The wider political situation in Korea was always in the background. The military confrontation with the North helped perpetuate dictatorship in the South, it was argued, and so held back the democracy movement. Some students therefore called for national unification, while infiltrators spread rumors of the presence of North Korean spies.
Four things are clear. First, once violence is sanctioned by an official decision, such as a government call for a "crackdown," the specifics of what happens are usually beyond anyone's control. Second, there is always a latent resentment among soldiers against students, the privileged (so they feel) of the future. Third, blood lust is a biological phenomenon, and once the mechanism is triggered it is hard to reverse.
And lastly, affairs in Kwangju followed the familiar trajectory of revolutions, albeit in miniature form. First came the heady days of early success, fed by the mythology of martyred comrades. Then came internal dissent, followed by the return of the old regime, an event that would only have been forestalled by the full militarization of the rebels themselves or the capitulation of the central authorities to their demands.
This is a disturbing book, and an important contribution to modern Korean history. It's replete with the rhetoric of heroic revolt. Students "threw their bodies into the arena of history." One woman is quoted as crying out "Look at this blood! Are you my national army?" and another "I am not a communist ... [but] ...I cannot sit back when many innocent students and citizens are being murdered." Elsewhere it's simply disgusting. A paratrooper says to one student after shooting his friends "How was that? Was it like a movie?" Lee Jai-cui's narrative is concerned almost exclusively with events within the city. An introduction by UCLA professor Bruce Cumings, and a "View from Washington" by journalist Tim Shorrock, attempt to put the tragic events in perspective. Together they lay much of the blame on their own country's inaction. The US president at the time was Jimmy Carter, a man these commentators later fair-mindedly praise for his post-presidential peace efforts in North Korea.
The translation of the main diary by Kap Su Seol and Nick Mamatas is excellent, relaxed and natural.
In August, 1998, South Korean president Kim Dae Jung (who was himself arrested in 1980 and charged with engineering protests) visited his native South Cholla Province and paid his respects at the graves of the victims of the Kwangju massacre.
Publication Notes
Kwangju Diary
By Lee Jai-cui
172 pages
UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series
RSS