Gwangju Uprising

Gwangju Uprising, mass protest against the South Korean military government that took place in the southern city of Gwangju between May 18 and 27, 1980. Nearly a quarter of a million people participated in the rebellion. Although it was brutally repressed and initially unsuccessful in bringing about democratic reform in South Korea, it is considered to have been a pivotal moment in the South Korean struggle for democracy.

The roots of the Gwangju Uprising may be traced to the authoritarianism of the Republic of Korea’s first president, the anticommunist Syngman Rhee. During his almost 18 years in office, Rhee grew continuously more repressive toward his political opposition in particular and the country’s citizens in general. Those conditions precipitated massive student-led demonstrations in early 1960 and Rhee’s ouster in April of that year. After the country was governed for a brief period by a parliamentary system, a military coup led by Gen. Park Chung-Hee displaced the government in May 1961. Park became president the following year and remained in office for the next 18 years.

As president, Park repressed the political opposition and the personal freedom of South Korea’s citizens and controlled the press and the universities. In December 1972 he introduced the Yushin Constitution, which dramatically increased presidential powers and created a virtual dictatorship. When Park was assassinated on October 26, 1979, a power void resulted that was filled by Chun Doo-Hwan, a brigadier general who had taken control of the South Korean military through an internal coup. Once in power, Chun persuaded the new president, Choi Kyu-Hah, to name him chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in April 1980. The military, under Chun’s leadership, declared martial law the following month.

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The situation soon escalated with a series of nationwide protests against military rule that were led by labor activists, students, and opposition leaders, who began calling for democratic elections. Gwangju—the provincial capital of South Jeolla, in southwestern South Korea—which had a long history of political opposition and a simmering grievance toward the Park regime, was a center of the pro-democracy movement. On May 18 some 600 students gathered at Chonnam National University to protest against the suppression of academic freedom and were beaten by government forces. Civilian demonstrators joined the students.

With the approval of the United States, which had maintained operational control over combined U.S. and Korean forces since the end of the Korean War, Chun’s government sent elite paratroopers from the Special Forces to Gwangju to contain the unrest. When the soldiers arrived, they began beating the demonstrators. Rather than squelch the protest, the brutal tactics had the opposite effect, inciting more citizens to join in.

As the uprising continued, protesters broke into police stations and armories to seize weapons. They armed themselves with bats, knives, pipes, hammers, Molotov cocktails, and whatever else they could find. They faced 18,000 riot police and 3,000 paratroopers. On May 20 a newspaper called the Militants’ Bulletin was published to counter the “official” news being published by government-run or highly partisan media outlets such as the newspaper Chosun Ilbo, which had characterized the protesters as hoodlums with guns. By the early evening of May 21, the government had retreated, and the citizens of Gwangju declared the city liberated from military rule.

The relative quiet lasted only six days. In the predawn hours of May 27, Chun’s military forces unleashed tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters that began indiscriminately attacking the city. It took the military only two hours to completely crush the uprising. According to official government figures, nearly 200 people—the great majority of them civilians—were killed in the rebellion, but Gwangju citizens and students insisted that the number was closer to 2,000.

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Despite the uprising’s failure to bring about democracy in the Korean peninsula, the sentiments surrounding the episode continued to simmer afterward. By the late 1980s public demand and scrutiny had led to the reinstitution of direct presidential elections under Chun’s chosen successor, Roh Tae-Woo, and in 1993 Kim Young-Sam became the first president democratically elected by the Korean people. In 1998 Kim Dae-Jung, who had once been arrested and sentenced to death for his role during the Gwangju Uprising, became the second democratically elected president; Roh Moo-Hyun, who became president in 2003, also had a connection to the uprising. In 1996 Chun and Roh Tae-Woo had been convicted of mutiny, treason, and corruption in connection with the 1979 coup and the Gwangju massacre, but Kim Dae-Jung upon taking office as president in 1997 pardoned both men.

The events of 1980 in Gwangju continued to have a significant impact on the Korean people and the politics on the peninsula. The role played by the U.S. military during the uprising led to an increase in anti-American sentiment among South Korean students and activists. A national cemetery in Gwangju is dedicated to the victims killed during the struggle for democracy. A Gwangju museum devoted to the uprising and the designation of May 18 as a national day of commemoration likewise mark the significance of the Gwangju Uprising in the development of democracy in South Korea.