One final rally was held in front of Provincial Hall plaza the night of May 26. It was a rainy, miserable evening. A few thousand gathered around the fountain – gone were the tens of thousands who had sat there on the sunny afternoons of free Gwangju, listening to the speeches about democracy and self-government. Most of the militia had surrendered their weapons and gone home. As the sun sank behind the hills west of the city, the leaders admitted: The military’s deadline for the surrender of the city had passed at 6 pm that day. The army could enter at any time.
Many in the crowd were for giving up the struggle. They had disarmed, trusting to the hope of a peaceful, negotiated solution. The shinmingun was gone, disbanded, except for a few hundred die-hards. The popular fervor of tens of thousands directed against a few hundred outnumbered paratroopers was no longer present – instead, they would be facing nearly three full divisions of trained, prepared troops. There was absolutely no chance of victory, and everyone knew it.
As the last few thousand holdouts sat there in the descending darkness, from one corner of the square one woman started to sing –
Our wish is reunification.
Even in our dreams, our wish is reunification.
With all our hearts, reunification.
Reunification, let’s bring it about.
A DPRK video of the song so you can get the melody
It was an old song, going back to the three-decade old division of the peninsula, popular in both North and South. Everyone there knew it. It was an anthem of the people, often sung in defiance of the regimes in Seoul or Washington that played games of power with Korean lives.* Gradually, the crowd all around the fountain took up the chorus:
Reunification that revives this nation,
Reunification that revives this country,
Reunification, come true soon.
Reunification, come true.
The 6,000 marched, still singing the chorus, into the street, emptying the plaza for the last time, and as they proceeded down the battle-scarred Guemnam-no more citizens joined them, and more again, until as they neared the barricades they numbered 30,000 strong, according to Lee Jae-eui. There, after a final round of chanting and show of defiance to the soldiers preparing their assault, the crowd dispersed, and most people went to their homes to see what tomorrow would bring.
Now, nothing is more nightmareish for an army than an urban assault. As far back as 1870, Paris had revolted against the French government and for a few weeks made itself a free city. The defeat of the Paris Commune had been a prolonged, bloody affair that lasted a week and resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. Everyone knows the horrors of Stalingrad – and of Aachen, Arnhem, Berlin, and a dozen other European cities in the Second World War. Even modern militaries are stymied in places like Mogadishu and Fallujah.
The Korean army had emphatically wanted to avoid a bloody street battle against their own people. Leaving aside the morality of the thing, the damage to Gwangju would be enormous, and the blow to the regime’s legitimacy – still fighting to establish itself after the assassination of Park back in October – would likely be fatal. Hence, the week of negotiation, the patient work of disarming the rebels with false promises of amnesty and reconciliation. In the end, the strategy had proven wildly successful – instead of tens of thousands of armed and trained rebels, the several thousand troops would face only a few very poorly-armed college and high school students in a small area of the city.
Back at the square, only 150 militia members remained. They had few pistols and rifles left between them, and had a grim choice – for most, literally life or death. Rally organizers paced the square, shouting, “Leave the square, unless you’re ready to die! We will fight the military to the death tonight! We may all be killed!” But most stayed.
The Hall itself was held by about 100 fighters, spread out in 2-3 person teams around the perimeter and in the various offices and rooms of the building. The remainder held various elementary schools, markets, and intersections in the neighborhood around, often spontaneously reinforced by other citizens. For example, as the night closed in, one teenage boy came, weeping, to the Hall. “Give me a gun!” he said. “Let me fight!” The paratroopers had killed his sister.** Two other college students, who had been studying for final exams on May 18 and missed the initial uprising, also turned up. They had been in hiding the previous week, they said, but they couldn’t live with themselves if they missed it all. They were given weapons – they, too, did not survive. Thus, the final strength facing the Army is difficult to estimate, but may have reached as many as 500. Losses, similarly, are also very difficult to determine with any certainty, with some sources (Lee Jae-Eui) claiming that as many as 150 people were killed in the final assault.
Of the 150 rebels who initially gathered on the plaza, 80 had completed compulsory military service, and about 70 were high school students. 10 of the 150 were women. They had a last meal in the YMCA – joking that it was their own Last Supper – and then the leaders, Yun Sang-wŏn, Pak Nam-sŏn, Kim Chong-bae, Chŏng Sang-yong – met to plan while retired military officers led the kids through shooting drills. Then, by about 11 pm, the final defenders of Free Gwangju dispersed to various strongpoints around the Provincial Hall and prepared to sell their lives.
One man, anonymously interviewed later, described his motivation to stand and fight.
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“At the time he had been a student, newly returned to college after completing his compulsory military service; unlike other insurgents, he was a married man with a child…[his motivation was] quite simple: he told me that he was not concerned about how people might judge his actions; rather, it was a matter of self-respect. Even though they all knew they would certainly be defeated, he understood that this was the course of all liberation movements in Korean history—the willingness of some to fight to the end. No one had expected the government to use such force in Kwangju, and he felt he had no choice but to continue the struggle for the honor of the uprising itself.”
For most, Gwangju was worth fighting for. They knew that they could not save the city – that when the paratroopers returned they would roll over the small militia with ease. They knew that there was no guarantee any of them would survive to be taken prisoner, that they might all be executed out of hand. But most were prepared to fight anyway.
Because May 18 had to mean something. They had to show that they were a free people, and that they would defend to the death their dream of democracy. Show the world? Most had given up hope that their story would ever be told to the wider world. The province was cut off. Show the country? Maybe. The true story might someday leak past the regime’s lies, denouncing them as communists and vandals. Perhaps they just had to show themselves that some things are important – some things are worth dying for. With their deaths, they could become a symbol to Korea as a whole – sacrificing their lives in return, not for freedom and self-determination, but to give the peninsula hope that one day these things would be true. So they stayed, young men and women mostly – college students, even high schoolers, who refused to be sent away by their elders to live. They stayed, and they prepared to face Splendid Holiday.
One of the militia was Park Yong-jun, an orphan, a young man who had made a living shining shoes. On his body in the YMCA was found the following note:
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“If you want our blood, my Lord, I will dedicate this small body of mine to You. Lord, what am I? I am a feeble being, a man trapped in a miserable existence. Lord, I have tried to live without shame or guilt. Please pour more pain, more agony, and more hardship on me, to give me the power and wisdom to overcome this world. The people spit upon us orphans, the scum of the earth. My brothers, my young brothers—is there nothing I can do for them? Will they live and die as trash, ever more burdened, after my death? Lord, what should I do? What is conscience? Why do you put me under such a heavy yoke? Must I beg you for the strength to serve? Then, I will do it Lord. Help me, and forgive us all in Your name—and mercy and love for the world. “
—-
Downtown Gwangju, May 27, 1980. 31st Division attacked from the north, 20th from the east, and 21st from the west.
Splendid Holiday began shortly before midnight, May 27th, as the army cut the phone lines into the city. Outlying rebel outposts found themselves quickly cut off from headquarters as the soldiers closed in.
At the Provincial Hall, by 2:30 am, most knew the final attack was imminent – the phones were cut and nothing had been heard from their outposts in hours. The leaders of the militia – Yun Sangwŏn, Kim Yong-ch’ol, and Yi Yang-hyŏn – held hands in farewell. “We will meet again in the next world,” they said to one another. Park Nam-sŏn, commander of headquarters, gave final orders. Do not shoot first; there isn’t enough ammunition. Don’t fire until you’re told and at close range.
Lee Jae-eui writes of the start of Splendid Holiday that, “artillery fire roared like thunder, and flare bombs and tracers lit up the sky with moments of daylight. At first, state forces shot their M-16s indiscriminately, at any sign of life, even in residential areas.” Linda Sue-Lewis wrote at the time, “At dawn – before 5 am – the sound of guns. Not just the ping-ping of guns and the ak-ak-ak of automatics, but big booms that I thought might be tanks but M said was dynamite.”
In the north, about 30 men, led by a reserve army commander, dug in around the YMCA and Kyerim Elementary behind the school fences and around the nearby highway overpass, in an effort to delay the assault of the 31st Division from the north. By 2 am, many of the rebels’ nerves had cracked here, and all but 20 fled to a nearby church for sanctuary. The remaining militia had only 10 guns between them, so the unarmed members headed back to the Provincial Hall to try to draw more weapons from the armory there. Then they returned to their positions.
The attack there lasted about ten minutes. The small rebel force was quickly flanked out of their position near Kyerim elementary and attempted to flee to the south, scaling a 7-foot wall to regain some breathing room. A second flanking force struck them from the rear of nearby Gwangju High School, and the men scattered. The reserve commander, wounded in the thigh, fled into a nearby private home. Most of the rest of his cell were killed, captured, or fled into the night.
At the Provincial Hall, some of the high school students’ nerves had cracked, and one boy, in tears, begged that the high schoolers, at least, should surrender, so that someone would bear witness to what happened there. The 20th division rolled swiftly down Guemnamno, led by armor, and by 3:30 am had surrounded the plaza, shining bright searchlights onto the former government offices. The rebels responded with fire, and the building was stormed.
Writes Jae-eui:
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“Yun Sang-wŏn was among the fifty insurgents on the second floor of the civil-service building, which was being used as a mess hall. They fired on invading troops, and dodged bullets coming from below. A high schooler screamed and collapsed onto the floor. Yun crawled over to him, and tried to shake him back into consciousness. “Hey, wake up!” he yelled. But when Yun lifted the boy up, his head fell back—he was already dead.
As Yun ran back to his position, a bullet tore through him. “Brother Yun!” the other rebels shouted. Yun did not respond, and dark blood oozed from his side. His body was covered with a blanket. Shortly thereafter, someone screamed, “No bullets, no ammunition!” and the few remaining survivors retreated to a nearby room. Paratroopers fired through the hallway windows; the rebels shot back, grabbing bullets from the bodies of the dead, and tried to duck under the line of fire.
When all the ammunition was spent, they declared defeat. “Give us your weapons,” the military demanded. “Point it at yourself and slide it through the window.” The soldiers rushed in with guns and grenades, calling for surrender. In one room, three rebels crawled out from behind a file cabinet; a total of ten survivors were forced face-down to the steps, their hands tied behind their backs. In one case, a pointed both his M-16 and a confiscated M-2 carbine at a captive’s head. When the rebel tried to run, the soldier shot him dead. He then turned the carbine onto eight insurgents whose hands were raised in surrender. As they approached the yard, he mowed them down, and joked to a rebel underfoot, “How was that? Was it like a movie?”
Only 10 of the 40 defenders of the second floor survived to be captured.
For hours, the battle at the Hall went on. Some rebels attempted to sell their lives dearly. Others hoped to be captured, so that they might at least make a statement at their trials before their executions. Prisoner after bloodied prisoner was roughly hauled out of the building and bound in the plaza outside. By dawn, the Provincial Office was back in government hands.
Over at the YMCA, the building was surrounded and bombarded with machine gun fire. Unarmed rebels tried to surrender, but were cut down when they exited the building. Then the building was stormed. Among those killed was the orphan shoeshiner, Park Yong-jun.
For many of the people of Gwangju, the most enduring memory they had of Splendid Holiday was the voice of Park Yong-sun, a 21-year old college student who had made herself known to all as the voice of the revolution, driving through the streets making announcements on her car’s public address system. As the battle went on, she drove through the city, shouting over and over, “Citizens, government troops are invading. Their guns and swords will kill our beloved brothers and sisters. The time has come! Rise up and fight! We will defend Gwangju to the death. Do not forget us.” At about 3 am, Yong-sun’s voice fell silent. She was not heard again.
—-
Splendid Holiday lasted about 3 hours in total, from 3 am to 6 am, May 27th. The government officially admitted to 22 soldiers killed and 150 ‘rioters’ killed, though some sources argue that the figures should be far higher. The last stand of Free Gwangju was over, though, and no one now remained to resist the will of the Chun regime. A cautious order was established in the city, as the soldiers processed the prisoners they had taken and shipped thousands to various nearby prisons.
Not all those who survived, of course, survived intact. One of those who survived the final assault was Kim Yŏngch’ŏl. Kim, thirty-two years old, married, and the father of three young children, was a political activist before 5.18; he worked with the urban poor through the YWCA credit union movement. When the new leadership was organized on May 25 as the Citizens and Students Struggle Committee, he was appointed planning director, and he was in the Provincial Office Building at dawn on May 27. In the final assault, he suffered contusions on his head and shoulders and while in detention at Sangmudae attempted suicide. Sentenced to twelve years in prison for his role in the uprising, in December 1981 his wife found him at 3 a.m., wandering outside his house, partially paralyzed and mentally deranged. She struggled for several years to keep him at home, but he required constant supervision. He banged his head on the floor and walls, ran naked through the neighborhood, was caught shoplifting, and suffered from delusions. He still imagined that his comrades-in-arms from 1980 were alive and talked about meeting them.
Finally, he had to be institutionalized.
Overall, nearly 1400 people were arrested and imprisoned following the fall of the city. Throughout the summer and fall of 1980, the police and military were hunting for those involved in the uprising and dragging them away for arrest and conviction. 12 people received life sentences. 7 received death. Others, such as Lee Jae-eui, had fled the city during the siege and skulked in hiding, sometimes for years at a time. Gwangju itself lived in a state of fear for nearly a year after the battle. Soldiers patrolled the streets, keeping a wary eye on the tense, restive city, lest it explode into violence again. Conversations were hushed, and people didn’t dare talk politics outside their own homes. A popular rumor had it that a man from Gwangju had been in a taxi in Seoul. When the driver asked him just what had happened in the city back in May, anyway, the man had truthfully answered – and in response the taxi driver drove him straight to the military police. While that story, as far as I can tell, never happened, it nevertheless resembles the truth – reporters were fired for writing the wrong things, such as that the paratroopers had killed people during the violence, and university students expelled for writing pamphlets about the uprising.
For Chun Doo-Hwan wanted nothing more than for the entire Gwangju Incident – as it came to be known – to go away. He censored all talk about it and his regime moved swiftly to denounce the entire affair as the result of North Korean agitation, an uprising by Communists and hooligans to destabilize the country and turn it over to the Kims in the north. He would go on to proclaim himself President and write a new Constitution for the country in the fall of 1980, and for that he desperately needed popular support. But for Chun, his rocky, unstable regime had already been fatally damaged by the battle in the sleepy southwestern city in May 1980. Although it took years, the echoes of Gwangju carried forward throughout the decade, and eventually – it brought down the Korean dictatorship itself.
* Accordingly, the song is often exploited by the North for propaganda purposes.
** He would also be killed in the final battle.
Gwangju Dreaming 