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

don kirk kirkdon at yahoo.com
Mon Dec 12 18:50:11 EST 2011


Very interesting -- and never "late" -- it's all part of the history, before we forget.
Don Kirk

--- On Mon, 12/12/11, Edward J. Baker <ejbaker at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

From: Edward J. Baker <ejbaker at fas.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: [KS] U.S. involvement in the Gwangju Uprising
To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Date: Monday, December 12, 2011, 3:48 PM

Dear Friends,

This is kind of late, but Norm's revival of the topic prompts me to describe a Kwangju experience. 

While listening to the radio in Brookline, Massachusetts, a few days after May 18, I heard that the citizens of Kwangju had taken control of the broadcasting station and broadcast a request for the U.S. government to mediate between them and the Korean government. Especially since the request had come from the citizens, I thought it offered an excellent chance for the U.S. to bolster its standing with the people of Korea in a situation where it seemed that its reputation was likely to suffer. Aroused I called the Korea desk at the DOS to urge that the the request be honored. Doug McNeil answered. Expecting a sympathetic ear, I enthusiastically urged that the U.S. move immediately to offer to mediate. Doug replied that the Embassy had not received a formal request. Stunned I replied, "But Doug the city of Kwangju is surrounded by troops! Normal means of communication are cut off! How can the people of Kwangju make a formal request?" Doug paused and then
 said, "But Ed, the U.S. has no interests in Kwangju."

Ed Baker



On Dec 12, 2011, at 1:32 AM, Norman Thorpe wrote:

> In response to Don Kirk’s urging, I will add a couple late comments related to the events of 1979 and 1980.  I didn't post earlier because I was traveling and didn't have access to my notes and writing from the period.
>   
> 1.   Very briefly, yes there is great sensitivity to the terms used to describe the participants and events in Kwangju. A few years ago, a fellow who had had a few drinks took great offense at my use of the term “rebels” to describe the participants in the Kwangju uprising. It was only with great effort that my drinking companions got him calmed down.
>   
> 2.  Questions about the U.S. role in Korea persist not only in relation to the events of Kwangju, but also about the response of U.S. officials during the period following President Park Chung Hee’s assassination in the fall of 1979 – several months before Kwangju. I learned about this from research done by Tim Shorrock and from formerly classified U.S. documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. He kindly shared the documents with me in 1996 for an op-ed article I was writing for the Asian Wall Street Journal.
>   
> Among the documents were cables between U.S. Ambassador William Gleysteen in Seoul and the Carter Administration’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke.  I want to share some of that information here because I think it tells a lot about the mindset U.S. officials had about Korea during the months leading up to Kwangju, and probably carrying over into the Kwangju period, and also their naiveté.
>   
> After Park’s assassination, which ended his 18 years of strongman rule, there was a groundswell of hope among many Koreans that the country would finally be able to return to democracy. Amazingly, though, the cables show that Holbrooke in Washington wanted the pro-democracy dissidents in Seoul to back off from their campaign for political change, and when they were arrested by the military, he saw that as their own fault for pressing too hard.
>   
> One of the most stunning documents was a secret cable that Holbrooke had sent to Gleysteen on Dec. 6, 1979.  Holbrooke said that top U.S. officials were preoccupied with the hostage crisis at the United States embassy in Iran. They didn’t want the U.S. to do anything that could cause instability in Korea, or “lead to chaos or instability in a key American ally.”
>   
> Holbrook expressed concern about how “a relative handful of Christian extremist dissidents” had been bothering the Seoul government with their pro-democracy activities. Although President Carter had met with some dissidents during his visit to Seoul some months earlier, this wasn’t the time for their pro-democratic struggle, Holbrooke said.
>   
> Holbrooke told Gleysteen that the dissidents should receive a “blunt message,” that, “We favor the lifting of martial law, and the lifting of Emergency Measure 9, but we do not favor challenges to martial law at this delicate time.” Holbrooke noted that the military recently had jailed nearly 200 dissidents, but he said the dissidents “had provoked the military into the unfortunate reaction.”
>   
> Holbrooke proposed that Gleysteen launch a “delicate operation” to make the pro-democracy groups stop causing trouble. “What we have in mind is your sending a clear message to Christian dissidents who are now stirring up street demonstrations. . .” Holbrooke said.
>   
> The message, he said, “would be that, in this delicate time in Korean internal politics, the United States believes that demonstrations in the street are a throwback to an earlier era and threaten to provoke retrogressive actions on the part of the Korean government.”
>   
> The embassy should further tell them that, “Even when these are in fact not demonstrations, but rather just meetings in defiance of martial law, the U.S. government views them as unhelpful while martial law is still in effect.”
>   
> “Alert them (the dissidents) to the fact that they should not automatically count on the same degree of American support now that they might have had a few months ago. Our priority is on the development of the political process,” Holbrooke said.
>   
> Then Holbrooke made another surprising proposal. He suggested that the American ambassador tell the military that he was telling the pro-democracy forces to back off. 
>   
> “We would propose that you discuss the message you are going to send to the Christian dissidents with the key military and civilian leadership of the government,” Holbrooke said. He added that that would show the interim Korean leaders that the U.S. was trying to help them as long as they committed to adopt more liberal policies in the future.
>   
> Could that message be misinterpreted by the military leaders as meaning they could suppress dissidents however they wished?  I asked Holbrooke that question in a telephone interview while I was writing my article.  He said of course that was a concern – that was why Gleysteen should get assurances there would be liberalization later on.
>   
> But the U.S. had dual objectives, he said:  stability and democracy. Stability was essential to keep North Korea from trying to take advantage of any chaos that occurred.
>   
> I have seen no evidence that Gleysteen acted on Holbrooke’s two proposals. If he didn’t, that probably was fortunate. Only six days after Holbrooke sent his cable, on December 12, 1979, Gen. Chun Doo Hwan grabbed power in a military takeover that Gleysteen characterized as “a coup in all but name.”
>   
> According to the declassified cables, the U.S. officials decided to try to portray the coup as just a military restructuring, and to press the generals to set a tentative schedule for political change in order to prevent protests from erupting.  
>   
>   
> Norm Thorpe
> 
> 
> 
> --- On Tue, 12/6/11, Matt VanVolkenburg <mattvanv at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Matt VanVolkenburg <mattvanv at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [KS] U.S. involvement in the Gwangju Uprising
> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Tuesday, December 6, 2011, 7:38 AM
> 
> 
> 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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