THIS MONTH IN KOREAN HISTORY - May 2025 — Korean Culture Center NYC

5.18 - The Gwangju Uprising

By Sharon Stern & Eun Byoul Oh

*South Korean paratroopers assault arrested civilians during pro-democracy protests against the new military junta. Gwangju, South Korea, May 1980*

This month is the 45th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, also known as the May 18 Democratization Movement. The Uprising began as a series of student-led protests against the coup d’etat of civilian President Choi Kyu-Hah by General Chan Doo-Hwa. The history leading up to the Uprising is complicated. To understand what happened in Gwangju, it is important to understand the events of the prior year.

On October 26, 1979, President Park Chung Hee was assassinated in the Korean CIA safe house that was near the Blue House. The head of the KCIA, Kim Jae-Gyu, was responsible. President Park was a military dictator who had been in power for 18 years. He had seized power in 1961 in a coup, bringing to an end the short-lived Second Republic of Korea, put in place after the April Revolution against President Syngman Rhee, which took place after the Jeju 4.3 massacre we highlighted last month. Post WWII, government in South Korea was a series of military autocracies.

After Park’s assassination, the Prime Minister, Choi Kyu-Hah was to become president, but Park’s death created a political void and plunged the country into chaos. Initially, students celebrated Park’s overthrow and began pro-democracy protests. The power void, however, was quickly filled by Chun Doo-Hwan, who convinced Choi to make him chief of the KCIA and to lead the investigation into Park’s assassination. Choi declared martial law in all of South Korea, except Jeju Province. Choi took power officially on December 6, 1979. On December 12, 1979, without Choi’s authorization, Chun staged an internal coup of the military and after skirmishes between military brigades in downtown Seoul, Chun took command of the military, whose power he had been concentrating since Park’s assassination. Chun threatened violence if protests continued and except for in Gwangju, protests largely stopped, for a time. Early in 1980, Chun was promoted to Lieutenant General and made himself director of the KCIA in April.

A photo by Park Tae-hong, covering the May 18 Gwangju tragedy while serving as a photographer for the Hankook Ilbo in 1980. This photo was only first published 5 years ago for the 40th anniversary of the Uprising.

In the first months of 1980, citizens staged a series of protests called the Seoul Spring. Pro-democracy protests continued until May and on May 15, demonstrations calling for Chun to step down were held around Seoul Station in downtown Seoul. Approximately 100,000 people protested. A video of the protests can be seen on YouTube.

President Park was responsible for the economic reforms that led to the creation of family conglomerates like Hyundai and Samsung, creating the chaebols we all know about. Chaebols and their companies were not separate from South Korean politics and the military dictators and chaebols worked together. This period of economic growth is referred to as the Miracle on the Han River. Despite the period of rapid economic growth, President Park’s popularity waned as growth slowed in the 1970’s. People were tired of the restrictions imposed on daily life, tired of authoritarian rule, tired of restrictions on the press and universities. President Park had instituted a new constitution in 1972, the Yusin Constitution, concentrating and centralizing his powers and having an internal body in the government decide the presidency.

The US maintained a heavy hand in the governing of South Korea after the Korean War. Worldwide, the US was invested in making sure that Communism or anything they perceived to be a threat of Communism did not get a foothold anywhere. Because of the investment in the Korean War and because the war ended in a truce but not a conclusion, that sentiment was even stronger on the Korean peninsula. Declassified documents show that there were 150 pages of high-level discussions about Korea just before Park’s assassination. Relations between the US and the Soviet Union were already tense and President Carter was dealing with the Iran hostage crisis. These documents show that the US backed Chun’s quelling of protests by any means that they saw fit. They had already been communicating with moderate factions in South Korea to quiet their dissent. Though the US continues to claim that they knew nothing about the plans to attack protestors in Gwangju, they had agreed that the government of South Korea needed restore order in Gwangju.

*The initial protest at Chonnam National Univeristy.*

On May 17, 1980, Chun staged a coup against the civilian government of Choi Kyu-Hah and declared martial law on the entire country, including Jeju Province. The expanded martial law closed the universities and made political activities and protests illegal. On this same day, the KCIA raided a national conference of student union leaders from 55 universities that was taking place. In addition, 2,700 individuals and 26 politicians were arrested.

The following day, May 18, 1980, the Gwangju Uprising began. The Uprising lasted until May 27 and by the end, an estimated quarter of a million people had participated and between 1,000-2,300 were killed. Up to another 3,500 were wounded. This incident was a critical step by the people of Korea towards democratization, even though it took another seven years to get there.

The Uprising began when around 200-600 students of Chonnam National University began protesting martial law in front of the university. The military shot and beat protesters and took many away where they were tortured. When the citizens of Gwangju saw what had happened, they joined the protests. Small groups of students and others raided police stations and stole arms, forming militias. By late afternoon and with a reported nod from the US, Chun sent in 3,000 special forces paratroopers to squash the protests. 18,000 riot police were also deployed. Chun believed he could put down the protests definitively with force.

*Families and relatives gather around the coffins of dead protesters at provincial headquarters in Gwangju, South Korea, May 23, 1980, some 250 kilometers south of Seoul, South Korea.*
*Credit: AP Photo/Kin Chon Kil*

In other parts of the country, the protests were officially being published as groups of “hoodlums with guns.” The truth was difficult to send out to the world because of military control in Gwangju. Associated Press Reporter Ahn Mu-hun had to walk several kilometers to another town to file his stories. American missionary Charles Betts Huntley refused to be evacuated and sent photos out with the German journalist Jürgen Hinzpeter who is depicted in the movie A Taxi Driver, including X-ray photos of bodies, showing the use of “soft” bullets that create a lot of damage in the body and are almost impossible to remove.

More and more people joined the protests May 19-20. The army troops even attacked police that tried to render first aid to victims. On May 20, hundreds of taxis, buses trucks and cars paraded to the Provincial Office. Police fired tear gas on them and pulled them out of their vehicles. This caused more vehicles to join the protest. By the afternoon of May 21, gunfights had broken out between the formed militias and the army. Because of the widespread and unified pushback of the people, on May 21, the government retreated. The citizens thought they had won their battle and that the city had been liberated from military rule. This idea could not have been further from the truth. From May 22-25, the army blockaded all access and communications to Gwangju. When a busload of people tried to leave the city on May 23, the army, who had established a circle around the city, fired on the bus, killing 17. During this time, citizens in Gwangju helped each other as best they could, offering first-aid, bury the bodies of those killed, cooking meals for large groups of people.

As word found its way out of Gwangju, protests in other cities of the region started up, but were quickly stopped.

*One of the most famous images of the Gwangju Uprising - as a paratrooper beats a defiant protestor in the streets of Gwangju.*

Six days after the Uprising started, before dawn on May 27, the government forces returned with tanks, armored personnel carriers and helicopters and began indiscriminately killing anyone on the street. It took only two hours for the military to completely squash the protests. Many people were killed. Many were arrested (an estimate of 750) and later tortured. The government published figures that said that 144 civilians, 22 soldiers and four police were killed. Anyone that challenged these numbers was arrested.

Protests moved underground. Public protests did continue to happen, especially from 1985 forward. It wasn’t until June of 1987 that things publicly came to a head again in the June Uprising. With Chun’s announcement that he had handpicked his successor to be Roh Tae-Woo, protests once again exploded onto the streets. South Korea had already been chosen to host the 1988 Summer Olympics and the government could not afford to have widespread dissent or commit more widespread violence. Chun and Roh conceded to direct elections and Roh was elected in December and there was a peaceful handover of power for the first time in South Korean history.

Because the government of Chun Doo-Hwan did not end on May 27, 1980 and because his successor had been hand selected, though publicly elected, the whole truth of the Gwangju Uprising and the massacre at its heart took decades to come to light. Some details are still being pieced together.

It is worth noting that in 1981, President Ronald Reagan invited President Chun to the White House as the first visiting head of state after he was sworn in. That was a step too far for many South Koreans and an anti-American sentiment began to build.

This photo by Tony Jeong, taken moments after Yonsei Student Lee Han-Yeol was hit by tear gas cannisters in 1987 became a turning point in the fight for Korean democracy. Lee died from his injuries. The Yonsei Student protestors were motivated in their rallying after seeing videos and images of the Gwangju uprising 7 years prior.

In 1995, the government passed a special law allowing for those responsible for the atrocities of 1979 and 1980 to be prosecuted. Although the results were not perfect, Chun, Roh and others were put on trial and convicted of a variety of crimes. Unfortunately, they were all pardoned at the end of 1997.
In 1997, May 18 was made a national memorial holiday.
In 2000, the May 18 Memorial Foundation began giving annual prizes to defenders of human rights.
In 2011, the Gwangju Uprising was listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register for Asia and the Pacific, provided impetus and protection for the collection of archival materials.
In 2017, President Moon Jae-In re-opened investigations into the Uprising and that investigation in 2018 revealed the evidence that protestors had been fired on from helicopters.
In 2019, a former military intelligence officer testified that Chun had personally ordered troops to shoot protestors.
In 2020, the May 18 Democratization Movement Truth Commission was finally formed to reveal the truths of the military crackdown.

The attempted internal coup in December of last year did not succeed, at least in part, because of the memories of the Gwangju Uprising.

Video:

A YouTuber has a series of three videos with different video clips from May 18-27
Arirang News has a news story about US complicity in the massacre

THIS MONTH IN KOREAN HISTORY - May 2025

5.18 - The Gwangju Uprising

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THIS MONTH IN KOREAN HISTORY - May 2025

5.18 - The Gwangju Uprising

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