[KS] U.S. involvement in the Gwangju Uprising

[Matt VanVolkenburg]

It was actually me Scott quoted about the Pusan Masan uprising regarding there being no deaths. At the time (4 years ago) I had read James Fowler's essay The United States and South Korean Democratization [from The New American Interventionism: Essays from Political Science Quarterly, Demetrios James Caraley, editor (Columbia University Press), 1999.] which was based a great deal on declassified cables between the embassy and state department. Here's the relevant part:


"On 4 October, Kim Young Sam was expelled from the National
Assembly. Radicals responded in kind on 17 October, when 12,000 students took a
demonstration to downtown Pusan
where as many as five students were killed and 500 arrested.6  
Though the Park government was very used to dealing with student protests,
these demonstrations were much larger in scope and received widespread support
from citizens other than students.7  
In response to continuing demonstrations in Pusan
and Masan, the
Park government declared martial law for the region including and immediately
surrounding the two cities."

Note 6:Telegram from Gleysteen to Vance, “Situation in Pusan Following Declaration of Martial Law,”
18 October 1979.  Note 7:Telegram from Gleysteen to Vance, “More on Pusan
Demonstration; Demonstration at EWHA University in Seoul,”
17 October 1979.

An (admittedly cursory) bit of research into those protests did not turn up any confirmation of deaths, which I would have assumed would be widespread knowledge after 30 years. However, after reading your posting, I found an Ohmynews article from a month ago about the 'first confirmed death' from that time:


32년만에 드러난 진실... 부마항쟁 사망자 첫 확인 

http://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/view/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0001620595

As for other sources on the Kwangju uprising, one story that has never really been focused on is that of the Peace Corps volunteers in the city. Two have since spoken out, with Tim Warnberg writing one of the first English language essays on the uprising ("The Kwangju Uprising: An Inside View", Korean Studies, v.11, 1987). It still stands out due to the fact he was there, and could report things like this:

"[On May 26] I walked to the hospital where I worked and talked to one of
 the doctors from the Dermatology Department.  He had been on assignment
 at the military hospital on the edge of town, and reported seeing fifty
 bodies airlifted from the military hospital morgue in a one hour 
period."

One wonders if these bodies were ever accounted for.

The other PCV who has spoken out is David Dollinger, whose accounts of the uprising can be read here:
http://518folkschool.blogspot.com/2005/11/eyewitness-testimony-of-david-dolinger.html
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2006/05/18/ghosts-of-gwangju/#comment-36329

As well, his account of his dealings with USIS, the peace corps office, and the embassy during and after the uprising is interesting:
http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2010/06/park-chung-hees-act-of-terrorism.html?showComment=1276519957503#c7651287543758252542

I've been told his presence in the Provincial Hall during the uprising led Chun to want to boot the Peace Corps out of Korea as quickly as possible.

-Matt




________________________________
 From: Don Baker <ubcdbaker at hotmail.com>
To: Bulletin Board Electronic <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws> 
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 12:39:39
Subject: Re: [KS] U.S. involvement in the Gwangju Uprising
 
As someone who has been studying what happened in Kwangju in May, 1980, for over three decades, I would like to add my two bits.   Scott Burgeson makes some factual errors. There were a few people killed in Pusan and Masan in early fall, 1979. Posters stating that fact were plastered to the walls of the pedestrian underpass at Kwanghwamun shortly afterwards. (The rumor at the time was that those posters had been placed there by the KCIA, on the direct orders of Kim Chaegyu.)  And the soldiers who were first sent to Kwangju were not sent there to arrest protestors. They were sent there to be so brutal that the whole city, and probably the whole country as well,  would be too intimidated to protest any more. They were paratroopers, not the usual riot police, and they had been told that North Korean had infiltrated Kwangju. How else can we explain the attack on peaceful demonstrators at Chunnam University's front gates at 10 am on the morning of Sunday,
 May 18?    The clubs they wielded were intended to maim, not arrest. And the bayonets they used later on Keumnanno were not intended to arrest people. They were intended to kill. 
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