughts about Kwangju aren’t settled and I don’t have many set conclusions or opinions about it.
Part of the reason being I don’t believe citizens taking violent means to oppose an oppressive government is always wrong.
But, I would much prefer success by other means and believe the ideal ——- the ideal —– of non-violent resistence is one that should be given much more respect……….
“For instance, I have never suggested that the aims of the radical student leaders were ignoble – only that the means to their intended ends were rash and irresponsible.”
Exactly….
And I go even further — like last year in an exchange without someone either here or at OnefreeKorea about what seems to me a reality-distorting habit of people to boomerang away from the “all commie bastards” interpretation forced on Koreans until democracy became firmly established —– to one where to question any of the motives of any of the people involvind in Kwangju 1980 or that time period is considered sacrilage.
I can understand this for Koreans in Korean society. And by understand – I mean it is natural considering the history and internal factors even today.
I can’t find a whole lot of toleration for it from non-Koreans.
It would seem like common sense to me that any discussion of Kwangju in the Korean environment of the time would include something on Pyongyang’s influence — either indirect or covert.
Why must everyone pick sides forcing the discussion into black and white????
I have no problem getting into a dicssuion about what was clearly a fluid and highly dynamic environment ——- in which I still conclude the Korean government at the time was Bad and needed to be gotten rid of and on the whole the dissidents and others who worked against it had right on their side…..
I place much greater value on Martin Luther King Jr. than I do Malcom X —- though I do have respect for the efforts of both men. And I think the examples set and the ideas of resistence set forward by people like King and Gandhi are valuable enough ———- to take the time to get into a discussion about Kwanju 1980 —— that can very easily piss people off or get me called a person who has no problem with right wing dicators.
Don’t worry about what people call you when you uphold the examples of the great and responsible leaders. Journalists’ use of polarized conflict is examined quite nicely here:
http://journalism.ukings.ns.ca/journalism_3673_6475.html
People will always call you names when you make subtle points. There will always be a tendency to reduce you to the status of friend or foe, no matter how much your point must be simplified, reduced and skewed in order to turn the issue into an “us” vs. “them” dispute – in other words, a flame war. The vicious circle incurred by this kind of argument is that it brings the issue back from reason to emotionalism, which is essentially a more effective and efficient way of influencing more people.
If I were running a campaign today, I already know what the stand would be – “fight the soundbite.” Because complex issues require nuanced thinking and thoughtful solutions. Just check off colum D – the “Neither Nor Party”.
The political problems we face here in Korea are not unlike the ones faced in other nations, simply more severe.
I guess I will have to go check the book out again, but to add to Mizar5′s last comment — I’ll repeat something else I remember from one of the section of Kwangju Uprising…..maybe someone else who has the book handy can find it.
It was a section written by someone who was in the city before the first day of bloodshed, and it was either in the introductory sections or one of the first chapters — if I remember correctly….
The person talks about going by the campus to join in the activities again.
In a couple of lines, not a focus of even a paragraph, but just mentioning activities that had gone on before, the person says the students had recently taken university administrators captive (kind of like, I’d guess, some contemporary Korean university students got kicked out of school for doing recently) ——– and —— having seized some police and “disarmed” them.
I found that very intriguing ——- because of how much emphasis in canonizing all the protesters in Kwangju 1980 is given to “who used violence first.”
I think this is highly likely to be a complete waste-of-time discussion in the first place – for two reasons:
One of the ways I’m probably far from Miraz5′s view is that —– the soldiers the first 2 bloody days in Kwangju went over the top in suppressing the demonstrators.
Nothing I’ve heard from anybody concerning the methods of protesting before those two days comes close to given any justification to what the paratroopers did.
2nd —- there was already so many violent clashes going on between troops and protesters elsewhere in the nation, getting into a kind of hair-splitting argument about who used violence first in Kwangju, or arguing about which days talk of who used violence should be limited to, ——— tries to create a vaccuum or time and space for the Kwangju Massacre that clearly distorts the reality of Korea at the time.
“we can also agree with the wisdom of avoiding needless bloodshed, particularly when it is also pointless, and this is my point about Gwangju.”
Here is where I disagree tentaively with Mizar5 as well.
I know which form of resistance I greatly prefer and believe should be championed, but I don’t know if we can call the bloodshed pointless….
What I mean is —–
It seems absolutely clear from what critics and sympathisers of them have said —- the main young leader and others, plus their mainly university student core supporters —
wanted to be martyers. It seems to have been the central idea with a secondary one being that maybe they could succeed right then and there in sparking uprisings in enough places in Korea to bring the government down.
And I can’t call their drive for bloodshed “pointless” —– given how history unfolded.
Whether or not I prefer the drive for martyerdom in that key leader’s mind and those who rallied around him as they pushed out others who wanted to negociate with the authorities on resporing order to the city —–
it does seem their plan worked.
Kwangju became the rallying cry for later events that did bring real democracy to Korea.
And today, the offical view of those leaders in Kwangju is one of santification……
Relgin,
Bottom line about the Tiananmen is this. Most Chinese today agreed that the government did what was necessary to restore order.
As for the Tiananmen, the Western world always seem to be so fascinated with the Tank Man and ask if he is still alive today. Isn’t it possible to simply query the PLA office to see which batallion that tank belonged to? Once you got that narrowed down, then it is just a simple matter of getting all the soldiers in that batallion to recall who was driving the first tank.
The Tank Man can then be interviewed and asked why he didn’t simply run that bystander over or why he didn’t pull out his gun to threaten to shoot that man if he didn’t move aside.
It is seem to me that if anyone wishes to know the identity of the Tank Man, it is just SO EASY if he/she really wants to try! Instead, they seem more comfortable hypothesizing that the Tank Man has been prosecuted or jailed or killed. I doubt this is so. Why would the government want to punish its own soldier?
“this is hardly an example of what the PLA did that day, according to more than a few accounts”
Many people died. However, I am always reminded of the many stories, for example, there was the case of a minor earthquake that happened at a stadium. The quake wasn’t very bad. If everyone had just calmed down, no one will die. But the quake created a panic that the crowd rushed out to save themselves. In the stampede, hundreds of people died. No one died because of the earthquake, they died from being stepped over by the panic crowd.
Things like that could have easily happened in the crowded area of Tiaanmen on that day. The soldiers fired a few shots in the air, the selfish capitalists suddently rushed to save their own skin, stampeding on elder women and children causing hundreds to die from the stampeded instead of the bullets.
Here is the link to the stadium stampeded that happened in Manila. 73 people die, over 500 people injured. They were rushing to get free stadium seats. No bullets were fired at all. All it takes to kill people is to create a panic. I’m sure that since the PLA actually fired bullets into the air, the crowd would be running away wildly, and a lot of people died from being stepped over.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1579600
And then you have people visiting the hospitals. They see so many bodies, and injured and the natural reaction would simply be the PLA killed them. The real question to ask is how many actually died from bullet wounds.
I have an even better example than stadium stampede. It is the stampede at Haj. This year, over 350 people died. And in 1991, over 1,400 people died from being stepped on.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Hundreds_dead_in_Hajj_stampede
Note that no shots were actually fired. All it took was a panicky crowd to create this mass murders by themselves. And the number of deaths from the 1991 incident is already nearly 3 times more than those who died at Tiananmen.
When you think of all the Tianamen deaths, ask yourself if they could have died from a stampede because of a panicky crowd running in random directions upon hearing gun shots fired into the air.
Please ignore the troll.
M_kay
In the Kwangju Uprising, Terry Anderson wrote:
On May 1, several hundred students had marched in Kwangju to protest martial law and demand an end to Chun’s hard-fisted rule. The protests continued for the next two weeks, spreading to Seoul and other cities.
Actually, he’s wrong about that.
Memories of May 1980: A Documentary History of the Kwangju Uprising in Korea, has an overview of the student protests in Seoul and Kwangju. Seoul led the way, and Kwangju followed – they did not spread to Seoul from Kwangju! The student movement originally aimed to democratize the campuses and stop the practice of forcing military training on university students (while at university, I mean). On May 1 a meeting of student association leaders in Seoul decided to start calling for democracy in the society at large; the on-campus rallies began in Seoul on May 2, and in Kwangju they started to do the same. The leaders of these protests were actually relatively moderate, but on May 12, they learned that troops were in the city (of Seoul), and, thinking a Coup was taking place, sent everyone home. Using this “cowardly example”, the hardliners were able to assert more influence, and the next night, students from 4 universities in Seoul rallied at Gwanghwamun against the wishes of their student association leaders. That was the first off-campus rally, and the 14th and 15th would see increasingly violent (and large) demonstrations in Seoul. Paratroopers were seen by Ambassador Gleysteen at the edges of the protest on the 15th in Seoul, but they weren’t used (and this was despite a police officer being killed). The student leaders decided to not hold another demonstration the next day, recognizing that maybe things had gone too far, and that they would wait and see what the government response was.
In Kwangju there were evening demonstrations held on May 14, and 15. There were a few differences, though. Unlike in Seoul, citizens participated, or at least cheered on the demonstrators. They were also more peaceful, as the police and students apparently didn’t clash. Kwangju’s students held a demonstration on May 16 (unlike in Seoul) because one of the student leaders knew Jeollanam-do police chief An Byeong-ha, who had the police direct traffic for the event. An would pay dearly for cooperating with the students, and later for refusing to follow military orders to suppress the uprising.
In a couple of lines, not a focus of even a paragraph, but just mentioning activities that had gone on before, the person says the students had recently taken university administrators captive (kind of like, I’d guess, some contemporary Korean university students got kicked out of school for doing recently) ——– and —— having seized some police and “disarmed” them.
At the beginning of chapter 13, Chang Jae-yol writes that “On May 2 [...] president of Chosun University Park Chul-ung was forcibly confined by students.” There’s nothing about seizing and disarming police, likely for reasons I mentioned above. Memories of May 1980 mentions that a Donga Ilbo article on April 19 figured that up to that point, “the president’s office was occupied and besieged at 12 universities” across the country. I would imagine some of those occupations would have involved confining the president. It seems to have been a relatively common tactic at that time – but one I doubt did much to endear them to the University authorities.
usainkorea: One of the ways I’m probably far from Miraz5’s view is that —– the soldiers the first 2 bloody days in Kwangju went over the top in suppressing the demonstrators. Nothing I’ve heard from anybody concerning the methods of protesting before those two days comes close to given any justification to what the paratroopers did.
Don’t throw out your back trying to be so politically correct. I have not argued justification. I have always adhered to the conventional piety of“democracy good, crackdown bad”.
And I can’t call their drive for bloodshed “pointless” —– given how history unfolded. Whether or not I prefer the drive for martyerdom in that key leader’s mind and those who rallied around him as they pushed out others who wanted to negociate with the authorities on resporing order to the city —–it does seem their plan worked.Kwangju became the rallying cry for later events that did bring real democracy to Korea.
Entirely conjectural, and doubtful considering how deeply ingrained the culture of protest is here.
Thanks to bulgasari for those quotes. I believe we’re getting closer to the truth, although I personally find the assertion that the demonstrations in Kwangju were peaceful, in direct contrast to any of the others on the peninsula rather hard to believe, and I would require additional supporting evidence to buy into it. It sounds sanitized, and the assertion that the citizens “participated, or at least cheered on the demonstrators” places in in further suspicion. It is far fetched considering it is highly doubtful that there was any breaking news of a coup at the time.
It’s not being politically correct. I mean from reading your comments, I probably have a significantly more negative view of the paratroopers and what they did to spark the bloodiest days in Kwangju than you.
And on the 2nd quote — I don’t think it is conjectural at all.
Kwangju became the ralliying cry for Koreans opposed to the government like “Remember the Alamo” did for those fighting for Texas independance. And the movement eventually did help bring democracy to South Korea.
And I do think you can safely say a large chunk of the society considers the core demonstrators and leaders in Kwangju martyers.
On the thing about the “disarming” the police — I’ll have to get to the library and track it down.
I know it is there. I wouldn’t have dreamed up something that specific.
As I said, it was just a passing mention in the book. It wasn’t something that would stick out. It just stuck out for me because of how much I’ve heard the argument that until the paratroopers came into Kwangju, the demonstrations had been peaceful.
Like Mizr5, that is hard for me to accept without serious doubts for 3 reasons:
How much violence was going on all around the country, Korean society’s history of violent protests, and how polarized the interpretations of Kwangju 1980 have been.
Also, on those two items —
the holding officials from the university captive means virtually nothing to me.
The “disarming” of policemen, however, raises a big question mark.
I also seem to remember that it wasn’t just the armory that was later breached to get arms.
I am less sure about this, but I believe in the same book, there is further mention about breaching (?and torching?) the police station and that rifles were kept at this station — but this occured as part of the reaction to the actions of the paratroopers / after the paratroopers had moved in and began the suppression.
Note for others with the Kwangju Uprising book handy…since I won’t get to the library for a couple of days at least —-
as I remember it, the item about “disarming” police came in something like this….
“On X morning” (before the days of blood) “I went to the university to meet with other activists. In the weeks before the uprising, X, Y, and Z had taken place. We were…..”
It wasn’t like most of the book —– reporters writing about things they witnessed or were told by witnesses. It was written by a participant.
I mean from reading your comments, I probably have a significantly more negative view of the paratroopers and what they did to spark the bloodiest days in Kwangju than you.
What I’ve heard is that the black berets were largely recruited from among orphans and other social outcasts and taught to be killers; that they had a reputation for violence and could empty a drinking establishment just by their reputation for violence; that the troops were mostly from Kyeong San Do, the regional rivals of Cheola Do. I have heard firsthand accounts of murders and rapes by friends on the scene who were with the students at the time. All I really know about these troops is significantly negative.
Perhaps Kwangju did become a rallying cry for future demonstrations. I also believe democratization would have proceded nevertheless, but, admittedly, I was NOT in Korea during the demonstrations in the No Tae Woo regime (I left in 1986) and cannot be certain of what happened here during that time. Kwangju had not become too much of a rallying cry at that point.
I’m not in the best of company here, but apparently Roh Mu Hyeon agrees with me that the Kwangju massacre could have been prevented and that:
“…it was time to abandon the mindset and behavior of the struggle against authoritarian governments. “We need to make progress in this respect,” he said. “The challenge we face today is to put into practice the values of dialogue and compromise in our daily lives.” The president called for “a culture of tolerance, where we can reach consensus by respecting each other and if necessary, make concessions.” He reiterated that to achieve this goal, Korea needs to “overcome regionalism and collective selfishness.”…”
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200605/200605180028.html
Not exactly an “appeal to authority argument” given the source, but perhaps one of those slips of the tongue when the truth actually escapes a partisan politician’s lips.
For an eyewitness account, here is one by a personal friend who was on the scene, David Dollinger:
http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/2038625.html
“the selfish capitalists suddently rushed to save their own skin,”
M_F why do you live in America if you hate capitalism?
Snow—please ignore the troll.
Knowing David Dollinger personally, I have no reason to doubt his testimony. He makes it clear that both sides were playing a dangerous game that made a volent clash inevitable. But he also makes no apologies for the violence and has told me personally that he and his other American friend stood at times in the way of troops as a buffer believing the troops would be reluctant to kill a foreigner.
“Then for no discernable reason the martial law troops started shouting at the students and the crowd of onlookers. At this time the martial law troops commanded Geum nam Ro with the marchers and onlookers situated in the side streets and the sidewalk. The students then picked up stones from a construction site (the city was building and underground shopping mall under Geum Nam Ro) and started to throw them at the troops. The troops continued to taunt the protestors by running out from their ranks and waving their hands and shouting. It appeared that they were being ordered by the officers to do this. Then without warning the troops attacked in unison. The troops used their truncheons to attack the protestors as well as the onlookers and anyone else that they caught. The troops even followed people into stores where they would hit everyone and if they found young men drag them into the streets where they were beaten again and forced on to trucks. The beating appeared to be indiscriminant.”
Why did the troops act like this. David believes they were obeying orders:
“During the Gwangju Incident I was able to talk with the soldiers involved. They stated that the reason that they were doing what they were doing, the violence, killing and mistreatment of the citizens was that they were ordered to and that those involved were all communists. They did not admit to being starved or given drugs. From a source that worked for the Korean army I was told that a number of the officers used in the final assault on the city were from the Cholla Provinces. They were used because they had to prove their loyalty to the government and it was assumed that they would be harder on their own people.
Finally, he has long told me that he estimates the casualties to be many times more than reported:
Based upon my own observations and information fro
m the citizens involved in the organization of the city and the negotiations with the martial law troops I estimate that the number of dead is between 1000 and 1500. But this number is very hard to determine as the soldiers took away large numbers of people and bodies. Of those that I know died the ages ranged form 4 years old to 67 years old, male, female, student and worker. While the citizens controlled the city they place 67 caskets in the police gymnasium for a mass memorial.
More about David’s accounts can be found somewhere on the web and he appears in Gwangju (a Non-Fiction/History) by Richard Martin.
Questions about the Peace Corps source from reading the info.
In the part about talking to the soldiers, were they the ones from the last action – the retaking of the city – as seems implied by the following line that deals specifically with the final assault?
The reason I wonder is —- from the accounts I’ve read, the final assault is not called into question much (except by the Peace Corps worker who wrote a book (or chapter of a book) early on about the events — which I’m taking it this is not the same guy).
By the final assault, the use of fire arms had become common on both sides and battle lines firmly established and when it was clear negociations for a return of the city to full governmental control had clearly broken down and the military announced they were going to come in, the average citizens returned to their homes and bolted the doors while the hardcore demonstrators made ready to become martyers.
And whatever excesses the troops retaking the town center did in the final assault, it has been described as nothing compared to the main days of bloodshed by the paratroopers.
And the decision to send in the army on the final day has not been called into question as the sending in of paratroopers has.
Next, the item about “throwing rocks” stands out.
It is items like this —- and familiarity with Korean protest culture —- that makes me react against the strong drive in contemporary times to bristle at the mere suggestion of violence on the part of the protesters —
at least before the main bloodshed by the paratroopers —— what I mean is – the way things are today — if you stray from saying protesters were totally peaceful until the paratroopers starting killing everybody — or you want to talk about violent clashes that were taking place around the nation before Kwangju — you have suddenly offended someone because you must be a fanatically fan of Chun Do Hwan.
Or, you must be saying that throwing of rocks justified beating people to death….
And the reason this bothers me is like I have written before —
there is an ideal that needs to be cherished and championed that is BADLY obscured when we force ourselves to equate all actions by groups with right on their side with those (rare) examples where non-violent means of resistance are used.
Ideals are ideals because they are impossible to live by (the vast majoirty of the time), but they are recognized by enough of human society as something to be highly valued and used as a guiding point to strive for.
So, to me, putting events in Kwangju 1980 along side (what I know about) Tiananmen 1989 —- does too much to wreck an ideal that is already too hard to live by —- but one which we VERY MUCH SHOULD keep championing — because we are going to see many more such events in the future.
Maybe if we preach the benefits of the ideal enough, we can have more outcomes (from both sides) like when communism fell in Russia when the last hardliners in the military and government sent tanks and troops into Moscow and held Gorbachev (sp?)— a case in which normally, you would have expected much bloodshed and mayhem, but for a variety of reasons, it did not take place — instead of the norm in human society —- bloodshed and mayhem.
What I mean is —– it is hard enough in human society for us to learn valuable lessons like non-violent resistance (and restraint by the government even in the face of massive non-violent resistance) —–
—–it becomes much harder to learn if we place virtually every form of resistence, where the people have right on their side, on the same level as those few examples where a higher ideal is applied (at least by the people).
Mizar5 -
Thanks for the link to the piece by Dan Dolinger. A few months ago I tried to see if anything he had written was available on the net, but had no luck. Another volunteer namedWilliam Amos wrote a book called ” The Seed Of Joy“, which is loosely based on his experiences in Kwangju. Dolinger comments on the book on that site, and there’s also an excerpt, which comes off as a first-hand account of the May 15 protest in Seoul; one that helps reinforce how violent the protests had gotten in Seoul (after being off-campus for only 3 days).
Regarding whether Kwangju’s 3 days of off-campus protest (where they would have come into contact with the police) were peaceful or violent , it might be worth looking at the photos linked to above (which Antti linked to). They can be found here. Proof one way or the other they are not, but there are some 70 photos of students marching throughout the city without any police in sight; when they are in sight, they are standing off in the background behind a wall of shields; there’s no sign of tear gas. That photos of violent confrontation might have been edited out is possible, but these peaceful images do match the descriptions (in 4 or 5 different books) I’ve read that say things were rather quiet in Kwangju (notice that some of the people marching in picture 50 seem much older (maybe they’re profs); picture 118 (in the second section, after the military arrive) is, I think, peace corps volunteer Tim Warnberg).
usinkorea -
I’ve looked through the Kwangju Uprising book and can’t find the ‘detained and disarmed police’ quote. The most obvious places would be in the two sections Lee Jae-eui wrote (he was in the main circle of the student leaders, and wrote Kwangju Diary), the chapter about Yun Sang-won, or the aforementioned chapter by the (only) journalist who was in the city before the uprising. I read through those sections and scanned briefly through the other Korean reporters (the rest of whom arrived after the uprising began) but turned up nothing. Perhaps you’re thinking of an episode from, I believe, the first day of the uprising when a number of students surrounded and captured some riot police (from what I’ve read, though, the police were not armed with guns). I’m quite certain it’s mentioned in Kwangju Diary, but I don’t have it handy.
[F]rom the accounts I’ve read, the final assault is not called into question much (except by the Peace Corps worker who wrote a book (or chapter of a book) early on about the events — which I’m taking it this is not the same guy).
Maybe you’re referring to Tim Warnberg, who wrote “The Kwangju Uprising: An Inside View” in Korean Studies, v.11, back in 1987. Haven’t read that, but would like to.
Next, the item about “throwing rocks” stands out.
It is items like this —- and familiarity with Korean protest culture —- that makes me react against the strong drive in contemporary times to bristle at the mere suggestion of violence on the part of the protesters
You may be interested in this photo and commentary about traditional ‘stone fighting’ that took place in Korea less than 100 years ago – it may or may not place Korean protest culture in a larger context historically, but it certainly raised my eyebrows when I first found photos of it.
Thanks for looking for the item I’ve mentioned.
I’ll get the book in a few days to a couple of weeks. I’m pretty confident it is there, because I remember making a note of it at the time. I also blogged about it, but I’ve culled the blog since then and it was one of the posts to go. I’ll probably have to re-read the whole thing until I hit on it, because it was just a passing remark in a paragraph.
On the rock throwing, I’ve heard about that before about Korean township customs. Incredible…
bulgasari,
Thanks for the reference. I was not aware Tim had written about Kwangju! I knew him too. He was a great guy and is no longer with us. Now, if it is true that there was complete peace and quiet in Kwangju the days before the stormtroopers, that would be quite eerie. I will send off an email to David today to ask what he saw.
Mizar5,
Sorry to hear that Tim Warnberg has passed on. From the accounts I’ve read he helped a lot of people at that time.
Actually, this (excellent) book has a brief exerpt from that piece he wrote. The least I can do is transcribe it here.
“An American Peace Corps Volunteer, Tim Warnberg, was downtown at about 3pm on May 18 when the paratroopers first began charging at crowds:
We ran with the panicked crowd and I ended up in a small store along with about 15 other people, including one other PCV. A soldier came into the store and proceeded to club everyone over the head with his truncheon until he came to the other volunteer and me. He stopped startled, hesitated a moment, then ran out. We went out into the side street and found the troops had retreated to the main street, leaving behind wounded people everywhere… Two volunteers and I picked up a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant who had been knocked off his bike with a blow to his head. We brought him to a clinic and managed to convince the reluctant doctor to open his door. He said he feared retaliation from the military. Other wounded people filled the streets and tried to push their way in, but he only let about ten people in before he locked the door again. People banged on the door cursing and screaming.
The next day Warnberg reports trying to help a Korean doctor carry wounded citizens off the street. The soldiers were forcing the injured to sit in the middle of the road. Warnberg and the doctor were able to carry some of the worst cases to a clinic before the soldiers refused to let them back through the lines. “The remaining 30 or so injured were forced to run the gauntlet to the back of a military truck and climb in on their own power.”
The photo I mentioned of a PCV is here.
And I don’t know if there was “complete peace and quiet in Kwangju” before the uprising – as I mentioned the Chosun university president had been ‘confined’ by students at one point, so the campuses were likely stirred up; but the marches off campus only lasted for 3 days, and from what I’ve read, they didn’t clash with the police (though this may have been in comparison to Seoul, which might then mean “they didn’t clash much.”) The only way to be more certain is to get more eyewitnesses to confirm – or debunk – it.
I’d be very curious to here more about what David saw.
Actually, on the page you linked to, David wrote:
The night of May 16 the people of Gwangju (approximately 2000 people) held a candle light march from Gwangju Railroad Station to the Medical School of Chonnam University to show the wish for democracy. The march was very peaceful and orderly. The police marched at the sides of the marchers.
So what do you all want to know? I am the stated Peace Corps volunteer David and was present.
Dave,
It’s great to see your post. Just tell it like it happened. I don’t care what comes out – you have an important role as an eyewitness.
My regards to your family and I hope you are all doing well.
David –
Thanks for taking the time to comment here.
Quite a few of the foreigners that remained in Kwangju at that time (from what I know, either PCVs, former PCVs, or missionaries, whose names are well known to those who have looked closely into the event) have publicly commented on their experiences during the uprising. I discovered William Amos’s website for his book “The Seed of Joy” several months ago and saw your comment there and was curious about what you had seen, until Mizar5 linked to your account above.
To try and ask a few specific questions, one of the topics being discussed here was the nature of the protests in Kwangju prior to the May 17 extension of martial law. Were the off-campus marches of May 14-16 as peaceful as some accounts have described them? What do you remember about the atmosphere in Kwangju (with the month or so of on-campus student protests) in the weeks prior to the crackdown? In your estimation, were labour strikes as prominent in Kwangju as they were in Seoul and Pusan (or the Wonju area)?
Please bear with me I am a scientist not a writer. It is a true tragedy that Tim died so young, Gwangju was his city. He was based at Chonnam Hospital, which was only a few blocks from the Provincial Office Buildings. I was located in Yeoung-am a small town about 30 miles southwest of Gwangju. For those of us living in Chonnam, Gwangju was our weekend Mecca. Where we could meet other Peace Corps volunteers, meet and make friends. During the Incident, Tim, myself and one other Peace Corps volunteer walked the city, visiting hospitals, translating for the foreign journalists and talking with the leaders of the citizens group. I personally spent a lot of time in the Provincial Office Buildings and spent one night in the in the Provincial Office Building. After the poison pencil incident my fellow volunteers urged me to think about my own safety. And just as an aside “The Seed of Joy” is partially based upon my experiences in Gwangju. After, the US and Korean governments succeeded in getting me out of the country, I was not out and out deported as George Ogle was in 1974. But I was forced to resign from the Peace Corps because of what I did and saw in Gwangju. My own personal KCIA agent also followed me. (I can expand on this at a later point if people are interested).
The Spring of Democracy, it was a very interesting time in Korea and in Gwangju. I actually had a number of friends who were deeply involved in the planning of the student activities. You are correct there was a lot of allowing ones outrage and angry be expressed by the throwing of rocks, but in so ways Gwangju was quite different than the norm. Initial protests prior to the initiation of martial law were peaceful. Remember prior to 05/18 the student unions had called for all protest to stop. The hope was that democracy could still happen if the students would back off. Gwangju students and some of the citizens decided that peaceful demonstration was still called for in order to re-enforce with the military that democracy was the desired outcome. With the initiation of martial law, student and civilian opposition leaders were arrested or went into hiding. Campuses were closed and students not allowed access by the martial law troops. Even the initial protests after the initiation of martial law were peaceful (it is a relative term in Korea during those years). But the candle light march on Saturday night was peaceful and orderly. To make the long story short the Gwangju Incident would not have happened without the random and overt violence that was precipitated upon the students of Gwangju. Yes rocks were thrown (there was a construction site nearby that made it easy). But the random violence is what flamed the fire within the citizens of Gwangju. On the first Sunday Tim and I were wondering around the downtown area of Gwangju in front of the Provincial Offices when we were approached by a weathered old grandfather, dressed in traditional cloths, stopped us. He asked if we knew what had happened and we said yes. He then went on to say that it was time for the citizens to fight back that they should not take the beatings any longer, that they must stand up and fight for their freedom or they would not be able to do so ever again in their lifetime. This was on the first evening, prior to the bus station machine gunning incident or the Chonnam Hospital machine gunning incident but after the random violence had begun to rain down on innocents. You must remember that during the protests of the first afternoon innocent people were chased, beaten and dragged away. Truly innocent people, people on their way home from church, people shopping on the only day they got off during the week.
I think that we must pull back and realize that if Chun had decided to handle the protests in a different manner there would not have been a Gwangju Incident/Uprising. With the crack down of martial law only Gwangju responded. And after it became known what was happening in Gwangju it became difficult to organize protests. The crack down in Gwangju had every powerful short term effects, that of making the opposition afraid, afraid for their lives. Another thing that made Gwangju different is that people (not a lot) had reach a decision that the sacrifice of their life was a small price to pay for a potential future of freedom.
“Were the off-campus marches of May 14-16 as peaceful as some accounts have described them?” Rock throwing was part of the script for protests at that time. Protests at the college campuses did involve rock throwing but it was an extension of the shouting. A protest without bloodshed would not be heard. BUT the protests march on Saturday was completely nonviolent. It was a show of solidarity so a different script was necessary. It was planned as a non-violent protest march, I know, I knew some of the organizers. With my friends I had always advocated non-violent protest (Quaker up bring) but I also told them to read about Gandhi protest methods against British imperialism. Students, who at that time were acting as the conscience of the people felt that for a protest to be effective and to be heard, blood had to be spilled. Remember what caused the overthrow of the Rhee regime. Read the biography of Chun Taeil to get a better understanding of what the activists felt was required in order to invoke change. And always remember that student protest and worker protests can not be equated at that time in Korea.
“What do you remember about the atmosphere in Kwangju (with the month or so of on-campus student protests) in the weeks prior to the crackdown?” There was still hope that democracy would be allowed to flourish. The students, the citizens had hope that they would be allowed to pursue a democratic future. Because of this hope the student unions called for a moratorium on protests. They felt that by pulling back Chun and his buddies would allow free elections. But 05/18 changed that perception. President Park had been dead six months, 12/12 was five months behind us and the north had not attacked.
“In your estimation, were labour strikes as prominent in Kwangju as they were in Seoul and Pusan (or the Wonju area)?” We did not hear of a plethora of worker strikes at that time in the Chonnam area but then again we did not have much industry. Chonnam had for the most part been ignored for economic development by the Park regime. Also at this time there was no great union of the students and the workers. They were for the most part separate groups fighting for separate but overlapping ideals.
And the ghosts of my friends from Gwangju’s fallen are with me everyday and have help to guide me down the path that I have chosen.
Peace
Thanks, Dave! It was a hard and scary time for everyone but especially for you guys there in Kwangju. At the time, we all thought Psrk Chung Hee was a jerk (although nobody would say so in a voice above a whisper) but we hated Chun even more. Still, I wish Gwangju had never happened because it changed nothing about the power structure and left a legacy of misinformation and misunderstanding. It also left a poor legacy reaffirming violence as a legitimate form of expressing political opinion that Koreans need to get over now – even Roh said so recently.
It’s good to have clear voices like yours speaking of firsthand experiences. Your view is a constructive one – a dispassionate view with an eye to what lessons can be learned rather than what people we should target as objects of hatred.
Also, it shows something about how you guys worked with and deeply cared about Koreans despite the obstacles – trying to adjust to an atmosphere of oppression and still try to do right. I think that the Korean habit of marginalizing and manipulating foreigners had much to do with the inability of any foreign powers to react in any meaningful way at the time. There is still a broad misunderstanding that the US cynically condoned Chun and the violence and that it was directing things from the sidelines, when in fact, the role was largely marginalized.
There was a sort of fatalism at the time and a grudging acknowledgement that any small steps toward democracy needed to be carefully nurtured. You have told me the USIS was incompetent and that the embassy expressed disbelief. Can you expand on this?
I was not out and out deported as George Ogle was in 1974. But I was forced to resign from the Peace Corps because of what I did and saw in Gwangju. My own personal KCIA agent also followed me. (I can expand on this at a later point if people are interested).
I’d also be very interested to hear about what Mizar5 asked about above. I’m also curious about the paragraph quoted above – about the KCIA agent, about your not-quite-deportation, and even about George Ogle. Though I do know a little about the Peace Corps program in Korea, I don’t know anything about his case. Another thing I’m curious about – how long were PCVs supposed to stay in Korea at that time? I have a friend who is a PCV in Albania at the moment, and she had to make a three year commitment – was it a similar amount of time back then?
Reading Dol’s account (rather quickly) and having from time to time mulled over this issue — it is regrettable the issue of “who did violence first” or how much violence was done by the protesters has become an issue – because broadly speaking, it is hair-splitting —– but it goes tend to be necessary given how much contemporary Korea has boomeranged away from the “communist bastard revolutionaries” and drug many (?most?) outsiders into a tendancy of strong negative reaction if anyone questions the “totally peaceful” idea or the “purity” of all the protesters.
From a broad point of view, it seems fairly simple:
Some form of violence was the norm in Korean protest culture then — and it is today as well.
Violent protests were taking place in several areas — and I believe the common thoughts on them is that the government was the bad guy in virtually all of them – as a general trend of suppression.
But, protesters did fight back.
But —————————– and this is the key point for me in this comment —
nowhere else in Korea did scores of civilians (whatever the true final tally might be) die as a result of the violence.
Obviously, there was a difference in Kwangju.
And the hands down common conclusion all around is that it was the actions of the paratroopers that caused Kwangju to be different from Pusan, Seoul or elsewhere that had violent clashes.
However…….Kwangju is also the unique place where groups of civilians decided to fight live fire with live fire —- that took up guns and other things as weapons — and fought back.
And it seems to me, there are two rough groups, especially among the non-Koreans, who interpret the actions of the students and few others who held out to the bloody end —– those who romanticize them as true freedom fighters whose emotions were not only justified, their final actions were as well —– and then those who are more like me – who would have favored an outcome led by those who wanted to minimize what bloodshed was left to come and negociated with the authorities.
there’s not much to analyze. It was a hate fight between Young Nam and Ho Nam.
I finally made it to the library and found the passage about disarming the police I remembered.
I doubt it technically matches my memory or what I wrote in my first comment on this thread.
I said the police were disarmed in action before the days of the uprising — in a conversation about what came first – the chicken or the egg…
Having found the quote again, it does and does not match.
The quote is describing events that happened on the Sunday, May 18th – not technically days before the time frame set in describing the Uprising.
Pages 28-30.
But, in these pages, it does say the disarming of the police came before troops came on the scene in “a sudden, dramatic upward shift of gears” in the clashes.
The quote about the police is just above these words on p. 30
“Over near the Sansu-dong junction on the east side of the city, demonstrators managed to disarm fourty-five police. They then tried to swap the police, as hostages, for students who the police had arrested earlier. Around 4:40 PM the police were released.”
As I noted in earlier posts on this thread, there is no mention of what exactly “disarming” meant — and no hint of whether any “arms” were returned along with the freeing of the policemen.
As I was looking for this quote, I ran across another that had interested me in sorting out the jumble that is the history of what was going on in Kwangju:
p.23 presents a quote from diary of the student leader who wrote this chapter: “The students of Chonnam and Chosun universities demonstrated, attempting to take over the streets,” I noted in my Kwangju Diary.
Again, just tantalizing tid bits to mull over — what does “take over the streets” mean?
It could mean passive resistance such as a peaceful sit-in strike.
It could mean the kind of what I call “semi-violence” you see in Korea’s protest culture of today.
It could mean the kind of activity the world saw in the news in 1988.
???
Another thought provoking part of these pages I was rereading was the list of core leaders of the uprising listed on page 25.
“Most of the hardline student leadership that was to emerge in May 22-27 were connected with this world centered on the bookshop Nokdu and the Modern Cultural Institute….
….One can see, looking at their names and ages, that they were a relatively experienced core group of “eternal student” activists…..
….older and more experienced in the ways of the world than the generation of students I belonged to-the Kwangju uprising could, most likely, not have ended, as it did in an organized, sustained confrontation under martial law…..Had they not been there [Provincial Hall], everyone would have scattered, I believe.”
This touches directly on a blogger thread debate I had last year on another blog with someone about whether the idea North Korean influences being involved in some in Kwanju 1980 was absurd propaganda close to what Chun forced people to believe – or whether it was common sense given what we know (beyond propaganda) about North Korean efforts throughout the last 50 years.
In that debate, I was again trying to say that I did not by what seems to me a forced boomerang into the opposite pole of what the Chun propagandists tried to create as the only truth about Kwangju.
Today, the interpretation forced on you is that nothing but peaceful resistance was in the minds of the protesters (and their leaders), and it is a sin to entertain the idea some of these leaders might have been Pyongyang inspired.
They were just student leader idealists.
I will close by renoting as I did in other posts in this thread — it was this core leadership that several of the chapters in The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea’s Tiananmen
noted — some with apparent displeasure others with apparent qualified admiration —
had forced out other leaders in the civil community who wanted to negociate a compromise with the military and police authorities after the main day of bloodshed.
It was these leaders who are described as having the desire to create maryters to inspire the democracy movement.
And as I said before, I guess you would have to conclude their plan succeeded.
Today, these guys are heros and everyone pays homage to Kwangju 1980 as the spark that eventually led to the flowering of democracy in the early 1990s.
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