It has become a cliche when talking about the events in the South Korean city of Kwangju in May 1980 to call them "Korea's Tiananmen Square." Yet both were massacres of students who, supported by much of the local population, were rallying in the cause of democracy. And both events led to the continuation in power of those ultimately responsible.
Lee Jai-cui's Kwangju Diary has had a complex history. It was first published in Korea with a different title and credited to a different author. Originally called "Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age," it appeared in 1985 attributed to the Korean novelist Hwang Sog-yong. Instantly banned, and the publisher and supposed author arrested, it nevertheless became an underground bestseller, whispered about as "Beyond, Beyond."
Although a Japanese version appeared almost immediately, no English translation has been published until this one. Recently, the Korean press discovered the true identity of its author -- a student who took part in the events described. The American academic publishers, UCLA , have insisted his name be used for their edition.
Kwangju is the capital of Korea's South Cholla Province, in the extreme southwest of the peninsula. Traditionally a poor area, with 1980 annual income 47 percent below the national average of US$2,896 per urban worker.
After a peaceful march on 15 May by some 15,000 students and 50 professors, on May 18 students rallied again to demand the lifting of martial law, the guaranteeing of workers' rights, and moves toward democracy. Chun Du-hwan had seized power in a military coup in Seoul the previous December.
Whereas on May 15 police had merely told the marchers to disperse, by May 18 national paratroopers had arrived. Protests were now to be pre-empted by terror, and to be young was enough to make you a target for brutality. Even ordinary high school pupils were dragged off buses and beaten with batons.
It would be too sickening to catalogue the paratrooper's orgy of violence and murder as described here. The codename they had been given for their initial operation was "fascinating vacations," meaning fascinating for them. For the later specific killing of dissidents the name was Operation Loyalty.
Eventually there was also violence from the crowd, which by May 19 included many ordinary citizens. Crowd psychology is a special area of study, but one thing is certain -- people in these situations behave in ways they never would contemplate in their every-day lives.
It is a sign of the ferocity of the violence on May 18 that the next few days were considered quieter, even though paratroopers attacked one section of the crowd with flame-throwers, killing many. The truth was that so many ordinary citizens had by now joined the insurgency that almost the whole of central Kwangju was in popular hands. Taxi drivers had formed a convoy, for example, asking why their fellow drivers had been killed when they were only taking injured students to hospital. Miners had donated explosives.
Indeed, by May 22 it appeared the pro-democracy activists had won, and the troops withdrawn. In reality, though, they had re-grouped and, together with reinforcements, quietly surrounded the city.
Then on May 27 the inevitable happened, and the army re-took Kwangju with yet more terrible bloodshed. Over the 10 days, between 1,000 and 2,000 citizens are thought to have been killed.
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
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