The Day the South Korean Army turned on its own Citizens

　
What happened in Kwangju 30 years ago is still a subject of debate, but the overall picture is well-established. The events of May 1980 developed in several stages. A significant preliminary step occurred after the assassination of President Park Chung Hee on Oct. 26, 1979, by his own intelligence chief, when Maj. Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, the chief of military intelligence, was named chairman of the committee to investigate the assassination. Reporting on the controversial findings of his committee, Chun first became known to the general public as a spokesman of the military.

As successor to Park, then-Prime Minister Choi Kyu Ha was nominally “elected” president under the provisions of Park’s so-called “Yushin Constitution” of 1972. Choi, a former career official in the Foreign Ministry without a political power base, had risen to foreign minister during Park’s military dictatorship and eventually served as his last prime minister. A day after assuming office, the new president annulled Park’s last Emergency Decree Number Nine which had threatened critics of his Yushin (Renewal) system with prison or even the death penalty. Choi also ordered the release of many political prisoners convicted or arrested on the basis of that decree, and lifted the house arrest of Kim Dae Jung, the prominent opposition figure from the southwestern province of Jeollanam-do, of which Kwangju is the capital city. Choi promised democratic reforms. But much of the country remained under emergency law, to be supervised by the military.

On the surface things seemed to be moving in the right direction until the so-called “Incident of Dec. 12.” During the night of Dec. 12-13, 1979, troops of the 9th Division commanded by Maj. Gen. Roh Tae Woo entered Seoul and arrested, without much resistance, the army’s chief of staff and about half a dozen other leading generals. As a follow-up, more than 30 generals were replaced, giving the army a new leadership.

Roh and Chun were graduates of the same class from South Korea’s military academy, as was Maj. Gen. Chong Ho Yong, commander of the special forces; all three came from the Kyongsang region on South Korea’s east coast. This trio of Roh, Chun and Chong would soon emerge as the new center of power not only of the armed forces but also of the politics of South Korea, with Chun at the top. And Kwangju would provide the stage for this to become evident.

On Dec. 14, Choi named a new Cabinet, seemingly without interference from the military. Choi also promised a new constitution within a year and fair elections to be held as soon as possible thereafter. At the end of February 1980, Choi had full civil rights restored to 687 South Koreans, including Kim Dae Jung and former President Yun Po Sun. And in March a commission of experts installed by the government began its deliberations about a new constitution.

But there were also disquieting moves: In mid-April, Choi appointed Chun – who in the meantime had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant general, but who was still the chief of military intelligence – as acting director of the civilian intelligence service, the Central Intelligence Agency (Chungang Chongboguk), better known as the Korean CIA (KCIA). This gave Chun power unrivalled by other military leaders. And it confirmed growing suspicions that Choi was becoming just a figurehead president, a puppet of the military, and that Chun was calling the shots in South Korea.

RESTLESS STUDENTS
The nation’s students became increasingly restless and demanded an end to emergency law. During March and April, they still confined their demonstrations to the campuses of their universities and colleges. But at the beginning of May, they broke through the police cordons put up around their campuses in Seoul and Taejon, and by May 15 an estimated 100,000 students were demonstrating on the streets of major cities all over the country. This was a direct challenge to the military, which was in charge of enforcing emergency law. Kim and other worried opposition leaders warned the students to restrain themselves, and on May 16 and 17 there were actually no more street demonstrations in Seoul.

But it was already too late. Chun and his comrades wouldn’t take any more. An extraordinary meeting of the Cabinet was held on the evening of May 17, chaired by Choi but in the presence of the new military leadership. It was decided to extend the emergency law to the whole country; until then it had been limited to Seoul and other specific regions. Immediately after the Cabinet meeting, the special military command in charge of enforcing emergency law issued Emergency Decree Number 10, which prohibited any public assemblies and all kinds of political activity whatsoever, closed all universities and colleges, reintroduced complete advance censorship of anything meant for publication in the media and declared any withdrawal from the workplace without prior permission a criminal offense. Armed soldiers were placed in front of all public buildings, including the National Assembly, universities and colleges, newspapers and broadcast stations, as well as the headquarters of political parties and trade unions. At the same time, carefully planned arrests were carried out by the military. When Kim’s secretaries tried to protect him, the soldiers brutally beat them down with their rifle butts.

The list of people arrested on May 17 and 18 surprisingly also included people from the ruling camp like Kim Jong Pil, chairman of the Democratic Republican Party (DRP, Minkong-Dang) and Lee Hu Rak, a former KCIA director. Kim Jong Pil actually had founded the KCIA after Park Chung Hee’s military coup d’etat of May 1961 and became its first director. Later he had served as the first chairman of the newly set-up DRP and as prime minister under Park. The military also stopped a meeting of student leaders from all over the country that had been planned for the morning of May 18 (a Sunday) at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul and arrested the 25 participants. In many other cities, student leaders and other people considered suspicious by the military were rounded up and taken away.

On the same morning several hundred students of Chonnam University in Kwangju began to demonstrate against Kim’s arrest, the closure of the universities and the other emergency measures announced the previous night. On their way to the center of the city, the students were stopped by riot police, who fired tear gas at them. The students responded by throwing stones and dispersing, only to regroup and continue their advance into the city center in small groups through narrow side streets. By noon, the number of demonstrators on the square in front of the Provincial Office of Jeollanam-do and in surrounding access streets had swollen to several thousand.

FEAR AND TERROR
The real tragedy of Kwangju began in the afternoon with the arrival of paratroopers from the 7th Brigade of the Special Forces, commanded by Maj. Gen. Chong Ho Yong. These troops were specially trained for parachute missions into enemy territory in case of another conflict with North Korea, and they behaved as if they were on the battlefield – in a war against their own people. Anyone blocking their way was brutally knocked down with truncheons or rifle butts or bayoneted into submission. Those who couldn’t flee were captured and tied up, loaded onto military trucks and driven away. Many were injured, and the first fatalities were recorded. During the night the military trucks reappeared and dropped off some of the captured in dark streets or alleys. Many were half-dead from beatings or bayonet wounds.

The indiscriminate brutality of the paratroopers caused fear and terror among the citizens of Kwangju. But it also aroused shock and fierce hatred against this brutal soldiery and their military commanders. The next day the number of demonstrators grew to tens of thousands, and not only students but also adult citizens – even housewives and high school kids had joined in. Again the paratroopers appeared, having by then increased in number to about 3,000. But if they were meant to scare away the demonstrators, it didn’t work. By the next day, May 20, about 100,000 people were demonstrating in a city that had a population of about 700,000 at that time. The military leadership had sent a division of regular troops (about 10,000 soldiers) to bring the city under control. But now the demonstrators tried to resist with sticks and rods, planks and stones, knives and axes. They stormed the head offices of the two local newspapers and set two Kwangju broadcasting studios on fire because they wouldn’t or couldn’t report what was really happening in Kwangju; they were only allowed to print or broadcast the “official” version that North Korean agents had stirred up the citizens and that Kwangju was in turmoil.

May 21 was a national holiday. The center of Kwangju was crowded with people. Before noon, the first armed demonstrators appeared. They had procured weapons and ammunition from a weapons depot of the Homeland Reserve Forces in Hwasun. Around 1 p.m. the military started shooting at the demonstrators. But now they shot back. Similar shooting exchanges occurred in several parts of the city. When the demonstrators began shooting from two machine guns, the military decided to withdraw. The police followed them. The demonstrators began to occupy public facilities one after another. By the evening Kwangju was in the hands of the demonstrators. Citizens committees were formed to maintain order, the main such committee meeting in the Provincial Office. Efforts were made to contact the military and try to negotiate a peaceful settlement. The Roman Catholic bishop of Kwangju offered his help, and many of the demonstrators deposited their weapons at some church facilities to be guarded by priests. But in the end no agreement could be reached.

As the correspondent in charge of covering Japan, Korea and Taiwan for the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and based in Tokyo, I had been reporting on the events in Korea from Japan since May 18. The withdrawal of the military from Kwangju on May 21 provided a good opportunity for me to go there before the soldiers could return. My editors in Munich and I agreed that I should go to Korea on May 24. To get from Seoul to Kwangju, I had to make a detour by bus and stay overnight at an inn in the village of Hwasun, 12 km southeast of Kwangju.

Monday, May 25, morning: With my borrowed bicycle I join the flow of people walking or biking on county road No. 15 toward Kwangju. At the entrance to a tunnel, the road is blocked by a burned-out truck. On the other side of the tunnel, an overturned jeep lies in a ditch. After a while, the people ahead of me suddenly get off the road and continue through the fields. At one point a group of armed soldiers are checking everybody’s identity. I show my passport, which does not indicate my profession, and say “Tokil saram im ni da (I am a German).” The soldier answers something like “Tokil? OK,” tips his cap as if in greeting and allows me to proceed.

We return to the road. There are no more soldiers to be seen. Later, two rows of demolished city buses obstruct both lanes of the road. “Tear Chun Doo Hwan to pieces!” is splashed in red paint on the bus wrecks. Whoever wrote that is holding Chun responsible for the bloodbath caused by the military among the people of Kwangju.

Passing an older man on a bicycle, I ask him, in Japanese, how far it is to the city center. And sure enough, he answers in Japanese – people of his generation all had to learn the language of their colonial masters after Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and held on to it until the end of World War II. When I ask him whether he would possibly be willing to help me as an interpreter, as I am trying to cover the situation in Kwangju as a reporter for a German newspaper, he – to my great relief – agrees.

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
After a while we see the first of several burned-out police stations, yet no police anywhere. But the situation seems to be quiet. There is no turmoil, no chaos, and hardly any traffic on the streets except for occasional bikers. On the sidewalks groups of people are talking to each other. Most shops are closed, but daily necessities, vegetables and fruit are sold at small open stands here and there. At the Chonnam Meil Shimmun, one of the two local newspapers, the front shutters are closed but several windows have been smashed. And the Kwangju studios of the two national broadcasting networks, public KBS and privately owned MBC, have been burned. “They didn’t report what actually happened here. That made people angry,” says my companion.

The white building of the Provincial Office of Jeollanam-do has not been damaged. On the large square in front of it young men are guarding captured military and police vehicles. At the next corner a black transport vehicle for prisoners is parked, its grated windows punctured by bullet holes. Nearby a crew of special guards, equipped with carbines and almost medieval-looking headgear and leather neck protectors taken from the riot police, is waiting in a jeep.

A long line of people is queuing up in front of the Provincial Office. They are looking for missing family members. In small groups they are being led to the backyard of the building where 13 wooden boxes are lined up in a passageway. They are half-open and contain the bodies of young men shot or beaten to death who cannot be identified. Crying and sobbing, the women and men move from coffin to coffin.

In a gymnasium across the street from the Provincial Office, relatives or friends of those victims of the bloody massacre in Kwangju that already have been identified, are paying their final respects to their loved ones. Exactly 60 coffins have been lined up, most of them wrapped in white cloth and many decorated with the flag of the Republic of Korea. On some of them, photos of the dead have been placed. A young man knocks desperately on one of the coffins and screams: “My younger brother is in here – how could Korean soldiers shoot at Koreans!” Nobody is visiting coffins number 56 to 58. A whole young family is here: A 7-year-old first-grader, his mother and his father. Somebody has placed a bouquet of white chrysanthemums on the boy’s coffin. In the next row, a group of girls from Shuntae Economic High School of Kwangju still find it incomprehensible that the body of one of their classmates is in the coffin before them. Sobbing uncontrollably, they try to sing a farewell song for her. Then one of the girls turns around and reads a dramatic appeal: “Seventeen-year-old Park Keun Hee shall not have died in vain .…” At the end, everybody joins in singing South Korea’s national anthem: “Long live the Republic of Korea. Long live democracy.”

RISING DEATH TOLL
In a flier issued by the “Committee for the Fight for Democracy” of Chosun University, the number of deaths during the five-day nightmare between May 17 and 21 is given as more than 200, while the number of wounded victims is listed as more than 1,000. About 300 of the wounded are being treated at the university’s hospital. It takes some convincing of the doctors and nurses of the hospital to show the foreign reporter around. “It is such a shame for Korea,” they insist. But then one doctor overcomes his hesitations and takes us from bed to bed including intensive-care cases: Shots through the brain or into the eyes, smashed skulls, shots into the chest or the stomach, destruction of the bladder. How many of these victims will survive?

Back in the Provincial Office, a spokesman for the citizens committee reports that the number of citizens killed and identified has risen to 161. Having suffered so many victims, he reasons, “We will continue until Chun Doo Hwan steps down.” They have enough food to survive for about a month, he figures, but then adds, “It would be good if we could talk to the American ambassador as soon as possible to explain our situation to him. There probably is no other way out for us.”

Monday, May 25, evening: The city is quiet. No international telephone calls are possible from Kwangju, so I’ll have to get to Seoul to transmit my report to Germany. Returning to Hwasun for the night on the same county road, after a few kilometers I run into soldiers again, but now they are much more conspicuous than in the morning, and all sorts of military vehicles fill the road. They were some of the 17,000 troops (including the dreaded paratroopers) that would, within a few hours, retake the city of Kwangju and commit another massacre.

Tuesday, May 26, morning, at my inn: Everybody in the breakfast room is crowding around a little radio. Someone translates for me what KBS is reporting: “Last night between 3 and 5 a.m., soldiers and police returned to Kwangju. More than 200 students have surrendered. Two were killed when they resisted.” Someone says: “That bit about the two deaths is surely a lie. There must have been many more.” By the end of May a military spokesman admitted that there had been 170 deaths and 380 wounded. Later on the government adjusted the death toll to 193. But in December 1987 when Roh Tae Woo was running for president to succeed his buddy Chun Doo Hwan, South Korean newspapers could quote Kim Dae Jung – one of the two major candidates from the opposition camp, the other being Kim Young Sam, the chairman of the New Democratic Party (NDP, Shinmin-Dang) – with the statement that there had been “more than 1,000 deaths in Kwangju.” ❶