The Kwangju Uprising and American Media

[chimx]

Over the next 6 months I will be substantially expanding on a short paper I wrote for a history conference. i was hoping history buffs here would be willing to offer their opinion on what they feel would be the best possible direction to take the paper. as it stands, it is currently evaluating the underlining narrative to american media's portrayal of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising in south korea. at least that is where the bulk of the primary research lays.

As I see it I have 3 possible directions I could take for an expansion of the paper.

1) I could focus in on the anti-americanism created by kwangju by tracing the history of korean-american relationships back to the Korean war. I would then continue to look at relationships through the Chun regime with the obvious conclusion that Kwangju truly did act as the catalyst. This wider historical range would help to emphasize the shift towards politica polarization with the two countries relationship

2) continue with raw media analysis, but take it back through the assassination of park up to the fall of chun doo hwan. presumably, the media reporting would following a similar pattern that is emphasized in the current paper.

3) divide a new paper into 3 chapters: first: American media's response. second: American government's response. third: Korea's response. Like the first option, this too would assist with the argument that kwangju spawned polarization.

of course, i hybrid of some kind will no doubt occur, but I would be interested to hear where y'all think the emphasis should lay. i would add that i also plan on diving deeper into the nature of Kwangju, especially during its period of liberation. I also plan on using interviews with journalists in Kwangju that I took last year.

anyway, keep that in mind when reading. here's the paper:

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From the artificial division of the Korean peninsula in 1945 until the late 1980s, South Korean democracy was a precarious experiment at best, often subjugated by the whims of political and military opportunists. Democracy within South Korea has been typified by a cyclic political culture, often fluctuating between political liberalization and democratic recantation. The adoption of the yushin constitution under President Park Chung Hee and the military coup under Major General Chun Doo Hwan exemplify this regressive tendency, as does the 1954 constitutional amendment to allow President Syngman Rhee to bypass the country’s two-term limit.1

The 1980 Kwangju uprising, as well as the resulting massacre, took place within this political context. Although the uprising was partly in response to combative excesses by the military in repressing demonstrations within the city, it was also a manifestation of Korea's democratic political aspirations and is thus significant not only as a casualty of the Chun Doo Hwan military coup, but also as being intrinsic to Korean democracy generally. From an international perspective, the Kwangju uprising also assumed another role, acting as a significant catalyst for Korea and America’s diverging perspectives on the direction Korean political development should take.

On the surface, this brewing hostility between South Korea and the United States seems irrational due not only to the American military support provided to South Korea, but also for economic reasons. Between 1962 and 1986, American investment in South Korea exceeded US$1 billion.2 However, further analysis of Korean student rhetoric, as well as American news reports and government documents regarding the uprising, reveals a potentially irreconcilable distinction between how the two countries define Korea’s role within international affairs. Following Chun Doo Hwan’s power seizure and his suppression of the Kwangju uprising, some Koreans underwent a necessary reassessment of the nature of its ally across the Pacific. During the ten days of the Kwangju uprising, a distinct American perspective of the peninsula was most publicly noticeable through the United States’ media coverage of Korea. By examining the underlying narrative of this journalism, a clearer understanding of America’s attitude towards Korea becomes possible.

Chun Doo Hwan’s seizure of power in 1980 not withstanding, President Park Chung Hee initiated the regression of democratic ideals within Korean politics in 1972. Although Park successfully won the presidency through legitimate popular elections in 1963, 1967, and 1971, it was 1972 that saw the declaration of martial law, the dissolution of the National Assembly, and the creation of Park’s yushin constitution.3 This reactionary document removed presidential term limits for Park and gave him the authority to handpick one-third of the National Assembly’s members, as well as the right to make emergency decrees.4

Ultimately, Park’s authoritarian praxis was incapable of appeasing the increasing labor discontent. On October 26, 1979, Kim Chae-gyu, director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), met with Park to discuss the potential power deprecation of the yushin government in response to union unrest. The meeting concluded with the assassination of Park Chung Hee at the hands of Kim.5 Choi Kyu-ha as prime minister under Park’s government assumed the role of presidency while Major General Chun Doo Hwan, as chief of the Defense Security Command, launched an investigation into the assassination. By April of the following year, Chun slowly emerged as a key figure with his ascension to the head of the KCIA. During this time, dialogue had already begun in Korea with Choi’s interim government on how to transition to a fully working democracy. Korean citizens remained persistent all through the spring months of 1980 and articulated their desire for political reform. Throughout Korean cities, thousands of students held peaceful democracy demonstrations.6 In Kwangju, students held democracy rallies daily during the month of May.7 By May 15, upwards of 16,000 students and professors demonstrated at Province Hall Square, calling on the government to “step up political reforms.”8 This demand for democratic reform in Korea left Chun and his military junta increasingly disturbed. As an avid devotee of Park-esque authoritarianism, Chun appeared to be a political anachronism in the eyes of Korea’s ever-increasing progressive student population. This came to a head on May 17, 1980, with Chun’s extension of martial law and the subsequent ban on political activity, as well as the arrest of thousands of political dissidents—including previous presidential candidate Kim Dae Jung who had come from South Chŏlla province, of which Kwangju was the capital.9

Kwangju responded in defiance to these events with a series of sit-ins and demonstrations on May 18. The government responded to Kwangju’s disregard of Chun’s decree and sent Special Forces Troops to silence demonstrators. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., Korean soldiers made their first attempt to disperse student demonstrators at Chŏnnam University with the use of force. Students quickly retreated, chanting: “Chun Doo Hwan subverted democracy” and “Kim Dae Jung has been arrested.”10 From this point forward, confrontation between Kwangju citizens and Special Forces Troops intensified, leading to numerous human rights atrocities. According to the World Council of Churches, “at least 40 people were killed the first day by the bayonets of paratroopers and girl students were raped and tortured.”11

By May 21, the violence had not subsided, despite the efforts of the government forces. Two hundred thousand demonstrators had filled Kwangju’s streets and began to seize administrative buildings, weapons, and vehicles, resulting in the soldiers retreating to the edge of the city.12 The following day, while demonstrations continued within the city, Kwangju began to exercise its newly obtained autonomy with the creation of the Citizen Settlement Committee to handle negotiations between the demonstrators and the martial law command, as well as the collection of firearms from citizens. Students from Chŏnnam University, partially in disagreement with the rounding up of firearms, in turn formed the Student Settlement Committee to recollect weapons from the Citizen Settlement Committee, assist with medical care, distribute vehicles, and ensure public order.13

From May 22 until May 26, Kwangju continued its experiment in self-government, as citizens cared for the injured, cleaned the streets, and continued discussions with the military for a peaceful resolution. The hope of the latter was trampled upon during the morning of May 27 as new government troops reentered Kwangju by force and seized key government buildings that had been held by demonstrators, thus putting an end to the ten-day Kwangju incident.14

America’s role in the suppression of the Kwangju uprising remains a controversy. Much of Korea’s outrage stems from the fact that the 20th Division of the American-controlled Combined Forces Command (CFC) had been released from the American CFC, under the command of General John Wickham, without protest. These Korean troops then entered Kwangju on May 21.15 As a result, when negotiations between demonstrators and the government broke down, four regiments from the 20th Division were involved in the retaking of Kwangju on the morning of May 27.16

The involvement of the 20th Division in Kwangju primarily serves as a misconstruction of America’s passivity toward Kwangju, leading some to assert that the action implied American consent. Ultimately, the emphasis on the involvement of the 20th Division, together with being inconsequential in revealing American desires for Korea, serves to overshadow the dual perspectives that emerged between the American government and the new generation of Korean democracy advocates. In the weeks following the suppression of the Kwangju uprising, Michael Armacost of the American State Department stated that “our judgments about what would contribute best to political stability reflected a belief that, in the aftermath of President Park’s death, it was inevitable that a new balance would be struck between the requirements of order and the desires for freedom. . . . We recognized that along with that process there were risks. I said I thought the twin dangers we recognized at the outset were that if elements of the opposition behaved with a lack of restraint, they could produce reactions, fears of disintegration which would produce the kind of events which we have seen in the past 6 or 8 weeks.”17 It is clear that the State Department supported the idea of political liberalization on the Korean peninsula, provided that democracy remained subjugated to stability. Democracy, though preferential to the existence of stability, remained a secondary concern.

This opinion was not limited to the State Department, but was reflective of a broadly held American concern as evidenced by the media coverage surrounding the Kwangju incident. On May 20, prior to the presence of reports from Kwangju, James Sterba of the New York Times reported on Chun Doo Hwan’s martial law decree, saying that “Korean students whose cherished if untested ideals of democracy” had been attacked by a “police state” created by the Korean government and that “promises of a steady transition toward democratic rule will remain unfulfilled.”18 The previous day, the New York Times had also emphasized the democratic nature of Korean demonstrations. “Students, fearful that the Choi Government and the military were moving to perpetuate the Park regime’s authoritarian rule, began nationwide street demonstrations last week to demand constitutional revisions, free elections, and a quick end to martial law.”19 The Washington Post acknowledged that political liberalization in Korea had been “snuffed out” due to the military’s power expansion.20 On May 18, the Los Angeles Times reported that demonstrators had clashed with police while “demanding democratic reform, early elections and an end to martial law.”21

In the days that followed, the severity of the Kwangju incident began to be noticed by the American press. Kwangju began to make front-page news, but it was largely divorced from the broader context of the Korean democracy struggle. In addition to the omission of democratic correlations, the diction of the journalism also shifted. Although the New York Times on May 20 was quick to assert that Chun Doo Hwan’s extension of martial law would result in the unfulfillment of Korea’s democratic aspirations, the following day, once reports of Kwanju’s contempt for martial law became apparent, the same paper began to depict student democracy protests in Seoul as being radical, due to the student’s desire for a “more rapid rate of progress” towards political reform.22 On May 22, the demonstrators’ list of demands ceased to begin with democratic reform or constitutional revisions, as reported by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times on the previous days, but were now topped with the removal of Chun and the freedom of Kim Dae Jung.23 Although both demands were intrinsic to the Korean democracy movement, they remained political abstractions when removed from the context of democratization. On the same day William Chapman of the Washington Post followed this pattern, explaining that the primary demand of students was the lifting of martial law, after which it explained that the arrest of Kim Dae Jung could also have complicated the situation.24 Following this report, on May 23, William Chapman overtly stated that “[a]mong those arrested was opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, who comes from the province in which Kwangju is located, and much of the anger of citizens is traced to the government’s treatment of a favorite son.”25 On May 20, the Los Angeles Times followed suit, stating that the demonstrations in Kwangju solely called for the ousting of Chun Doo Hwan and the lifting of martial law.26 Furthermore, though students in Seoul were “rioting for political reform”27 on May 18, by May 20, Kwangju’s students had become “violent anti-government” demonstrators.28

This general journalistic shift can be explained by what South Korea represented to the United States: an island of stability to house American interests in what was otherwise an unstable area. An opinion column running in the New York Times on May 22 makes this clear. Although it was preceded by the assertion that security concerns cannot justify the preservation of a non-civilian government, the editorial then said that “the civil insurrection in Kwangju demonstrates [that] the prolongation of undemocratic rule can only undermine security.”29 From this quote it can be inferred that the uprising in Kwangju was not representative of Korea’s desire for democratization, but rather an ailment of instability caused by a miscalculating government. John Nielson of Newsweek put it bluntly by quoting a Korean official in regards to the suppression of Kwangju. “We had the choice between democracy and stability. We chose stability.”30

Instability in South Korea remained a principle concern of the American media throughout the uprising. This was largely due to the fear of North Korea exploiting the situation for its own advantage. Fears of North Korean military advances were mentioned in the media almost as much as the Kwangju uprising itself. On May 21, the Wall Street Journal reported that “U.S. fears that political instability in South Korea could encourage an attack by Communist North Korea. This, in turn, could lead to a war involving the 42,000 U.S. troops protecting the Seoul government.”31 The following day, the Los Angeles Times ran an article entitled, “N. Korea Seen Tempted by Strife in South,” which stated that “the violent clashes in the southwestern city of Kwangju present North Korea with ‘a tempting situation’ compared with a year ago.” The article would go on to quote an American official in Seoul, saying that Korean students had become “very radical, very communist and inflammatory.”32 In doing so, the Los Angeles Times alluded that student demands for democratization were unnecessarily radical and could lead to an attack from the communist North. Although the United States remained persistent in its hopes for a “transition to a democratic government,” it is apparent that this aspiration was predicated on stability on the Korean peninsula.33 On May 20, the New York Times’ James Sterba began reporting on the State Department’s warnings to North Korea by saying, “the United States . . . would ‘react strongly in accordance with its treaty obligations’ to any attempt to exploit the present situation.”34 Commenting on the arrest of Kim Dae Jung, the New York Times reported on May 23 that according to one Seoul official, Kim Dae Jung was a Marxist and supporter of the Pyongyang government. “He is in league with the students, many of whom spout pure Pyongyang propaganda.”35 The paper then reasserted the State Department’s warning to North Korea that the United States would “react strongly” to any military advances from the north.36 By May 26, the New York Times also reported, “President Choi said that North Korea was bent on exploiting the confrontation and that its continuation would directly affect national security.”37

Weekly news magazines were also quick to report on the fear of a North Korean invasion. On May 26, Time magazine printed an interview with Chun Doo Hwan. According to Chun, “since February there have been large-scale military maneuvers by [the North Korean] army, navy and air force and preparations for mobilizing the whole nation. This continues. At the same time, North Korea regards recent developments in South Korea as a ‘decisive moment for [touching off] revolution.’ They are mounting a deceitful ‘peace offensive’ [with repeated calls for unification] in order to divide our nation against itself.”38

On June 2, nearly a week after the uprising had been suppressed, U.S. News and World Report made the dramatic claim that “the insurrection, centered in Kwangju city in southwestern Korea, raised the specter of 39,000 U.S. troops standing alone against North Korean invaders while South Korean forces battled dissidents on the home front.” The article would then go on to report that “South Korean officials blamed North Korean spies for the uprising.”39

Not surprisingly, the British news magazine, The Economist, offered a tellingly different explanation than its American counterparts: “Koreans are a literate, highly politicized people who have lived too close to the threat from the communist north to take it lightly but who have heard the cry of wolf too often to be taken in again. They know, even if their censored press will not acknowledge it, that the Kwangju riots and the non-violent student protests that preceded them had little if anything to do with Marxist politics. They were expressions of frustration and a desire for constitutional change.”40

To its credit, the Washington Post was one of the few daily news publications that was not quick to report on the potentiality of an impending North Korean attack. The first significant reference to the Pyongyang government came on May 21, in an editorial that read: “Naturally, the coup-makers say an ‘emergency situation’ had been produced by North Korean ‘troop movements’ and by civil disturbances. But of course there is no supporting evidence. The more likely explanation lies in the situation being created by South Korea’s tentative movements toward a new constitution.”41 On May 28, the paper would go on to run an article that reported on Chinese Premier Hua Guofeng’s comments to Japan that “North Korea was not about to intervene in politically unsettled South Korea.”42

Throughout the ten days of the Kwangju uprising there was a continual effort on the part of the media to depict Kwangju citizens as violent usurpers and anti-government rioters, thus not only reinforcing the portrayal of instability in the South Chŏlla region, but also undermining the rationality of Kwangju’s struggle toward democracy. In contradiction to many media reports, Shim Jae Hoon, a reporter for the New York Times, recalls his initial thoughts on Kwangju when he entered the city: “Kwangju was not in disorder, nor was there violence. Citizens, no matter who they were, provided food and water to the militants. The first conclusion I reached, then and there, was that this was no riot situation—as the military maintained, insisting on that expression ‘riot’—it was an ‘insurection,’ and ‘uprising.’”43 On May 24, the Washington Post reported, “students were cleaning up the debris of four days of fighting and maintaining order. . . . Food and medicine were in short supply in Kwangju and a system of food sharing and rationing was informally begun.”44 Despite this, numerous reports continued to characterize Kwangju’s citizens as rioters. On May 23, the LA Times ran a story entitled “Rioting Spreads In South Korea” in reference to the popular uprising of the South Chŏlla region.

This bias in the press is undoubtedly a byproduct of America’s perception of Korea. According to one White House meeting, “there was general agreement that the first priority is the restoration of order in Kwangju. . . . Once order is restored, it was agreed that we must press the Korean government . . . to allow a greater degree of political freedom to evolve.”45 National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski summarized America’s opinion by explaining, “in the short term support, in the longer term pressure for political evolution.”46

America’s primary concern was security. Because the uprising in Kwangju in May of 1980 led to instability on the Korean peninsula and raised the possibility of a North Korean attack, American concern centered on the restoration of order through the suppression of Kwangju and then a later return toward political liberalization once American security interests were met. The American media’s portrayal of Kwangju—as being divorced from the broader democracy movement, perpetrated by rioting mobs, and an unnecessary temptation for a North Korean invasion—is representative of the broader American perspective on Korea.

In an interview with the press spokesman of the Student Settlement Committee, Bradley Martin of the Baltimore Sun quoted the young activist: “We think the United States as an ally can exercise its influence on the Korean government. Since it hasn’t done so, we suspect the U.S. might be supporting General Chun Doo Hwan.”47 Moon Ik Kwan, jailed at the same time as Kim Dae Jung following the extension of martial law, recalled what Kwangju symbolized to him, as a Korean democracy advocate: “For the first time I was able to see the Korean problem in an international context. . . . Syngman Rhee, Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan—to me, they had been the enemies. But all of a sudden I realized that America and Japan are pulling all the strings behind them. . . . America knew what was happening [in Kwangju] and . . . condoned it. That was shattering."48 Although both quotations are based on varying degrees of erroneous information, it is clear that a unique Korean perspective was coalescing in the wake of the Kwangju incident. While Armacost, Brzezinski, and others of the American government were quick to assert the supremacy of external to internal threats when dealing with Korean politics, many Koreans began to assert the primacy of internal democracy to that of America’s external security concerns.

Because Kwangju acted as an impetus to a perspective distinction, it consequently legitimized the rise of anti-Americanism with many Korean students. This would later come to be reinforced by President Ronald Reagan’s official invitation of Chun Doo Hwan to Washington. By excessively emphasizing the necessity of stability, the American government, and by extension the American media, undermined the Korean struggle for democracy, and in doing so, not only allowed Korean politics to be dominated by Chun’s brand of authoritarianism, but also sowed the seeds of anti-Americanism which continues to haunt American-Korean relations to this day.

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notes available. just ask. i also didn't go through and italicize or blockquote anything.

[chimx]

No suggestions at all?

[Nachie]

haha nobody likes you.

I was gonna say option #3 is everything I like about #1, but caters to the physical needs of what you've already written. I think the media response thing is a little boring to focus exclusively on, but to the extent that you can tie it to questions of US-Korea relations and a broader "geopolitical" analysis, it's an effective topic to work with.

[chimx]

thanks. my major concern with #1 was that it minimized the original research. i definately think it needs to be tied to the "broader geopolitical analysis" more, especially considering the president carter's foreign policy promises in regards to Korea at the time. My major concern though is access to Korea sources that are available in English. qThe media response is dull, but that is where the original research comes in... :P

[Nachie]

Did someone at that conference ask you to expand on it and get published, or are you just being a nerd?

[chimx]

Some folk at the conference made suggestions for it to be expanded, in particular emphasize the US government's response more. I'm expanding on it because i post-dated my graduation diploma so that I can quickly finish up an thesis so my undergrad career will be done 'with honors'. I'm told that by doing this I can probably just do a 1 year MA program as well, so now that i'm done with my BA, i'm thinking of this as being a nice transition into grad work. :P

[Nachie]

*head explodes*

[apathy maybe]

This is a good read. You might be able to put a bit more interpretation into it, but otherwise the facts are well presented.

Hope your thesis goes well.

(For the record, both 1 and 2 seem like good options. But hey&#33

[chimx]

Thanks. For the thesis I ended up doing a hybrid of 1 & 2, with aspects of 3 scattered throughout. The first chapter now focuses on the history of American-Korean relations since the end of WWII up through the assassination of Park. Chapter 2 dives into Chun, the actual Kwangju uprising, and America's political response. 3 then dives exclussively into the American media, which corresponds to the government, but I offer more interpretation here, emphasizing that this is due to the context of the US' relationship with the ROK.

Incidentally, I didn't really emphasize the anti-americanism as much in the final copy as I did in this paper. I'll post the final text here when its done in a month or two. Though I'm sure that its length will make most people want to skip over it...