DEMONSTRATIONS, THE KWANGJU UPRISING AND THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH KOREA DURING THE 1980s

DEMONSTRATIONS IN SOUTH KOREA DURING THE 1980s

During the 1980s often violent demonstrations in South Korea were often broadcast on American television. Among the things the students demanded were the resignation of the government, the establishment of fair-and-free elections, the expulsion of the United States military, apologies for the Kwangju Incident and better relations with North Korea on their terms.

During the turbulent 1980s campuses and downtown boulevards in South Korean cities were transformed into battlegrounds with Molotov-cocktail-hurling students pitted against tear-gas-shooting police. The students were usually armed with sticks and rocks and had handkerchiefs wrapped around their faces to hide their identity and protect themselves somewhat from tear gas. To get themselves worked up the students played traditional Korean drum music and looked at pictures of demonstrators that had been tortured, brutally beaten up mutilated while in police custody.

The police carried long rattan clubs, clear plastic shields and tear gas launchers, and wore uniforms reminiscent of the ones worn by Japanese samurai or by Darth Vadar in the Star Wars movies. To break up particularly violent rallies police had great success with a tear-gas fluid released on demonstrators from helicopters.

Student Demonstrations in the Late 1980s Push South Korea Towards Democracy

Political activism reached its peak in the late 1980s. In 1987, there were 3,749 strikes, of which 94 percent were regarded as illegal. In the months before the 1988 Summer Olympics, angry demonstrators, hurling Molotov cocktails, were shown almost every night on American television. After the Olympics, radicals bombed police stations and burned themselves to death to protest various causes. In one particularly tragic event, in Pusan in 1989, six policemen were killed when barrels full of burning chemicals were rolled down on them as they were coming up a stairway.

The pressures from nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations in June 1987 resulted in the surrender of the military government and the adoption of a presidential general election that year. In the 1992 election, former dissentient Kim Young Sam became South Korea's first civilian president. In the late 1980s, many ordinary Koreans were grateful to the student demonstrators for bringing a positive change in Korean society.

Workers, students and members of newly emergent civil society were at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s again the military dictatorship. The transition to democracy occurred when the per capita income of South Korea reached the US$8,000 to US$10,000 level and was closely associated with the rise of the middle class. New classes emerged and wanted a voce in politics. [Source: Francis Fukuyama, John’s Hopkins University, Yomiuri Shimbun, January 2008]

Demonstrations: a Tradition in South Korea

Student demonstrations have traditionally been like a rite of passage for South Korean young adults. Protests helped topple the military governments that ruled South Korea during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and political leaders, who are the objects of demonstration while power, were often once demonstrators themselves.

The first large student demonstration were directed at ending the authoritarian rule of president Syngman Rhee (1948-60). In the 1960s demonstrators protested against normalization of relations with Japan. In the 1970s and 1980s, they rallied for democracy, and against the presence of American troops in South Korea. In the 1990s the number of student demonstrations dropped off as university students became concerned about finding jobs.

Religious and business leaders have also played a part in the demonstrations. Catholic and Protestant church were major forces the pro-democracy movement while large corporations like Hyundai hired their own paramilitary thugs to harass labor leaders and break up strikes.

Chun Doo Hwon and Democracy

In 1988, Chun Doo Hwan, the leader of South Korea since 1980, gave in to public pressure and left office, paving the way for South Korea's first democratic election. In doing so, he became the first South Korean president to give up office in a peaceful manner. In 1987, Chun agreed to hold democratic elections. It is not exactly clear why. Some say out was pressure from the United States. Other suggest he may have bowed to pressure form the student demonstrations or because of reluctance in the military to crack down on them. Other say may he was afraid if being assassinated like his predecessor.

The unpopular Chun regime and its constitutional framework was brought down in 1987 largely by the student agitation that beset the regime. Student activists set the tone and agenda of the society as a whole because the government and the government-controlled press had lost their credibility. The opposition parties worked with the students, although they disagreed on the ultimate aim — the politicians wanted reform, while the students demanded revolution. The opposition politicians wanted constitutional reform to replace the existing system of electing the president through the handpicked electoral college with direct popular election. The students attacked not only the military leaders in power, but also the entire socio-political and economic establishment. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, Library of Congress, 1990 *]

A small number of confirmed radicals led the student movement. They argued that the basic cause for the political and social malaise in South Korea was "American imperialism," which they believed had dominated South Korea ever since it was liberated from Japan in 1945. In their view, "American imperialism" buttressed the military dictatorship and the exploitative capitalist system; the struggle against the military dictatorship and American imperialism was inseparable. This position was the same argument that North Korea had been advancing since 1946, but a more important source of intellectual persuasion came from the revisionist school of historiography that swept United States academia during the 1970s.

The revisionist argument was very similar to that of Lenin on imperialism. The Cold War was seen as the inevitable outcome of the United States capitalist system's need for continuous economic expansion abroad. United States participation in the Korean War and the subsequent stationing of United States forces in South Korea satisfied such a need, according to this perspective. For the revisionists, it was irrelevant that the United States had decided to abandon Korea in September-October 1947, or that the United States had withdrawn its occupation forces from South Korea in 1949. The communist countries, whether the Soviet Union or North Korea, were seen as passive entities reacting against the aggressive actions of "American imperialists" rather than pursuing their own goals. The fact that the United States had interjected itself into the Korean War in 1950, and that it continued to station its troops in South Korea after the war, was evidence enough.

The revisionist arguments found a fertile soil among the university students. The inquisitive students had long viewed the one-sided anticommunist propaganda emanating from official and established sources as stifling and as leaving too many questions unanswered. The new arguments sounded logical and convincing, particularly when some of the revisionists took liberty with historical evidence. Increasing numbers of students took to the streets to denounce the military dictatorship and American imperialism.

Initially, the public was apathetic to the confrontation between the student demonstrators and government, but the daily fracas on the streets and the never-ending smell of tear gas aroused their ire. The news about the torture and death of a student, Pak Chong-ch'ol, by the police touched the sore nerves of the people. President Chun attempted to squash the opposition by issuing a declaration on April 13, 1987, to suspend the "wasteful debate" about constitutional reform until a new government was installed at the end of his seven-year term. The declaration was, instead, his regime's swan song. Chun wanted to have his successor "elected" by his handpicked supporters; the public greeted the declaration with universal outrage. Even the Reagan administration, which had been taciturn about South Korea's internal politics, urged the Chun government not to ignore the outrage. Finally, on June 29, 1987, Roh Tae Woo, the government party's choice as Chun's successor, made a dramatic announcement in favor of a new democratic constitution that embodied all the opposition's demands.

Three Kims

Politics is the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s was dominated by the "three Kims" — Kim Young Sam, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Pil. The first two Kims had been fixtures in the opposition scene in Korea for a long time. Kim Jong Pil founded a repressive intelligence agency under Park Chung Hee — the president of South Korea from 1961 to 1979 — and played a major part in the kidnapping of Kim Dae Jung from a Tokyo hotel and the plot to kill him by throwing him off a ship.

Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam lost the election in 1987 because they split the opposition vote and Roh Tae Woo won. In 1992, Kim Young Sam joined the ruling party and won the presidential election that year partly because of false reports that North Korean leader Kim Il Sung supported Kim Dae Jung. After losing Kim Dae Jung vowed he was through with politics. He then became president in 1998

In 1993, Kim Young Sam became the first civilian president of South Korea's new democratic era. In 1979, he became the new leader of the New Democratic Party and began to challenge the government of Park Chung Hee —who ruled for 18 years from 1961 to 1979. He announced to the foreign press his readiness to meet with Kim Il Song, the North Korean president, to discuss matters relating to unification and delivered a scathing attack on the government in the National Assembly. He argued that the government had been in power too long and had been clearly discredited by the elections; that Emergency Measure Number Nine suffocated peoples' freedom and was clearly unconstitutional; that Seoul had colluded with hoodlums to assault the New Democratic Party headquarters and to harass him; that the suppression of human rights had become an international disgrace; that the people should be permitted to elect their own president through direct elections and be allowed to live without fear; and that a fair distribution of wealth should be permitted without government interference. The government immediately retaliated and ousted Kim from the National Assembly. In a show of solidarity, all opposition members of the National Assembly resigned on October 13, 1979.*

Kim Jong Pil was a relative of Park Chung Hee. A military man and retired colonel, he was and one of the original planners of the coup that brought Park Chung Hee to power. He was a founder of the infamous KCIA and extended its power to economic and foreign affairs as its first director.

On May 17 1980, the military regime led by Gen. Chun Doo Hwan declared martial law, banned political activity, shut down universities and arrested opposition leaders Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam and scores of other politicians. The arrest of Kim Dae Jung and other arch enemies of Park was to be expected as soon as the military stepped in on May 17. But the arrest of Kim Jong Pil and other people who had been influential under Park came as a total surprise.

Kim Dae Jung

Kim Dae Jung became president of South Korea in 1998 after Kim Young Sam. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his contributions to South Korean democracy and his "Sunshine" policy of engagement with North Korea. As leader of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), Kim Dae Jung almost beat Park Chung Hee in the elections of April 1971. The NDP made significant gains in the National Assembly elections that year.

During the brief period of democracy in 1961, Kim ran for the National Assembly and won. He said he was motivated by the "suffering of people caused by bad politics" under Syngman Rhee. Kim made a mark for himself during the Park Chung Hee era as a firebrand speaker and powerful dissident. The Guinness Book of World Record listed him as giving the longest speech (9 hours and 17 minutes before the Korean National Assembly). In 1967, he ran again and won after foiling election-rigging efforts by Park supporters.

Almost on a whim, Kim decided to run for president in 1971 and was stunned by the number of people that came to see him in Seoul. Park won, but only because he used a host of dirty tricks to steal it away from Kim, who took 46 percent of the popular vote. The next year, Park declared martial law and Kim was constantly harassed by the KCIA and Park's thugs. A months after the 1971 elections Kim's car was rammed by a 14-ton truck and "flew into the air like a glider." Two people were killed but Kim survived, barely, and still walks with a limp from the injuries he sustained. Later the truck was traced to the government and most people feel that the KCIA and Park himself were probably involved in a plot to kill him.

Kim went abroad after the 1971 election and remained there after Park declared martial law in 1972, traveling between Japan and the United States and conducting anti-Park activities. In August 1973, Kim Dae Jung was kidnaped from a Tokyo hotel by the six KCIA agents who stuck a chloroform-soaked cloth in his mouth, blindfolded him, and tied him up. He was placed on a speed boat in Osaka and delivered to a freighter at sea. Out at sea, Kim was wrapped in a shroud and attached to concrete blocks and prepared to be throw him off a ship. There were reports that a U.S. plane or helicopter appeared and dropped a flare as a warning and this saved Kim’s life (a story that seems to be more myth than fact). Kim was arrested several times after his 1973 kidnapping and was originally sentenced to death. Kim spent the next three years under house arrest, and somehow still managed to carry out pro-democracy activities which earned him an eight year prison term. He wasn't freed until after Park's assassination in 1979. He was allowed to go to the United States in 1982.

Political Parties in the Chun Doo Hwan Era

In the meantime, the country underwent a brisk process of political realignment. Although Park had organized and headed the Democratic Republican Party in 1963 to mobilize mass support behind his regime, by 1972 he had discarded it when he imposed the yusin constitution. As a result, the DRP had only a nominal existence at the time of Park's death. It was incumbent upon the new president of the DRP, Kim Jong Pil, to revive the party. The DRP had suffered a disastrous loss in the December 1978 National Assembly elections. This situation led to a call for "rectification" (chongp'ung) within the party, which meant removing certain top leaders who had attracted notoriety for illicit wealth and undemocratic political behavior. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada, Library of Congress, 1993]

The New Democratic Party (NDP), the principal opposition party, also had its share of problems. Kim Young Sam was elected as NDP leader for three years in 1979, so his position would have been secure, had not the Ch'oe government restored Kim Dae Jung's civil rights. Even though Kim Dae Jung, the NDP presidential candidate in 1971, had been out of the political arena for more than seven years, he commanded a large political following. Because the NDP was expected to win the forthcoming election by a wide margin, the presidency of the republic was at stake in the negotiations for Kim Dae Jung's reinstatement in the party. In the end, negotiations broke off, and on April 7, 1980, Kim Dae Jung declared that he would no longer seek to rejoin the NDP.

Although Kim Young Sam and his supporters had waged a fierce political struggle against President Park toward the end of his rule, many of those in leadership positions in the NDP had tended to be accommodating to the Park regime. Kim Dae Jung and his followers, on the other hand, represented the active dissident students, intellectuals, and progressive Christians who had engaged in direct struggle against the Park regime. The chaeya seryok (literally, forces in the field, but the term also means an opposing political force) were more radical in orientation. Kim Dae Jung and his group wished to expedite the process of restoring democracy, even if it meant forcing the hands of Ch'oe and his supporters.

Student Demonstrations in 1980

Demonstrations led by university students spread during the spring of 1980. In mid-May, the government declared martial law (in effect until January 1981), banned demonstrations, and arrested political leaders. In the city of Kwangju, more than 200 civilians were killed in what became known as the Kwangju massacre or the Kwangju Uprising (See Below). Choi Kyu-hah was pressured to resign and Chun Doo Hwan was named president in September 1980. Chun came to power under a new constitution inaugurating the Fifth Republic. A total of 567 political leaders, including Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, were banned from political activity. All existing political parties were dissolved and all political activity banned until three months before the 1981 elections.

While professional politicians engaged in the struggle for realignment, college students were restless for action. The students initially were concerned with campus affairs. As soon as the new semester began in March 1980, students on various campuses began to demand the removal of professors with close ties to the Park regime, and of university owner-presidents who had amassed fortunes by operating their institutions. They also demanded autonomy from government control. The students held rallies and on-campus demonstrations and in some cases occupied college offices. As a result of the unrest, many university presidents resigned.

In early May 1980, however, the students' slogans began to change. Students demanded that martial law be lifted immediately and that the "remnants of the yusin system," including Chun, be removed. They also demanded the guarantee of labor rights, the removal of "compradore capital," and the protection of farmers' rights. Although student demonstrations had been confined to their campuses when the issues raised concerned institutional matters, they how began to spill out into the streets.

The massive demonstrations by the students continued until May 16, when Premier Sin Hyon-hwak promised that the government would attempt to speed up the process of adopting a new constitution. Ch'oe even shortened his Middle Eastern trip by a day and returned home on the evening of May 17. Student demonstrations paralyzed the nation and sent politicians and government leaders to their council meetings. According to an unconfirmed report, Sin even offered his resignation to the president upon his return and advised the president to remove Chun.

Kwangju Uprising

On May 27, 1980, during anti-government demonstration in Kwangju (Gwangju) — a city of 600,000 people located 270 kilometers south of Seoul, in South Cholla Province — police open fired on crowds of demonstrators. The government admitted that 193 people were killed, but the real number of dead may be as high as 500, with 2,000 injured. This became known as the Kwangju Uprising. For a long time the South Korean government tried pretend the incident didn’t happen.

The Kwangju Uprising lasted for 10 days from May 18 to May 28, not long after Chun Doo Hwan sized power. It occurred at a time when South Korea was racked by pro-democracy demonstrations. The Kwangju area had a reputation of being the center of opposition politics and the Chun government reasoned that if they could put down demonstrations in Kwangju it would send of message to anyone else with ideas of opposing the government.

The United States has been accused of playing a role in the Kwangju incident, giving tacit approval to carry out of the violence or least not do anything to stop it. The U.S. State Department has insisted that U.S. military personnel was not anywhere near Kwangju at the time of the incident and they had no authority to interfere with domestic affairs.

Chun's hard-line policy led to the confrontation in Kwangju. As noted in a report issued by the Martial Law Command, the students and "hot-blooded young soldiers" confronted each other, angry citizens joined in, driven by alleged rumors that the "soldiers of Kyongsang Province origin came to exterminate the seeds of the Cholla people." The Kwangju massacre was to became an important landmark in the struggle for South Korean democracy. It heightened provincial hostility and marked the beginning of the rise of anti-American sentiment in South Korea. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, Library of Congress, 1990]

Key Events in the Kwangju Uprising

On May 17, the military regime led by Gen. Chun Doo Hwan declared martial law, banned political activity, shut down universities and arrested opposition leaders Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam and scores of other politicians. The next day , elite paratroopers known as the Special Warfare Command were sent to Kwangju to suppress demonstrations that had become increasingly violent each day.

The initial demonstrations were led by students. Police battled protesters with rubber bullets and batons and fired so much tear gas the leaves fell off the trees. Even so the students refused to go home and were joined on the streets by town people, including children. Large crowds began forming on the streets of Kwangju when news was spread that soldiers had striped and bound protestors, forced them to kneel in long rows and beat the hell out of them. One man told the Washington Post he spent six months in the hospital after his beating and still has a crater in his skull as a reminder of what happened. Militias of factory workers, shopkeepers, homemakers and students were so determined, the security forces retreated from Kwangju for five days.

According to the report, the sequence of events was triggered by student demonstrations on the morning of May 18 in defiance of the new edict. Some 200 Chonnam University students began demonstrating in the morning and by 2:00pm they had been joined by more than 800 additional demonstrators. City police were unable to control the crowd. At about 4:00pm, the Martial Law Command dispatched a Special Forces detachment consisting of paratroopers trained for assault missions. The report did not mention it, but the paratroopers killed a large number of people. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, Library of Congress, 1990 *]

On May 20, some 10,000 people demonstrated in Kwangju. On May 21, the Special Forces were withdrawn and the city was left to the rioters. A memorial service was held on May 24, with approximately 15,000 citizens in attendance.

On May 25, approximately 50,000 people gathered for a rally and adopted a resolution calling for the abolition of martial law and the release of Kim Dae Jung. A committee of leading citizens was organized on May 23 to try to settle the impasse, but "impure elements" and "maneuverers behind the scene" allegedly obstructed an effective solution.

A number of conclusions can be drawn from the Martial Law Command's account. The uprising started with student demonstrations. The Martial Law Command dispatched assault troops whose random killings angered citizens who had not participated in the initial student demonstrations.

Kwangju Violence

On May 27, at 3:30am, an army division that had been circling the city for three days launched an attack. After light skirmishes, the army quashed the revolt in less than two hours. The army arrested 1,740 rioters, of whom 730 were detained for investigation. According to later reports by the command, nearly 200 persons were killed, including 22 soldiers and 4 policemen; of the 144 civilians killed, only 17 died on the final day of assault. And, regardless of who spread the "wanton rumors," they evidently were credible enough to prompt the gathering of 50,000 Kwangju citizens. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, Library of Congress, 1990 *]

On May 27, some demonstrators reportedly broke into armories and took weapons, and paratroopers stormed a building where protestors had barricaded themselves. To this day no one knows exactly what happened after that, and it is still unclear who ordered the soldiers to start shooting. The Chun government claimed the soldiers began shooting in self-defense. Local people said that protestors in the buildings were attacked with flamethrowers and strafed from helicopter gunships. But after that soldiers began shooting at demonstrators and civilians throughout the city .

"My mom was just one of those looking on," one Kwangju resident told the Washington Post. "She happened to be in the wrong place when the soldiers started shooting. Fragments of bullets struck her head and chest. I was 14. She was 34." The woman is buried with 140 others on a mountainside in Kwangju. It is widely believed that the army secretly buried the bodies of hundreds of others, but locating the bodies today would be next to impossible with all the new buildings that have gone up since the incident.

One witness quoted in “The Kwangju Uprising” said, “Women and young girls were choice targets. The martial army men stripped them, cutting up their blouses or their skirts using their bayonets, and more or less leaving them naked, whereupon they set about pounding the most delicate part of the body, using their clubs their booted feet, anything. All without reason.”

Peace Corps Member Recalls the Kwangju Uprising

At the time of the Kwangju Uprising, Paul Courtright was a Peace Corps member treating Hansen’s Disease patients in small villages near Kwangju. “There is a small little town of Nampyeong. … Right on the main street where buses pass, where people were gathering and all of a sudden a bus transits. On the side of the bus it said ‘Free Kim Dae Jung’. It was occupied by students who were traveling from Kwangju to all the other towns,” said Courtright in an interview with The Korea Herald. “It just struck me, here was a small little village in the middle of nowhere, but was fully engaged. Everybody was in the streets and supporting people demonstrating against the military,” he added. [Source: Kim Bo-gyung, Korea Herald, May 12, 2019]

“Courtright lived in South Korea between May 1979 and November 1982. He spent 1 1/2 years in Naju, about 30 kilometers southwest of Kwangju, and Hohyewon, a small village located midway between Kwangju and Naju. He recalled a moment on May 21, 1980, when after a heated discussion, a crowd demolished weapons they had taken from a police station to prevent the soldiers from using them. “The people in that town (Nampyeong) were neither students nor agitators. They would have been the first to rise up against any North Korean engagement,” said Courtright. “They were ordinary citizens, yet they were there defending themselves.”

“While the bloody crackdown was taking place in Kwangju, people outside the city either knew little of the uprising or believed it was a riot as President Chun aggressively censored broadcasters and newspapers. About 1,000 journalists were dismissed between May 20-27, 1980, because they refused to publish news reports, protesting the dictator’s ban on reporting about the massacre in Kwangju, according to a council of journalists who were dismissed in 1980. After watching television channels broadcast false news about the situation in Kwangju, members of the Peace Corp in the city felt the need to reach the U.S. Embassy to clarify facts, according to Courtright. “The TV (news) that we were getting in Kwangju was being fed from Seoul. It was talking about ‘impure elements’ and North Korea’s influence, which wasn’t true,” he said.

“Members of the Peace Corps, including Courtright, were also referred to as “impure elements” by the military government as it was eager to prevent news of the massacre from spreading and was uneasy that members had translated for foreign reporters. “It stunned me to sit down with my Peace Corp friends here in South Korea who were not in Kwangju. They believed the government story. They said ‘that’s what we heard.’ The media was controlled,” Courtright said. “That was their (military’s) narrative. So it took quite a while talking with my friends to say ‘no that is not correct.’” While telephones worked in Kwangju, the military government had blocked all telecommunication links to the rest of the country, isolating the city.

On May 19, 1980, Courtright witnessed for the first time violence at a bus station in Kwangju, where he had arrived with two patients to transfer to another bus to get to a hospital in Yeosu. “The first time I saw violence was on Monday, May 19. There was a young man who was killed, right there in front of us by a couple of soldiers,” Courtright said.

“The other thing that has always baffled me and still don’t understand … (On May 22, 1980) when I came across the soldiers (between Kwangju and Nampyeong), there were a number of buses and cars that were full of bullet marks. They were completely bullet ridden and there was blood everywhere,” he noted. “I just thought ‘where are the people who were in the vehicles? Did the military take them away? What happened to them?’ Some of the vehicles were being used to create a road block (by the military), so I guessed they are the ones responsible for what happened to the vehicles and people. That has never been clear to me. “It was really, extremely disturbing to see vehicles that were full of bullet marks. These were the same buses that I saw the previous day in Nampyeong (with) ‘Free Kim Dae Jung’ and other banners.”

Legacy of the Kwangju Incident

Chun, touring the city after the revolt had ended, told the people of Kwangju not to make an issue of what had happened, but to learn from it. The specter of Kwangju, however, was to haunt him for years to come. There were several aftereffects resulting from the Kwangju incident. It deepened the chasm that had existed between the Kyongsang provinces (from which Park and Chun originated) and the Cholla provinces, of which Kwangju is a capital and from which the opposition leader Kim Dae Jung came. The United States' role also was controversial. General John A. Wickham, Jr., had released South Korean troops from the South Korea-United States Combined Forces Command to end the rebellion; President Reagan had strongly endorsed Chun's actions. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, Library of Congress, 1990 *]

In 1995 Koreans were glued to their television sets as the Kwangju Incident was recreated in a 24-part miniseries called “The Sand Clock,” which incorporated footage of the massacre never seen before in Korea taken by foreign film crews. “A Petal” is a film about a young girl who lost her family during the Kwangju Massacre that also contains real footage of the violence from the 1980 Kwangju Incident

Human Rights Documentary Heritage 1980 Archives for the May 18th Democratic Uprising Against Military Regime in Kwangju was placed on the UNESCO Memory of World Register in 2011. According to UNESCO: “The May 18th Democratic Uprising not only played a pivotal role in the democratization of South Korea but also affected other countries in East Asia by dissolving the Cold War structure and achieving democracy. After the 1980s, various democratic movements took place in the Philippines, Thailand, China, Vietnam, and elsewhere in an attempt to follow in Korea's footsteps. The documentary items related to the Uprising, which took place in Gwangju, Korea between 18 and 27 May 1980, take the form of documents, photos, images, etc. relating to the citizens' rebellion, punishment of the perpetrators, and compensation

According to the North Korean government: “This written material relates to the Democratic Uprising, which occurred on May 18th, 1980 in Kwangju, and a series of relevant events afterwards. The collection features archives related to this democratic move in the forms of files, photographs and video footage concerning the pro-democracy movement, covering the scenes of suppression, and compensation for victims later. The uprising in Kwangju not only provided crucial momentum for the democratization of Korea but also exerted positive influence on the dismantlement of the Cold War regime in East Asia. It had similar impact on the pro-democracy movements in various countries in the region by showing the tragic consequences that occur when illegitimate state powers infringe upon the honor and dignity of citizens. In recognition of this universal significance, the document was enlisted for the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. [Source: Korea Tourism Organization visitkorea.or.kr ]

Student Demonstrations in the Late 1980s

One of the most serious problems the Chun Doo Hwan government faced was that the argument for restricting democracy became less and less credible. The people had long been tolerant of various restrictions imposed by succeeding governments because of the perceived threat from the north, but the consensus eroded as the international environment moderated. More and more people became cynical about repeated government pronouncements, viewing them as self-serving propaganda by those in power. This tendency was particularly pronounced among the post-Korean War generation that constituted a majority of the South Korean population. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, Library of Congress, 1990 *]

The unpopular Chun regime and its constitutional framework was brought down in 1987 largely by the student agitation that beset the regime. Student activists set the tone and agenda of the society as a whole because the government and the government-controlled press had lost their credibility. The opposition parties worked with the students, although they disagreed on the ultimate aim — the politicians wanted reform, while the students demanded revolution. The opposition politicians wanted constitutional reform to replace the existing system of electing the president through the handpicked electoral college with direct popular election. The students attacked not only the military leaders in power, but also the entire socio-political and economic establishment.

A small number of confirmed radicals led the student movement. They argued that the basic cause for the political and social malaise in South Korea was "American imperialism," which they believed had dominated South Korea ever since it was liberated from Japan in 1945. In their view, "American imperialism" buttressed the military dictatorship and the exploitative capitalist system; the struggle against the military dictatorship and American imperialism was inseparable. This position was the same argument that North Korea had been advancing since 1946, but a more important source of intellectual persuasion came from the revisionist school of historiography that swept United States academia during the 1970s.

The revisionist arguments found a fertile soil among the university students. The inquisitive students had long viewed the one-sided anticommunist propaganda emanating from official and established sources as stifling and as leaving too many questions unanswered. The new arguments sounded logical and convincing, particularly when some of the revisionists took liberty with historical evidence. Increasing numbers of students took to the streets to denounce the military dictatorship and American imperialism.

Demonstrations against Chun continued and became violent at Inchon in May 1986 and at Konkuk University that fall. Opposition groups began collecting signatures on a petition demanding direct (instead of indirect) election of the president. Initially, the public was apathetic to the confrontation between the student demonstrators and government, but the daily fracas on the streets and the never-ending smell of tear gas aroused their ire. The news about the torture and death of a student, Pak Chong-ch'ol, by the police touched the sore nerves of the people.

Chun Doo Hwan Agrees Allow Democratic Elections in 1987

In April 1987, as demonstrations became increasingly violent, Chun banned all further discussion of constitutional reform until after the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. The ban, which could have guaranteed the election of a hand-picked successor to Chun’s Democratic Justice Party (DJP), set off violent antigovernment demonstrations throughout the nation.

Chun attempted to squash the opposition by issuing a declaration on April 13, 1987, to suspend the "wasteful debate" about constitutional reform until a new government was installed at the end of his seven-year term. The declaration was, instead, his regime's swan song. Chun wanted to have his successor "elected" by his handpicked supporters; the public greeted the declaration with universal outrage. Even the Reagan administration, which had been taciturn about South Korea's internal politics, urged the Chun government not to ignore the outrage.

In June 1987, the DJP nominated its chairman, Roh Tae Woo, a former general and a close friend of Chun, as its candidate for his successor. On June 29, 1987, Roh made a dramatic announcement in favor of a new democratic constitution that embodied all the opposition's demands. When Roh accepted opposition demands for political reforms, Chun announced in July that the upcoming election would be held by direct popular vote. On July 8, 100,000 people demonstrated in Seoul in the largest protest since 1960. On the same day, the government restored political rights to 2,000 people, including the longtime opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung. [Source: “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations”, Thomson Gale, 2007]

Following the revision of the constitution in 1987, South Koreans enjoyed greater freedoms of expression and assembly and freedom of the press, and in 1988, several hundred political dissidents were released from prison.

The period from late June through December 1987 saw rapid implementation of political reforms in an unusual mood of compromise between the ruling and opposition parties. In July the government paroled 357 political offenders, amnestied more than 2,000 other prisoners, and restored full political rights to prominent opposition figure Kim Dae Jung. In August the National Assembly established a committee to study constitutional revision. Representatives of four parties took one month to negotiate and propose a draft constitution that incorporated most of the provisions long sought by the opposition parties: greater press freedom and protection for civil rights, a stronger National Assembly, and direct presidential elections. After the bill passed the National Assembly, more than 93 percent of the voters approved the new draft in a plebiscite on October 28, 1987.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons.

Text Sources: South Korean government websites, Korea Tourism Organization, Cultural Heritage Administration, Republic of Korea, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Library of Congress, CIA World Factbook, World Bank, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, “Culture and Customs of Korea” by Donald N. Clark, Chunghee Sarah Soh in “Countries and Their Cultures”, “Columbia Encyclopedia”, Korea Times, Korea Herald, The Hankyoreh, JoongAng Daily, Radio Free Asia, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, BBC, AFP, The Atlantic, Yomiuri Shimbun, The Guardian and various books and other publications.

Updated in July 2021


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