In recognition of the 28th Anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising I have posted an article written by Georgy Katsiaficas that blames the Gwangju Uprising like just about everything else unpleasant in Korean history, on who else, but the big, bad Americans:
Contemporary South Korean anti-Americanism appeared after the Gwangju Uprising – and for good reason. The U.S. government aided and actively abetted Chun Doo-hwan in suppressing the uprising and helped stabilize his government afterwards. In 1980, popular intuition in South Korea knew well the role of the U.S. The rationales for U.S. encouragement of the suppression of the Gwangju Uprising are commonly understood in terms of national security – avoiding a “second Iran” (where American hostages and the U.S. Embassy were still held by radicals in May 1980), preventing the debacle of “another Vietnam” (which had “fallen” only five short years earlier), repelling a possible North Korean threat, responding to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 25, 1979, or stopping the threatened nationwide uprising against the military that loomed in 1980.
My reading of thousands of pages of official U.S. documents clarifies that the chief perceived threat articulated by the U.S. government in 1980 was of a capital flight by U.S. investors who worried that the R.O.K. government after Park Chung-hee’s assassination might prove unstable. These documents portray U.S. officials’ awareness of the need to demonstrate regime stability in South Korea in 1980, leaving little choice but to endorse Chun’s rule. The U.S. subordinated its own professed concerns for human rights to the economic interests of American corporations. [Gwangju News]
Make sure you read the rest of the article by clicking on the above link. Of course I highly disagree with much of the article, but it is still worth the read to see what many in the anti-US left think of America’s role in the Gwangju Uprising. I will probably post a more detailed response sometime next week, but in the mean time I highly recommend reading Richardson’s posting from last year and more importantly the comments that provides some great information and perspective about what really happened in regards to the Gwangju Uprising.
Likewise if you want to read more about the Gwangju Uprising I also highly recommend reading Linda Lewis’ book, Laying Claim to the Memory of May:
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10:41 am on May 18th, 2008 1
You need a link to Richardson’s page.
10:49 am on May 18th, 2008 2
Thanks I guess that would help.
4:23 pm on May 18th, 2008 3
And of course, a Japanese man enjoys the sight of Americans raping the scenery. He’s waiting for the Americans to finish the job so he can take over Dokdo. Then he’ll sell “Liancourt Rocks” to America on the cheap so Bush can build a Mcdonlads there.
Speaking of Park Chung Hee - am I the only one who sees a passing resemblance between him and Lee Myung Bak? All he needs is Park’s signature sharply cadenced speech to complete the mimicry.
7:28 pm on May 18th, 2008 4
GI, he’s giving a talk at the Gwangju International Center on May 31st on that topic, if anyone is interested.
I was down at some of the memorials today and yesterday, and as soon as I figure out how to get photos off of my damn phone and onto my computer I’m going to do a write-up about it. Wall-to-wall Mad Cow stuff. So much for solemnity. Also, on Chungjangno—the main drag in downtown Gwangju—they had a series of paintings, about a half-dozen of which were regarding the tank incident. The old standby “Fuck USA” was painted on one of them, and there was another mural of white soldiers aiming bayonets at helpless Korean children. Then, a few meters away there was tons of anti-FTA stuff . . . I don’t think “irony” is in the Korean dictionary because beside the posters lampooning Bush and Lee Myung-bak there were those featuring Kim Dae-jung shaking hands with Kim Jong-il. More anti-beef stuff at the cemetary, too. Oh, and there was a huge candlelight rally last night in front of the Old Provinicial Hall. Not to mourn the deaths of those murdered in Gwangju, hahahahaha, no, this was over Mad Cow Disease.
Like I said, I took a bunch of pictures but I’m having the damnest time trying to get them uploaded onto my computer. Hopefully tomorrow night I can put them on and do a little write-up.
Oh, and I’d also recommend people look through all of “Gusts of Popular Feeling”’s posts on the Gwangju Massacre for some really interesting reading: http://populargusts.blogspot.com/search/label/Kwangju%20Uprising
7:34 pm on May 18th, 2008 5
I just wrote a reply but it disappeared. Maybe because I had a link in it? Anyway, let me try again.
The guy who wrote that article has written it for other publications, too, and it was reprinted in the Gwangju News. He’ll be giving a talk at the Gwangju International Center on May 31st for anyone interested.
I was in Gwangju this weekend for some of the memorials, and it was pretty much wall-to-wall Mad Cow stuff. So much for solemnity. They had a candlelight rally, not for those murdered and scarred during those hellacious days, hahahahahaha, no, this was for Mad Cow Disease. They had a row of paintings devoted to the 2002 tank incident. “F* USA” made an appearance. (Maybe my other comment was blocked b/c I typed out the whole word). I was hoping for a little solemnity, but was surprised to see everything on the night of May 17th basically be a rally against American beef. Oh, and a few meters from those paintings was a huge set of banners and posters against American beef. Next to several lampooning Lee Myung-bak and Bush was one of Kim Dae-jung shaking hands with Kim Jong-il. Irony is not in the Korean dictionary.
A bunch of Mad Cow stuff going on at the National Cematery, too. I took a bunch of pictures with my phone, but I’m having such a hard time trying to upload them to my computer. I’ve visited five different LG stores, downloaded two different programs, and still can’t do it. I plan to do a write-up on all that stuff tomorrow night, but it will be less effective without pictures.
Oh, and the link I had was to Gusts of Popular Feeling and his “Kwangju Uprising” category. I encourage everyone to google it and read through all his posts for a very well-informed look at both the Massacre and how it’s been represented and imagined through the years.
7:46 pm on May 18th, 2008 6
Koreans like to tie their anti-Americanism to purely Korean problems like Gwangju.
Do you find it odd that more people were killed in the daegu subway fire or sampoon dept store, yet most korean could care less about the either. I mean Korean have heard of the Daegu fire and Sampoon, but it is Gwangju that korean yap about. I think its because Korans can wallow in pity about their “horrible” past regarding Gwangu and blame the USA with Gwangju.
I don’t think the Korean military did anything wrong in Gwangju. The idiots there deserved everything they got.
9:05 pm on May 18th, 2008 7
Brian, I rescued your comment. It got marked as spam because of the cuss word. I have a pretty stringent spam filter because I get hit with about 1,000 spam comments a day. It is pretty incredible.
The fact that the 5.18 remembrance was hijacked by the anti-US loons doesn’t surprise me in the least. I have seen so many disgusting things from these people I have no respect for them at all.
Shattered the Korean military did plenty wrong in Gwangju. Bayoneting people for protesting is usually not the best way to put down a protest. Plenty of thuggery by the ROK Army in Gwangju. I can’t blame the people in Gwangju for wanting to fight back against these thugs.
However, the anti-US left is just trying to blame the US for the thuggery instead of the name man who ordered it Chun.
9:43 pm on May 18th, 2008 8
GI Korea,
Now we look back, we can say things were done wrong. The Gwangju people had guns and were using them, Solders and police were killed too 25 or so. This wasn’t just a “protest” the loons of Gwangju declared independence to the UN. Everyone knew that they were stooges for the North Korean government and if the South Koreans didn’t take a harsh stance then the revolution would widen and possibly develop into a small civil war.
Koreans these days can only see things from the persepcive of what is happening now. That was a different time. The possibily of war was real and with an unstable government it was possible that the NKs were going to take advantage of the situation.
Shoot to kill was the right move. There was a few rapes but the special forces in Korea cut their teeth as mercenaries in vietham where they were well known as almost professional rapists bloody killers. But you are right they are thugs.
But they did the job. I consiter the 150 or so people killed justified, and I would reccomend doing it again under similar circumstances.
9:48 pm on May 18th, 2008 9
I think the filter ate my last reply to you GI Korea.
9:55 pm on May 18th, 2008 10
I always wanted to know who started all this? It has been 28 years since the anarchy but South Koreans are only focusing on how Chun reacted to the anarchy in Kwangju. Who started the anarchy? Who are the core leadership who organized and executed the plan of taking over police station, armory, military base and other supply depots where civilians got in their hands on all those military gears? It is hard enough for normal military unit to do the exact same thing that these “civilians” were able to do. I am guessing that there has to be some type of outside sources who helped organized and led the anarchy and once the ROK military forces showed these “leadership” just slipped away from the city through their own “underground” network. And they may been watching the whole things through TV news from safety of their outside location. Hummmm? I wonder who these leaderships were?
10:09 pm on May 18th, 2008 11
Funny you ask that Gim. No Korean leader really wants to look into quesions like that. Likewise, EXACTLY how many were killed. Come on folks, get a group of 20 grad students and one honest Korean professor, and a few real hisorians with some professional interviewers, and you can get a body count. The lefties say 20,000 people were killed for gods sake. Why not get to the bottom of all this.
Like everything about Korean history, their are more lies then truth.
I support Chun. He did the right thing by putting down all the lefties. Morally he is the greatest Korean leader (remember the competition).
12:16 am on May 19th, 2008 12
CPT Kim,
Check out the comments section of that DPRK/Richardson post.
And somewhere over at Marmot’s around the anniversary of the massacre, perhaps in 2006 or 2007, bulgasari and I got into an extended exchange about what was going on in Korea and what type of people were involved.
I can’t say I’ve read very extensively on the topic, but I feel I’ve read enough to form some conclusions.
The Special Forces units were definatly guilty of crimes against the civilians.
However, the protests were nowhere near as pure as Koreans today like to claim.
It will take another decade or two before Korea and outsiders will be able to more accurately record the history of the Kwangju Massacre.
It is way too hot a topic in Korean society - so much so it spills over into how non-Koreans describe it.
6:04 am on May 19th, 2008 13
Brian, thanks for the shout-out. I look forward to your post. I went down to Kwangju in 2005 but don’t remember any overtly anti-American displays.
The full text of Katsiaficas’s essay is here, by the way:
http://www.eroseffect.com/articles/neoliberalismgwangju.htm
I might not agree with his conclusions, but I it’s good he’s looked into the wheelings and dealings of 1980 - every bit of information brought to light helps. I tend to think that Chun did his best to make it look like the US was supporting him, and actually just found this essay: Donald Sohn’s “Chun Doo Hwan’s Manipulation of the Kwangju Popular Uprising”, which looks interesting.
I’ve heard of a meeting between US citizens in Korea and the embassy in 1980 where Horace G. Underwood warned that “Chun is wrapping himself in the American flag. If the United States doesn’t do something about it, it will have ‘hell to pay’ in the future.”
Thinking of this, when I saw a powerpoint presentation Katsiaficas did, which uses some quotes in very misleading ways but which has scans of some of the cables he used, I found one of them very interesting. 10 days after the end of the uprising, Ambassador Gleysteen says that US business interests aren’t concerned with democracy, but that missionaries are complaining about perceived US acquiescence to Chun’s takeover, and worried about arrested friends, and mention that anti-Americanism is rising. Gleysteen treats their complaints as a pain in the ass. Oops.
8:27 am on May 19th, 2008 14
OFF TOPIC: Psst, Jon, your friend Charles Hanley’s back with a story at Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/korea_mass_executions_covered_up
8:28 am on May 19th, 2008 15
Please check your spam trap for a message with an interesting link.
9:17 am on May 19th, 2008 16
Thanks Sonagi, Hanley is getting even more pathetic. Anyone that knows anything about Korean War history knows that the ROK Army executed suspected communists. Lots of holes as usual in his article. I will probably post something on this later this week.
12:06 pm on May 19th, 2008 17
As someone who was stationed in Korea as an American service member from 1979 to 1981, let me offer my first person perspective on how I remember things. Sometimes, it helps to understand the context of the times.
When the writer said, “The U.S. government aided
and actively abetted Chun Doo-hwan in
suppressing the uprising and helped stabilize his
government afterwards.” I don’t know who or what part of the U.S. government the writer was referring to, but I don’t believe there was any part played by the U.S. military and I’ll explain why shortly. But, as far a the U.S. government, you have to remember that our President at the time was Jimmy Carter, one of our most passivist presidents and whose tenure was most associated with human rights criticisms of other countries.
In fact, that was why I learned my first great lesson about the depth of nationalism in Korea. When Park Chung Hee was still president, a Korea friend asked me what I thought about Jimmy Carter. I asked him why? He said that while most Koreans agree they have serious human rights problems, they resent more that a foreign president would criticize their country. My point is that I don’t see President Carter directing any part of his administration to support or abet any violent repression.
Then when the writer says, “My reading of thousands of pages of official U.S. documents clarifies that the chief perceived threat articulated by the U.S. government in 1980 was of a capital flight by U.S. investors who worried that the R.O.K. government after Park Chung-hee?s assassination might prove unstable.” Well, from what I remember, it didn’t appear that the economic fallout was our chief concern at the time.
Right after President Park’s assassination the U.S. military went to DefCon 3, carriers were repositioned and we had AWACS parked on Osan. That was the first time they were ever deployed overseas. The public messages from the military, the State Department and explicitly from Pres. Carter himself were directed at North Korea. ‘Don’t even think about attempting to do anything stupid during the period of uncertainty in South Korea because we are on a hair trigger.’ So, I don’t think our economic interests were our main concern at the time.
Now, a little context on the South Korean side. You have to remember that we were under martial law. Of course, before President Park’s assassination, martial law was just curfews and restricted area inconveniences Koreans had to put up with. Sounds familiar? After the assassination, the man in line to be president apparently was seen as too weak and ineffective during those unstable times so Chun Doo Won took over. He ratcheted up to some of the more severe aspects of martial law that are considered during time of national emergency and crisis, such as when the use of deadly force is authorized. Regrettable, but to some extent understandable. Some might says that the war phase of our operation in Iraq was complete with Mission Accomplished and we are is some kind of quasi martial law, military policing operation now.
If South Koreans could not understand that before, perhaps they will be able to put 5.18 in better context (that word again) when they start to learn of the horrific things the South Korean military and police did to their citizens during the early months of the Korea war. Here is a link to another article on the mass executions mentioned above.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080518/ap_on_re_as/korea_mass_executions
Maybe after South Koreans come to accept that, there will be less blaming Americans for “just about everything else unpleasant in Korean history.”
2:09 pm on May 19th, 2008 18
P.S. I know the reference 5.18 is for one of the dates of the incidents, but it could also have caught on as a double entendre.
I think most people get that 9/11 is not just a infamous date in history, but is also the code for a police emergency. If you read out the Korean words for 5.18, one way of saying it sounds like “Oh, shi p’al!”
3:39 pm on May 19th, 2008 19
4:01 pm on May 19th, 2008 20
What the special forces did can’t be justified and are connected to Chun. Everyone on the scene, from what I’ve read, say the special forces set things off to making Kwangju so different from the other violent clashes that had been taking place. The question is whether Chun told them to make an example out of Kwangju by going over the top or not.
The actions of the military after the main couple of days of bloodshed are much easier to defend - and it becomes much more clear that the younger and more pro-North elements of the protest leadership took over that leadership and wanted further bloodshed/deaths to take place.
Chun is not close to being a positive or even neutral character in my book. He led a military coup to continue the strong-armed, authoritarian rule that finally came into question with Park’s assassination. He short circuited the democratic process before that process had a chance to get going. Ultimately, he was a traitor to his government and people. The fact he stashed away massive amounts of money for his own personal use just adds a cherry on top.
11:29 pm on May 19th, 2008 21
It gets interesting when you look at the forces (in the beginning, paratroopers) being sent into Kwangju. 2 battalions of the 7th brigade were sent to university campuses by 1am on the 18th, and there attacked students approaching the campuses in the morning. When the (small) protest began in front of Chonnam university and moved downtown and the police had difficulty putting down the protest, the 7th brigade was ordered in. Before they went downtown, however, 3 battalions of the 11th brigade were ordered to move from Seoul to Kwangju, and before they arrived the next day, 4 battalions of the 3rd brigade were ordered from Seoul to Kwangju. Put simply, it was the only place in the country where any kind of demonstration was taking place, and it seems pretty clear that Chun wanted to crush the demonstrations there.
Also interesting is the fact that the normal chain of command was ignored. When the commander of the 31st division was ordered to send the 7th brigade downtown, he replied that it wasn’t necessary, that the police could handle it. Told to pass on the order, he found that the troops were already marching. The orders were coming straight from the top, and the commander was actually lied to and told, at the end of the day, that the protests had been put down. When friends from Kwangju called him and told him what had happened, he gave orders to the 7th brigade to stop being so excessive, but these orders were not followed. When you consider 12 out of 22 of the soldiers killed in the uprising died from battles with other units, it makes sense when you realize the chain of command wasn’t being followed, and officers on the ground had no idea where the other troops (and their were many more than the paratroopers after the 21st and 22nd) were.
This information comes from “Memories of May 1980: A Documentary History of the Kwangju Uprising in Korea”, by the way.
4:05 am on May 20th, 2008 22
This will retred over field the two of us have plowed before, and you most likely have read more than I have on this period, but I have doubts about the idea that nothing was going on at this time.
I would guess on what the parameters you place on “this time” - because there was a lot going on in different places in Korea before Kwangju. I don’t have the books handy, nor the time to find them, and I don’t have the timeline well in memory, but Masan, Wonju, Pusan, Teajon and Seoul come to mind. I also remember in the US Amb’s book, he noted the violent protests that had been going on as far back as the lead up to Park’s assassination - which did produce an immediate lull in activity. The Amb. says that one reason why the US in Korea was slow to appreciate the events in Kwangju is that violent protests had become common but nobody expected the scope of the Kwangju violence.
I also vaguely remember, and could be wrong, that the special forces were in Seoul in part due to protests that had been going on there. Or was it fear of protests at the universities???…
Whatever the case, from what I’ve read, I don’t think you can say that things were quiet before Kwangju.
4:18 am on May 20th, 2008 23
Just as I finished the above message, I remembered the full text of the USFK commander’s book on this time period is available via Google Books.
Korea on the Brink is the title.
On page 126 of the google version (127 on the printed text), it mentions May, leading up the Kwangju Massacre, as witnessing student riots along with “massive labor unrest in urban areas such as Masan, Pusan, Inchon, and Seoul.”
I can vaguely remember specific references to violent protests involving miners in the Wonju area - but can’t remember the specific time.
The page goes on to mention demonstrations in Seoul on May 17th.
Wickham specifically claims that the Seoul protests sent Chun into a panic.
I read a little further then came here to comment.
None of this is offered as an excuse for the actions of the special forces unit and certainly not Chun. I thought commuting his death sentence was the right thing to do — solely because I think South Korea has advanced too far as a nation to execute a former president - even if he deserved it.
6:50 am on May 20th, 2008 24
[...] that everyone head over and check out Brian’s posting on the events this past weekend for the 5.18 anniversary in Gwangju. It doesn’t surprise me that the events had little to do with remembering the [...]
6:58 pm on May 20th, 2008 25
6:06 am on May 21st, 2008 26
[...] goes on to blame US business interests (where have I heard this before?) for America’s involvement in the [...]
12:27 pm on May 21st, 2008 27
4:04 pm on May 27th, 2008 28