Author’s note: I have chapters 9, 10, and 11 written, out of a projected 13 or 14. Nearly done! I haven’t updated in a while because I lost the ability to update at work due to WordPress freaking out on my work PC, and at home I am rarely remembering to update since I’m busy preparing to leave Korea. I know I owe lots of pictures for this update, so I’ll come back and edit later. 10 and 11 going up soon, too.
It’s been a while, so let’s recap quickly:
By May 21st, the city of Gwangju had been spiralling into ever-more chaotic civil revolt for 4 days, sparked initially by college student protests against martial law. Korea had never been a democracy, and had been under the rule of various strongmen for more than 30 years in 1980. The current regime had come to power via coup in the wake of the assassination of the previous strongman, Park Chung-hee, and the rulers of the country felt that they were on shaky ground. In an effort to maintain their power, they had gone after the growing student movement and attempted to clamp down on political opposition.
In Gwangju, the students protested this seizure of power on May 18, but were met with increasingly violent resistance by specially trained regime paratroopers. The violence of the troopers increasingly drew in more and more citizens, until by the morning of May 21 virtually the whole city was in revolt.
That brings us to Wednesday, the 21st, the bloodiest day of the uprising.
It was Buddha’s birthday, a national holiday, and the day was warm and clear. Such fine weather drew tens of thousands into the streets to participate in the ongoing insurrection, which had never really paused overnight. Sporadic gunfire and raids on symbols of regime authority like the Tax Office had continued all through the night of May 20th. The heavily outnumbered regime forces, battered by stones and pressured by crowds, steadily abandoned their outlying positions one by one and concentrated most of their remaining troops at the Provincial Hall. Meanwhile, rowdy protestors broke into the Asia Truck Factory and seized vehicles. Soon tiny jeeps overloaded with young men were whizzing through the streets.
Linda Lewis, the American law student living in Gwangju, recorded the mood of the city in her diary that day:
“Things are so tense, I don’t want to type. A gorgeous, clear day—warm, even hot. Things began early—as soon as the fog cleared and there was good visibility, the helicopters started overflights and the citizens took to the streets. . . .
All phone lines to Seoul—or anywhere—are out. So, apparently, is all access to the city. . . . A festive atmosphere prevails. People on rooftops, sitting on the hilltops, on balconies of apartments. I wish I had a vantage point. Almost everything—especially on the main street—is closed and shuttered. Knots of people sit and talk. The brave make it down to the yakkuk [pharmacy], past women wrapping kim [dried seaweed] around rice and packing it in boxes to give to students. A notice [from student activists] is tacked up down by the yakkuk, on a public phone, [Sansu intersection] to the Toch’ŏng [Provincial Office Building]—everyone else [ordinary citizens] to the Toch’ŏng. It is a promenade down to the rotary [the Kyerim 5 street intersection]—people out with their kids. Much tension. . . .
Every so often a truck whizzes by, horn honking, flags waving, full of cheering students geared for battle. People cheer. . . . No soldiers anywhere. But I don’t trust them. They will appear, suddenly, and maybe with guns. . . . The only thing the radio [The U.S. Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN), in English, which so far had not mentioned Kwangju] is saying is, “U.S. citizens, don’t go to Kwangju. More news when the situation is clari¤ed.” That means no one knows what is going on here, exactly.”
As before, the epicenter of the protests was Guemnamno, the long, broad boulevard through the heart of Gwangju that terminates before the plaza of the Provincial Hall. While tens or even hundreds of thousands of citizens gathered in the street outside, a trio of representatives was admitted through the skirmish line to meet with the governor. They demanded the withdrawal of the paratroopers, release of the hundreds of detainees taken since Sunday, information on hospitalized victims, and a public apology from the governor for the mayhem. The little bureaucrat agreed, despite the fact that he had absolutely no power to enforce any part of this agreement. At this point, events had left the governor of Jeolla Province far, far behind. This was a showdown between the people of Gwangju and Chun Doo-hwan himself.
Through the morning, though, the governor failed even to appear to issue his apology. The crowd around Guemnamno grew, and grew more restless, as the sun reached its zenith.
As with all such incidents, what happened next would be hotly debated for decades to come, without the truth ever really becoming clearer. Recriminations and blame would fly back and forth, investigations would roll slowly through the halls of justice in the army, in the government, and by private citizens. Dozens of officers would show the moral courage of their class by totally denying any responsibility or foreknowledge whatsoever.
What is known is this: The day was hot, and the troopers were stressed. They had been increasingly under siege for four days now, and despite all the stabbin’ they could do the citizens of Gwangju were still in the streets – and in numbers vastly greater than the paratroopers. They were now outnumbered possibly 100 to 1 on Guemnamno, they had been forced to abandon most of the rest of the city, and there were rumors that the crowd was armed. The soldiers had all been issued ammunition, apparently by request of their battalion commanders. Choi Woong, the commander of the 11th, swore that he issued the bullets but naturally with strict orders that they were under no circumstances to actually be used. At the same time, Jeong Hoyong, commander of the Special Combat Unit in Seoul – basically the next link up in the chain of command – reported that his commanders had urgently requested to him that they be allowed to open fire, and he of course said under no circumstances whatsoever. In fact, no one it seems above the rank of battalion commander* gave any verifiable permission to open fire (although they all agreed it was a good idea to give the nervous paratroopers with the twitchy trigger fingers lots and lots of bullets anyway, just in case).
We further know the following: At one pm, the national anthem was broadcast over loudspeakers near the Provincial Hall. It was loud, and obvious – no one there at the time missed it. And shortly afterwards, the troops lining Guemnamno, facing that crowd of 100,000 people, lining the street shoulder to shoulder, opened fire. From the neighboring rooftops and even the hovering attack helicopters, other soldiers joined in. The May 18 protests were evolving into the Gwangju Massacre.
The military would argue in years to come that the demonstrators had fired first, and cited reports that citizens had stormed police armories around 2 and 3 pm that afternoon, arming themselves. It blithely ignored any timeline issues that this chain of events requires. In the meantime, during the remaining years in power, the military would busily destroy any and all incriminating evidence to the contrary. The truth, then, of what exactly provoked the massacre on Guemnamno on the 21st will never be known. Whoever did order the troops to open fire, or whatever nervous young idiot got too handsy with his rifle, screwed up massively – their actions would lead to the total loss of Gwangju to the regime within hours.
On the streets, though, the immediate result was chaos. Lee Jae-eui wrote in his Gwangju Diary:
“At about 1 p.m. we talked back and forth about what countermeasures we could take, when suddenly we heard a thunk and a rat-a-tat sound. We went out. In the vicinity of the labor office tens of citizens had fallen in an instant. The soldiers had begun to ¤re indiscriminately in front of them, at the gathered citizens. If they were hit by gunfire, three or four people dragged those who had fallen, and everyone’s faces were white with shock. Citizens kept falling. And among them were even students who looked like they were in high school.”
(cited in KMHRI 1990:330).”
Martha Huntley, an American missionary, wrote later that when the soldiers started firing on citizens,
“My husband and I were at the Kwangju Christian Hospital the afternoon of May 22 at 3 p.m. when this first happened. In two hours our hospital alone received 99 wounded and 14 dead. Among the wounded were a 9-year-old boy who was shot in the legs. Our first dead was a middle school girl; the second was a commercial high school girl who had donated blood at the hospital 15 minutes earlier and was shot by the troops as she was being returned home in a student vehicle. We received five patients with spinal cord injuries, many of whom will never walk again. One was 13 years old. We had other patients who lost eyes, limbs, and their minds.”
In the crowd that day was Kim Yong-dae. A young worker at the local tire factory, he had been keeping his head down and his nose out of trouble. His wife was pregnant with their second child and he had no intention of risking himself in any fool revolution. But it so happened that the factory was closed, and the bus that day was late, and a confrontation started before Kim’s eyes at the terminal. He was torn – he wanted to return to his family to protect them, but to walk away right now would be to show himself as a coward to all his neighbors. He stayed, and was swept with the crowd to the Provincial Office.
When the soldiers opened fire, Kim fled with the other panicked thousands for any sort of cover. He ran towards the YWCA, when he felt a hammer blow in his back. Paralyzed from the waist down, Kim was hurried to the Christian Hospital, past Mrs. Huntley, and into surgery. A few rooms away, his wife was also in surgery – she was having a C-section.
There were hundreds of stories like Kim’s from the 21st. An official count later reported over 54 dead, with hundreds wounded, but victims insist the real count is far higher. An unknown young man spread wide a banner, painted with a slogan falling for the end of martial law, and began walking towards the soldiers. Those around him warned him to get down, saying that he would surely be killed – but the young man replied that he didn’t care. He continued to walk towards the troops with his banner until he was indeed cut down in a hail of gunfire.
Park Yong-sun, riding in a cab as part of the vehicle demonstration, was hit in the shoulder. His companion was killed. Kim Myongchul, a 65-year old man, had not been part of the demonstrations, but he was anxious about his son and so was standing outside his door when the paratroopers came. His son found his father’s body in one of the hundreds of coffins at the Provincial Office later that week. Choi Mi-ae was a 24-year old housewife. She was 8 months pregnant, standing outside her own home, waiting for her husband to return when she crumpled, struck in the head by a bullet. Kim Chae-pyong was a 29-year old man from Seoul, a bureaucrat. His wife was from Gwangju and he had come with her to join her family, as she was about to give birth. He cowered with his in-laws in the living room of their home when bullets ripped through the wall – Kim was struck in the jaw and killed.
Initially surprised and scattered by the sudden fusillade (which continued for several hours through the afternoon), the people of Gwangju started to arm themselves and fight back. Korea is a mostly disarmed nation, so there were few guns available to fight the government forces. The protestors – now rebels, I suppose – resorted to breaking into police stations and armories in Gwangju and in the countryside around the city, where they found mostly light arms – old carbines and rifles, a bit of ammunition. They were so desperate for weapons that a contingent of miners from nearby Hwasun showed up with their dynamite in tow and were greeted as heroes. Paltry stuff, to stage a revolution with, but the other guys started shooting first.
A mile or two from the Provincial Office, near City Hall, there is a large park, at the time called Gwangju Park. The citizens rallied there and began to organize the Citizen’s Army. Mostly teachers, professionals, young men, and high school boys (and not a few girls), the Citizen’s Army was pretty well organized. Universal conscription meant that most young men in Korea had military training, knew how to follow orders, and how to shoot a rifle. Those with military training provided quick and dirty survival courses to the others, and then led small squads of ten or so. These squads piled into stolen trucks and started racing through the city to various strategic points, to be seized and defended by the citizens. Kim Jae-eui records the exhortations of hte leaders as they prepared for battle with the paratroopers:
““People who are afraid to fight to the death should leave right now. Tonight we will fight the paratroopers to the last breath, until we win. We are people who will fight and not run away.”
– Kim Jae-eui, Gwangju Diary
By 3:30, more than 2 hours after the regime forces had started shooting, small street battles were being waged all around the city as the last remnants of regime forces were driven into a ring around the Provincial Office. Rebel squads would fire quick volleys from the cover of buildings, then slip away. Snipers and machine guns fired from roofs. I don’t know that the dynamite was put to much use, but simply having it was probably a great psychological comfort to the defenders.
Yun Heung Jung, commander of the 31st Division and nominally in charge of the paratroopers who had been running amuck in Gwangju the last four days, had a dilemma on his hands now. Bayoneting unarmed college students was all in good fun, but now things were serious – those jerks out in the streets had gotten their hands on weapons somehow, and now his guys were getting shot at! Someone could get seriously hurt out there. His men were better trained and more heavily armed than the rebels, but also very, very badly outnumbered and isolated in a foreign city. Any attempt to venture beyond the troopers’ base at Provincial Hall plaza just got whatever unlucky squad tried it bushwacked. After mulling it over, by 4:00 pm – within thirty minutes of the formation of the Citizens’ Army – Yun reached his decision. It was just too dangerous to remain in the city, so he ordered a withdrawal.
The paratroopers executed their “advance in a different direction” perfectly by the book. A few squads laid down a heavy barrage of machine gun fire from the front of the Office down Guemnamno to make those characters out in the streets keep their heads down. Meanwhile, the rest of the division started to quietly nip out the back. Unobserved mostly by the rebels, they quickly withdrew through the eastern part of the city and into the surrounding hills.
Back in Gwangju, the Citizen’s army took a few hours to get organized, cautiously working its way up to the Provincial Office, the young men doing their best to avoid getting shot and dying gloriously as a martyr to the cause if they didn’t have to. Finally, just after sunset, around 8, they screwed their courage to the sticking place and stormed the Office – to find that the governor, the military brass holed up inside, and all the soldiers had fled.
For the first time in 4 days, there were no hostile soldiers in Gwangju.
The closing hours of May 21 were a frantic race between the regime and the rebels to consolidate the sudden outbreak of outright rebellion in the province. Demonstrations in the surrounding cities like Mokpo, Yeosu, Hwasun, and Naju had been ongoing for several days – now they flared like tinder at Gwangju’s success and the soldiers pulled out of most of those cities, too. If left unchecked all of Jeolla province could be in revolt in a matter of days – and the regime had no more reserves left to stamp them out without pulling troops off the line in the DMZ**. For a crucial few days, the fate of the ROK hung on the events unfolding in the southwest.
The army, for all that it had totally screwed the pooch in the last few days, responded well, finally. After getting their asses the hell out of the city, they quickly scattered to the major roads leading in and out of Gwangju. The city sits in a sort of bowl surrounded by mountains, and by closing 7 highways the city was more or less totally isolated. The smaller bands of rebels in the surrounding cities were unable to join with or coordinate iwth the Citizens’ Army now besieged in the metropolis, and no one could enter or leave the province. More importantly, all phone lines into and out of Jeolla were totally cut, and no honest news reporting was permitted. For most of Korea and the world, what they knew of Gwangju would be only and exactly what the regime told them. For the people of Gwangju, they would have essentially no news of the outside world beyond the city limits for as long as the siege lasted.
But for the moment, though, the city was free and independent – the first independent city on the peninsula since the fall of the Joseon dynasty to the Japanese nearly a century before. The killing, which reached a height on the 21st, would for the next few days be confined to the outskirts, where the military leaders dug their men in and then started scratching their heads as to what exactly the hell they were supposed to do now. And in Gwangju, the people started to set up the ideal community.
Next week: The only free city in Asia
*That is, no one in any position to actually be held accountable in any way, shape, or form.
**Which it would need explicit US permission for, and telling President Jimmy “Human Rights” Carter that they really, really needed the troops in order to go and shoot all those citizens protesting for things like ‘democracy’ and ‘ending martial law’ was not a conversation Chun Doo-hwan wanted to have.
Gwangju Dreaming 