The most famous division on the Korean peninsula today is, of course, the 38th parallel. The line between North and South is so stark that it can be seen from space, and the saber-rattling and defiant threats in Pyongyang frequently transfix the attention of the world. What is less well known is that the Republic of Korea itself is rife with provincialism and mistrust: The inhabitants of Seoul view their more southerly brothers with skepticism, the southeast around Busan is proud and insular, and of course the southwest, Jeolla, dislikes everybody. Not for nothing did Korea spend centuries fractured into its own Three Kingdoms.
It was that provincialism that Chun Doo-hwan now counted on to save his regime. While he had miscalculated – badly – the average Gwangju citizens’ response to his heavy-handed attempt to suppress the student protests, Jeolla as a whole had long had an antagonistic relationship with the central government, especially with its favorite son languishing in prison still. That antagonism did not exist elsewhere in the republic. So, in the days after the military’s undignified withdrawal from the city, unrest spread across Jeolla – but stayed there. Busan did not rise against the government, nor did Daegu, or Daejeon, or Seoul. And so Chun could breathe a sigh of relief. The militarists did not have the resources to put down an uprising on such a scale in more than one city – if dissidents in Seoul or another provincial capital had followed Gwangju’s example, it might have meant the end of the regime.
As it was, he would need to stress himself thin in order to meet the emergency. The paratroopers were not enough to hold the city, clearly, much less recapture it. The local police were no help at all. So, the outnumbered soldiers pulled back and set up a cordon in the hills around the city, creating roadblocks on the few major highways into the isolated valley. The martial law commander, Gen. So Junyeol, was ordered to string out negotiations with the insurgents, and otherwise he sat tight, waiting for reinforcements. There was only place Chun could find the troops he needed to recapture Gwangju: the DMZ itself. And that would mean dealing with the United States.
——
More than 7,000 miles from the beleaguered city, a group of the grandest grandees of the administration of US President Jimmy Carter gathered in a quiet room in Washington. The participants included the Deputy Secretary of State, Warren Christopher; Richard Holbrooke, assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser; CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner; Donald Gregg, the NSC’s top intelligence official for Asia and a former CIA Station Chief in Seoul; and U.S. Defense Secretary Harold Brown. The administration had been following with mounting concern the situation in Gwangju as it spiraled out of control, but frankly Gwangju was one of only a hundred problems besieging the White House that spring.
This was 1980. The year before, other student activists had overthrown the Shah of Iran, a key US ally in the ongoing cold war with the Soviet Union, and seized the US embassy in Tehran. Three weeks before, Operation Eagle Claw, a secret US effort to rescue the hundreds of hostages trapped there, had ended in humiliating failure as the helicopters burned at Desert One. Domestically, Carter had described the US economy as trapped in a “malaise” and his opponent in the ongoing Presidential election, Ronald Reagan, was hammering him over it up and down the campaign trail. To top matters off, on May 18 – within hours of the students pouring into the streets of Gwangju – a volcano had literally erupted in his backyard, as Mt. St. Helens blew its top in the deadliest eruption in American history. Suffice to say, Carter had a lot on his plate.
The men at the meeting that morning in May had one priority: the security of the Republic of Korea against any possible invasion from the North. The People’s Republic, crouching on the far side of the 38th parallel, frequently bared its teeth whenever one of the periodic demonstrations of unrest shook the military governments of their southern neighbor. In the past, communist insurgents had crept into the country in efforts to begin guerrilla wars in the myriad Korean mountains and destabilize the regime from within. At times, they had even launched daring commando raids to kidnap the president of the ROK himself.
So, it was the overriding imperative to maintain the firm front against the North that had dominated most US dealings with Korea over the past six months. While never enthusiastic about Chun, it was the view of many senior officials – such as General John Wickham, commander of US forces in Korea – that it was the dictator or no one, bringing on the kind of chaos that could invite a Northern invasion. Half-hearted attempts to prompt the military towards moderation and democratic reforms inevitably failed when Chun called the US’s bluff – they would never let him be toppled by an internal uprising.
As the slow-motion Chun coup neared its completion on May 17, the CIA and Ambassador William Glaysteen had sent back outraged cables to Washington, reporting on the mounting unrest. They complained “…the military leaders have shown disregard for the constituted authority in the ROK – and for us. We have been presented with a fait accompli suggesting that the military leaders either do not know or do not care about the consequences of treating us in this manner.” What exactly those consequences were was left unspecified. Through the week, Glaysteen had complained about hte military’s increasingly heavy-handed tactics, but at the same time the US watched with mounting concern as the protests became riots and the riots became an uprising.
The Korean military knew well how to manipulate their American partners, as well. On May 18, the morning of the uprising, Lee Hui-sung had told Graysteen that if the rebellion were not swiftly squashed, Korea “would be communized in a manner similar to Vietnam.” Meanwhile, the Korean deputy commander of the US-Korean CFC, met with Gen. Wickham every day. Wickham later said: “General Lew was worried about Gwangju morphing into warfare around the country, and he wanted to tamp it down the best he could. That’s why he and I talked about how to do that with minimal force [and] what’s the best way to do it…The coup leaders were saying we have to suppress this, it’s a threat to our coup.” Finally, as the protests flared on the 21st, leading to the military withdrawal, Graysteen cabled, “The massive insurrection in Kwangju is still out of control and poses an alarming situation for the ROK military who have not faced a similar internal threat for at least two decades…At least 150,000 people are involved.” Clearly, from the US’s perspective, the violence in Jeollanam-do was threatening to destabilize the entire country, and invite a North Korean invasion. Such a thing could never be tolerated.
That, then, was the context as Carter’s advisors met to try to puzzle out an American response. The fundamental problem was this: Chun could not suppress the uprising without more troops, and the only place troops could be got was the DMZ. Those troops could not be moved without the permission of the US military, under the US-Korean alliance, since it directly concerned the joint defense against the North. So the decision became the US’s – if they allowed the move, Chun would certainly crush the rebellion and none too gently. If they did not, the rebellion might topple the entire government and imperil their entire position in the country. Chun was an asshole, they all knew it – but he was the only guy they had.
Defense Secretary Brown was firmly behind Chun. His aide, Nicholas Platt, recalled the meeting: ““There was unrest in Gwangju and the Korean military was moving troops in…We were worried whether they would be able to restore order. There were units that had been moved from the DMZ and we thought that might lessen our ability to deal with the North Koreans.” While Graysteen’s cable had made no mention of the 60+ dead the initial military effort to squash the unrest had left behind, Platt affirmed that those in the meeting were well aware of it – which was information not even the rebels in Gwangju had.
Christopher, the deputy Secrety of State, demurred. He argued that Chun “has done real harm and set the process [of democratization] back.” Secretary of State Muskie agreed, adding, “Chun could be come a liability” and speculating about the US becoming hostage to the clique. The advisors discussed having Chun step down as part of a deal to release the forces needed – but Brown intervened.
“If Chun goes, that will create a vacuum,” Brown said. Chaos at the top. North Korean tanks rolling south again – unacceptable. If the US forcefully backed Chun, he argued, Koreans would fall in line – because “Koreans go with who’s winning.” The dead citizens of Gwangju went unmentioned, as the advisors came to a consensus.
“The first priority is the restoration of order in Kwangju by the Korean authorities with the minimum use of force necessary without laying the seeds for wide disorders later. Once order is restored, it was agreed we must press the Korean government, and the military in particular, to allow a greater degree of political freedom to evolve.”
So, Chun would have his support, but to ensure they hadn’t completely sold out to yet another authoritarian strongman, and in a nod to Carter’s “human rights”-based foreign policy, the US would pressure Chun to adopt unspecified democratic reforms at an unspecified later date. And as for the people of Gwangju, well, the US would prefer violence not be employed by all those army troops Chun was asking to move to the area, but at the same time, well…they could look the other way.
The decision was made. Chun would have his troops. The Americans only asked that he give them time to move reinforcements into the region to make sure that the People’s Republic stayed quiet.
When an American aircraft carrier was reported entering Korean waters a few days later, some of the rebels in Gwangju took hope. The Americans were coming! Surely the world’s foremost democracy was intervening to put Chun down and support their cause? Those hopes began to fade, however, when the next day, two full divisions of ROK troops pulled out of the border and began making their way south.
The US would not save Gwangju.
——
With permission granted from the United States, Chun diverted the 20th and part of the 31st Divisions south, to Jeolla. There they joined the other troops on internal security. Most of the regime’s forces had been containing the insurrection to Jeollanam-do – despite the efforts of some of the sinmingun to reach Jeonju or Seoul, none had been able to escape the province. Jeollanam-do, like every Korean province, is surrounded by high, thickly forested mountains, with only a few major highways linking the region to the rest of the peninsula. The intercity buses, the main means of transportation for a population still largely without personal automobiles, proved simplicity itself for the army to blockade. The highways were shut down and Jeolla was entirely isolated from the world – no one other than the regime forces came or went, and the flow of information in both directions became the barest trickle.
Most of the army surrounded Gwangju itself. The paratroopers had formed a loose ring, concentrating on the mountains to the east and south of the city – nearest the Provincial Hall and the plaza that was the heart of the rebellion. When the reinforcements from the north arrived, the detachment from the 31st Division took over the northwest perimeter, while the 3 regiments of the 20th division – the 60th, 61st, and 62nd – spread out in an arc from west to southeast to northeast. The 20th, particularly the 61st Regiment, would have the primary responsibility for seizing the city, with the paratroopers in support.
But not right away. Rather than risk a bloody street fight, Gen. So felt that the rebels would have their ardor sapped via siege, letting him clear away all but the hardest of die-hards without a fight. Only once the way had been prepared would he send his men in to recapture the city and stamp out the last embers of resistance. So, from the day the troops were driven out on the 22nd until early in the morning on May 26th, the nearly 3 divisions surrounding Gwangju dug in, blocked the roads, and waited.
The siege was bloodily enforced – though many of Gwangju’s citizens were unaware of it. For example, one woman caught up in the fighting was Kim Chun-nye, an 18-year old worker in the Ilsin Textile Company. Miss Kim slept most nights in the city, and had done her best to keep her head down and out of trouble the last few days. But Friday, May 23 came, and she needed to return to her hometown of Hwasun – a small village to the southeast of the city. It was not an ordinary weekend – her grandmother had passed, and in the family and elder-centric Korean culture, missing the funeral was unthinkable.
No one really knew what was happening – the troops had vanished the day before, and apart from the sporadic gunfire in the hills, all had been quiet as the citizens set about reorganizing their city. She and her dorm mate at the factory, Ko Yong-ja, knew that the busses obviously weren’t running, but with all the telephone lines cut there were no other sources of information.
Nervous, Chun-nye went to the only authorities she could find, the Citizen’s Army, told them her story, and asked for help getting home. She and Yong-ja were given a small squad of 9 citizen-soldiers as escort, and they ventured into the hills.
About a kilometer southeast of the city, on the lower slopes of Mudeungsan, the local mountain, the road narrowed in the small village of Chiwon-dong before running over the flank of the mountain to Hwasun. As the truck came into the pass, abruptly the paratroopers opened fire from both sides. Witnesses later reported that the sinmingun stopped the car and raced out, hands in the air, shouting, “Don’t shoot!”, but the soldiers concealed in ambush on both sides of the road did not relent – all 11 people were cut down. Chun-nye and Yong-ja’s bodies were identified by their families five days later, after the end of the siege, and their stories gathered from survivors.
Later that day, a second bus from the city blundered into the same ambush. A minibus loaded with university and high school students attempted to reach Hwasun from Gwangju. There were fourteen high school boys, proudly but nervously clutching M-1 carbines and two-way radios as young members of the Citizen’s Army, and 4 high-school girls, among them the sixteen-year old Hong Kum-sak. Kum-sak had slipped into Gwangju that morning, with her mother. Her two brothers were students at Chonnam University, and the family was terrified for their safety amidst the chaos. As they wandered the city, searching for the boys – or their bodies – Kum-sak had grown separated from her mother in the chaos of that day.
As the afternoon wore on, Kum-sak began to trudge home, when the bus, with its load of young ‘soldiers’, rolled by. The boys were laughing and joking with each other, all of them from the same class, friends enjoying the novel camaraderie of soldering. They had ventured into the hills around the city the previous two days to gather wooden planks – for coffins. They offered Kum-sak a ride home when she said she lived in Naju, on the road to Hwasun. With traffic in the city at a standstill otherwise, she accepted.
Nervously, she made her way to the back of the bus, where she found three female members of the Citizen’s Army. A smiling girl asked her her name, and then introduced herself as Park Hyon-Suk. Kum-sak sat down next to her and the bus roared off.
She recalled, “When the bus had passed Gwanju stream and neared Chiwŏn-dong, a soldier standing by the side of the road gave a signal to stop. Because we all knew what would happen if we stopped, the vehicle speeded up. With sudden noisy sounds, bullets poured down on the bus. Bullets kept coming down, and someone yelled to turn the bus around. The moment the vehicle was turned around, the driver was hit by a bullet, and he fell forward, bleeding.”
The boy soldiers leapt out of the halted bus and returned fire, but the position was hopeless – these were high schoolers with antique weapons, facing trained paratroopers in cover in the hills surrounding the road. Quickly realizing the same thing, one of the boys said they had no choice but to stop firing and surrender. The young people threw their guns to the ground and raised their arms in the air, one of the girls waving a bloody handkerchief. Kum-sak’s account of what came next is worth quoting at length:
“Usually the bullets were coming from the front and back part of the bus. I, sitting in the far back row, moved to the middle and got under a seat. The deafening sound of guns, the screams begging for life, moaning, and the sound of bullets ricocheting off the back of the bus—such sounds created hellish confusion inside the bus.
A male student who was shot, his intestines spilling out on the floor of the bus, was saying, “I want to live.” He suddenly closed his eyes and rolled over like he was dead. I closed my eyes and rolled over like I was dead. In a moment the sound of gunfire stopped, and we couldn’t even hear the sound of people moaning. I felt nervous, with pains all over my body, and I opened my eyes. I was bleeding all over, including my right arm and back and sides and thighs. Luckily, I had not been hit directly by bullets, but splinters were all over my body.
Voices came from nearby. Soldiers said, “Let’s make sure they are all dead.” Three or four soldiers came inside the bus. They nudged people with their boots to see if they were alive or dead. From someone in the back came a voice saying, “I want to live.” After pulling that person out, the soldiers went back in the bus and there was another sound.
“If you want to survive, don’t be afraid and get up.” And from a person in the front came a moaning sound, begging for life. “Bring him! Let’s make a complete check!”
I was lying on my back like I was dead, and I was glancing at them sideways. Then suddenly a soldier’s boot kicked me in the side, and it was painful, so I let out a sound. So when they checked if everyone was dead again, an ambulance came and gave me simple first aid. And I was taken into the mountains by a farmer’s tractor.” Laying Claim to the Memory of May, 32-35.
Hong Kum-sak was taken with the only other two survivors, two male students – one already severely injured, one begging for his life – to the local commander. The two males were summarily shot. Hong was kept imprisoned through the summer, finally being released with a warning never to speak of what had happened. She never did share her story until the fall of the dictatorship, years later, and parliamentary investigations into the massacres in Gwangju.
The next day, Ambassador Glaysteen cabled back to Washington reports of “an armed clash, with ‘dozens’ of casualties, between troops and an armed convoy of diehards outside the city.’ *
The cordon established on the 23rd – most bloodily enforced in the pass to Hwasun – tightened on the 24th. Inside the city, the initial optimistic mood on the 22nd and 23rd, when the soldiers had withdrawn, was turning gradually to fear as the citizens realized how cut off they were. Looking over their barricades, most of the rebel city placed their hopes in either the reasonableness of the regime – never before had the ROK government wantonly massacred an entire city of its subjects – and the intervention of the United States. Jimmy Carter was for human rights, the Americans wouldn’t let their allies the Koreans be slaughtered by the brutes in Seoul. So they whispered encouraging words to each other, but all the while the telephone lines stayed dead and the noose tightened.
Prior to Saturday, the 24th, many people had still been able to slip out of the city on foot, such as Lee Jae-eui, who by now was lying low in the villages in the countryside. But now even that escape avenue was being cut off.
That Saturday was warm and sunny – it gets hot early in southern Korea, and stays hot and humid all through the summer. Pang Gwang-bom, age 12, was out of school with his friends and was playing in a village reservoir of Wonjae, near the city. The boys were largely unconcerned with politics, and their parents had told them little of the trouble in the city, although they were vaguely aware something big was on. For that day, though, Pang was mostly concerned with splashing and dunking his friends, enjoying the weekend away from Chonnam Middle School.
As Pang and his friends played, the paratroopers were pulling out of their blocking position near Hwasun and retreating over the mountain to regroup for the coming assault on the city. Perhaps frustrated at the ‘communists’ who had humiliated them and driven them from Korea’s 5th-largest city, perhaps desiring, as some were later overheard, “to teach these Jeollanam rascals a lesson,” or maybe just because they’d grown used to killing, the airborne troops were firing into the houses of Wonjae as they retreated through the city. When the boys heard the gunshots begin, they frantically began to splash their way out of the pond – and caught the wrong sort of attention.
Nine of the ten boys made it. Pang Gwang-bom was last, desperately swimming for a floodgate behind which he hoped to take cover, when the passing troops sprayed machine gun fire at the fleeing middle schoolers. Pang took a bullet to the head. When his father, Pang Tu-hyong, found his body, he embraced his dead eldest son and “rolled on the floor kicking and screaming like the world had collapsed.”**
The latest massacre simply added to the growing body count. Rumor and expectation swirled around the city as Free Gwangju felt the walls closing in around it – “Chun is too weak to come into the city,” “Chun is just biding his time,” “They’re going to reach a settlement soon and it’ll all be over.”
Linda Lewis recorded the scenes as family members combed the hospitals and public places of the central city, looking for their slain loved ones:
“They had the bodies in the gym [Sangmugwan] and were letting family members in to see them. Normal people out today—men in suits, lots of women. M saw lots of her friends (“So-and-so’s daughter died.” —“Oh, no, the one who lives [at] such-and-such?” —“Yes. But wasn’t she young?” — “Yes, only about 3d year middle school.”) And so it went, M picking up bits and pieces all around, and I doing the same.
I got interviewed for French TV—they were really nice. I got crowds all around me. People saying – tell them how it happened, the first days, what the soldiers did. That is one concern – does the world know what radicalized us? Then point 2 is – tell them we are led by law-abiding people, not gangs roaming the streets. We evidently are big news, and have been. M dragged me over to talk to a blasé CBS cameraman. . . . I had lots of questions for him, but I don’t think he knew shit. No, the rest of the country is not demonstrating. Yes, the US govt is firmly supporting Chun. People clamored to have me ask what the world thought of Kwangju. . . .”
The other concern, other than their isolation and the growing sense of doom, was that the world needed to know what was being done to them. Chun couldn’t just massacre them and get away with it – and he wouldn’t, not if the outside knew. Not if news could get out of Gwangju, out of Jeolla. And so foreigners throughout the city – missionaries, students, Peace Corps volunteers, and most of all, reporters – were besieged with pleas to carry their stories out to the world. “Tell them what’s being done to us!” There was a great worry that they would be written off – as they already were, in the corridors of Washington – as leftist radicals, student agitators, communist agents – and not fundamentally normal citizens of Korea, pushed into rebellion by the brutal violence of the thuggish regime Praetorian guards.
The same day, May 24th, the Korean army had finalized its plans to re-enter and re-take the city, sharing them with General Wickham (the head of all Allied forces in Korea). Wickham urged restraint, arguing that the Settlement Committees were moderating the people, successfully collecting weapons, and providing the possibility of a peaceful resolution, but the Korean military – that is, General So – countered with the intelligence of the growing split in the committees, the divisions already rending Free Gwangju apart, and that a solid core of diehards would never trust the regime and would never surrender. So said that the citizen demands were “excessive” and that the students were not interested in good-faith negotiations. So, the preparations for the reconquest of Gwangju – codenamed Splendid Holiday – went forward.
By the 25th, negotiations between the various settlement committees and the army had stalled. The people of Gwangju insisted that the military admit fault for the fighting started on the 18th, and that the citizens had been justified in defending themselves – but the military stuck to the line that the city of Gwangju was full of traitors and rebels, and no apology would be made. Only complete surrender could be accepted. The voluntary disarmament of the sinmingun, still hoping for a peaceful resolution, continued apace. General So judged that by May 27th, he would have filtered out all but the diehardest of diehards, and the situation would be ripe to move in.
The early rumbles came on May 26th, the 9th day of the uprising. Early that morning, the military, in violation of its negotations with the citizens – for what promises could be owed to rebels? – began to creep forward to seize jumping-off positions for the assault on the next morning. A stolen army radio reported that tanks and troops were approaching the heart of the city from the west.
An emergency meeting of the settlement committees was called, and the city leaders rushed out to the incursion, even as the soldiers contemptuously brushed aside the barricades that had been erected during the siege. The delegation pleaded with the soldiers, some citizens even lying down in the street to stop the tanks – nine years before Tiananmen, and not nearly as well remembered – and the committee made a last ditch effort at a peaceful resolution. To no avail.
That afternoon, one final mass rally was held in front of the Provincial Hall – the last of Free Gwangju, though no one yet knew it. As detailed before, with the rain, the massacres taking place around the outskirts of the city, the desertion of the United States, and the constant pressure, the moderates in Gwangju were dispirited and defeated – most drifted away. In their place was left the hard liners, who rejected the Settlement Committee and now formed the Struggle Committee. They issued one last set of demands – a set obviously impossible for the military to accept:
- The Choi Kyu-ha interim government holds full responsibility for the current situation and should resign after paying full reparations to the people of Kwangju;
- Martial law must be lifted immediately, as it justifies continuing violence against Kwangju;
- Execute the butcher Chun Doo Hwan in the name of the nation
- Release dissident leaders and form a national salvation government with them
- Stop the biased news coverage that distorts the uprising
- Our fundamental demand is not just the unconditional release of the arrested insurgents and full compensation, but a real democratic government
- We will fight to the death if our demands are not met (Hwang Sŏk Yŏng 1985:202–203).
The rally ended at about nine pm the night of the 26th. The warning that the army might attack that night flew around the city, and final efforts were made to dissuade the diehards in the city-center from making a last stand – to no avail. About 200 rebel fighters, most of them high school students and other young people, grimly armed themselves with the handful of weapons not given up and began to fortify the YWCA, the Provincial Office, and a small number of other public buildings.
As the students prepared for their defiant martyrdom, the citizens of the city held one final, mass funeral for the dead. Linda Lewis was in attendance and I will let her words speak for themselves:
“[Each coffin] had pictures and memorabilia placed on top, so there was some sense of who the victims were. Here, a young student, his high school picture showing him strong and serious; there, a young woman portrayed in hanbok (traditional Korean dress). There were older people too; some pictures showed mature men and women. …Two young sisters, I supposed, were beside their brother’s body, holding each other and reading a bible. A whole family stood together, a middle-aged woman weeping, arms around the casket itself. Men in hemp mourning hats sat on their haunches around the edges of the gym, quietly talking; mothers in white mourning hanbok leaned on each other for support….
A girl in high school uniform spoke, followed by a boy in fatigues, then a young man wrapped in the national flag. Remember the dead. Think of democracy. There were no wild exhortations or radical talk; the scene spoke for itself. Watchers wept. A grandmother behind me pushed at my shoulder to get a better glimpse, and beside me Mother kept gasping, “Omae!” (My goodness!) as she took inventory of the victims.
For the first time I really felt the dimensions of the tragedy; there before us all was the evidence that all kinds of citizens—young, old, male, female, innocent, and maybe not so innocent—had died. We sang the national anthem, and the service ended with a middle-aged, apparently middle-class man reminding us of the uncertainty of what might happen that night and of how the whole thing would end. Then we all filed out, making room for the next group. All the way home, Mother kept dabbing at her eyes. “I can’t help it,” she said. “The tears just keep coming. Think of it! A young mother . . . those students …”
——
Early the next morning, Splendid Holiday started and the Gwangju Uprising reached its bloody conclusion.
*Glaysteen also frantically cabled about “people’s courts” and “executions” being carried out by communist radicals inside the city. Not one eyewitness reports the same. The most charitable explanation is that Glaysteen was swallowing the regime’s lies hook, line, and sinker – the top US official in Korea at the time being more or less led around by the nose.
** Later, the elder Pang took to drinking every day, but he never did recover from his son’s death and ultimately ended his days in an insane asylum.
Gwangju Dreaming 