Photos from Kwangju

[chimx]

Pictoral history of the Kwangju uprising:

Government attacks demonstrators and citizens

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[chimx]

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citizens drive army out of the city after days of fighting.

[chimx]

The period of liberation

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public discussions

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members of the citizens army

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numerous government buildings and press buildings were burnt.

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gov't dropping leaflets

[chimx]

government retakes city

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[BreadBros]

Very powerful. Thanks for sharing. This has inspired me to read more into this. Do you know any good sources on Asian workers struggles? Unfortunately most of the info sources I know of tend to be somewhat Eurocentric.

[chimx]

There is a fairly new book out called Contentious Kwangju. I think it was published in 2003. It has one or two essays in it deal with the class make up of Kwangju's Citizens Army, and how they generally came from a labor background.

If you want the best book for an introduction to the kwangju uprising, you need to get Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age. Lots of hyperbole and an emotional narrative, but still one of the better first-hand accounts. It was originally banned in Korea.

There is an essay online which deals with the historical marginalization of the Cholla region (kwangju was the capital of the south cholla province). The tonghak rebellion of the 1893s was a peasant uprising attacking the korea states export of rice. the park regime of the 70s often ignored industrialization in the cholla region.* some may argue that the explosion of insurrection in kwangju was a result of this historical marginalization. you can scope it out here:
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/asianstudies/publicat...rking/maps.html (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/asianstudies/publications/working/maps.html)

George Katsiaficas has an essay written comparing kwangju with the paris commune, but don't read too much into it. i think he takes a few ideological liberties at the expense of real korean history:
http://chimx.yardapes.net/countrystudies/s...arisKwangju.pdf (http://chimx.yardapes.net/countrystudies/southkorea/ParisKwangju.pdf)



*edit add: here is an excerpt from The Economist on this:


Lee Kwan Young, a young Buddhist who was helping move the stricken to hospital when a sniper paralysed him with a shot through the backbone, believes the troops behaved with such viciousness out of hatred for the people of Cholla.

He could be right. Other Koreans have long been hostile towards Cholla. Cholla people are stereotyped as clever and untrustworthy, adjectives which to this day are often applied to Kim Dae Jung.

The generals who dominated Korea from 1961 to 1993, Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, were all from Kyongsang in the south-east. With their stranglehold on the economy through state ownership of banks and other controls, they made sure that Kyongsang companies had easy access to capital, while Cholla firms had virtually none. The giant industrial conglomerates that prospered under military rule were mostly based in Kyongsang. Their managers have been reluctant to hire graduates from Cholla's universities. Until recently, the Samsung group had an explicit policy to exclude them.

[chimx]

from your paper:


Ms. Jeong said that there has been much disinformation both in south Korea and the U.S. about the extent of U.S. involvement in Gwangju during that time. Participants in the meetings were eager to learn the facts and truth about Gwangju from the two speakers, Mr. Kim Hyo-Seok and Mr. Lee Shin, who were actively involved in the uprising.

American participation in Kwangju has obtained a near mythical status for a lot of Koreans. This is specifically because following the uprising, the military dictatorship made comments on the censored korean press that said America approved the move.

The actual massacre which left hundreds (some say thousands) dead was on may 18th and was done NOT by members of the Combined Forces Command. The CFC was led by American general John Wickham, and he knew nothing of the deployment of special forces troops to Kwangju.

However, to suppress the uprising 10 days later, regiments from the CFC were sent to Kwangju. Wickham, ambassador gleeysteen and other american politicos argue that legally speaking, there was nothing they could do to stop this movement of troops. under CFC rules, the korean army maintains its rights to move around troops to deal with internal matters. America only had the right to move troops when dealing with external security matters.

however, military attache young (i forget his first name) has published in h is memoirs that americans were very active in the process to send in troops from the CFC. This was because CFC troops had crowd control training and were thought to act far more civily than the special forces troops.

Tim Shorrock on the other hand has published articles in The Nation and Journal of Commerce saying that documents he uncovered through the FOIA show that Gleeysteen had talked with Chun and acknowledge the necessity of using forces to quell demonstrators in the event of martial law being declared. while this was never specificially meant to be directed at kwangju, shorrock feels this is enough to damn the US.

personally i think america's direct roll in kwangju over shadows the indirect roll we have had in shaping the direction of the country, in which democracy always came second to cold war security interests.

[Cryotank Screams]

Truly stunning, and truly sad; I am definately going to some research on this, thank you.

[chimx]

Sorry to revive a dead thread. I ordered a video from the Vanderbilt News Archive with all the American television footage of the Kwangju Uprising. There is a lot of video showing Kwangju during its period of liberation. Some of you seemed interested in this earlier, so I thought I would post the video i uploaded to youtube here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aTcXBGibhhM

Also, here is another video on youtube of the Kwangju Uprising. It is interesting how the Kwangju Uprising is used as a symbol of patriotism today, legitimizing the rule of liberal capitalist democracy in Korea, when in reality, the significance of the event is far deeper:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qECcHt48tEM