Far Outliers

I did not write any field notes for May 29, 1980, so I cannot recheck my memory of leaving Kwangju as the most frightening experience of my life. The day before, May 28, things had eased up a bit, and it was possible to go out. I went out to look at the cleanup operation. Soldiers with shovels were cleaning up piles of trash and refuse. There were cordons around some buildings, ID checks at a few places, and still no telephone calls or bus transportation outside the city. In the afternoon I went to visit friends and also to the Kwangju District Court, where the judges were at work, but I learned it would be the next week before I could resume my research. Downtown I had met up with Don Baker, a fellow graduate student and former Peace Corps Volunteer in Kwangju, who had come down from Seoul to check on his wife’s relatives. He stayed with my family that night, and the next day I decided to go along with him back to Seoul.

We set out in the late morning on Thursday, May 29. The streets were full, taxis were running, and the city bus system had just resumed operation. We took a taxi to Songjong-ni, at the edge of town. Others were having to get out of their taxis and walk over a bridge, through lines of troops, to get to the suburban taxis waiting on the other side, but somehow we were allowed to ride through. A tout was yelling, “To Seoul by bus for 10,000 W!”–about five times the usual price, but we hopped into his cab for the ride to the Songjong-ni station.

The station was packed, and we sat in a hot bus for forty-five minutes while, amid confusion and heckling from other exasperated passengers, the driver waited until the bus was full (to overflowing–a seat in the aisle went for a discounted 8,000 W).

We were actually on a local express bus (chikhaeng), supposedly destined for a nearby county. So initially we headed there through the countryside. The normal five-hour trip to Seoul took over eight hours, the first four spent on back roads to Chongup, where we could get on the expressway to Seoul. As we quickly learned, the highway was closed in South Cholla Province; getting to Seoul first involved eluding various roadblocks and military checkpoints to get out of the province.

We were stopped eight or ten times, each a slightly different experience. Soldiers would board the bus, sometimes with guns and bayonets at the ready, once only with pistols. Sometimes they were polite, but more often, surly. They asked for citizens’ ID cards and inspected our faces closely. Once, all the male passengers were ordered off, with their luggage, for a thorough search. (The men immediately took the opportunity to wander off to relieve themselves, to the distress of the soldiers.) “What do you do?” they would interrogate some young man. “You visited your brother? His name? Your employer? Phone number?” The first time, some unemployed youth said that they had gone to Kwangju “to play.” When the bus pulled out again, their fellow passengers advised them, “Don’t say that! Say you are a farmer or a minister.” At the next roadblock, one of them tried it out, replying that he was a minister. He was hauled off the bus and detained. As we went on without him, the passengers agreed he should have said he was a priest instead.

At one stop, we were ordered to turn around; a soldier got on the bus and said we had all been “taken” by the driver. Only the persistence of a white-collar worker (who outtalked the soldier) got us going again. Occasionally we were hailed by farmers standing beside the road who thought we really were a country bus heading where our sign said “This presents a problem” (kunil natta) muttered the bus driver, letting the people on, then dropping them off as soon as we were out of sight of soldiers and other onlookers.

Finally, we reached the expressway and picked up speed on our way to Seoul. As a suburban bus with South Cholla Province plates, we were rather conspicuous. Twice our bus was stopped by patrolling cops. “How much did you pay him?” came a voice from the back as we pulled away from the first such incident. We were all nervous when at 10 P.M. we approached the tollbooth just before Seoul. All vehicles were being checked, but we got special treatment. A soldier pointing a gun at all of us and saying, “Don’t move!” directed the driver across several lanes of traffic. We were boarded by eight men, one in civilian clothes. People were pulled off for questioning, then allowed back on. “What is this, checkpoint eight or nine?” grumbled one passenger. From outside, a soldier replied, “You should have been checked at least fifteen times!” The stop was short but tense. When we were finally allowed on our way, everyone cheered, and one man ventured the opinion, “At 10,000 W, this was cheap!”

They unloaded us in a hurry in front of the new express bus terminal in Kangnam at 10:15 P.M., less than two hours before curfew. As a country bus with the wrong markings, the best the driver could do was pull in with a lot of city buses and hope no one would notice. At that time, the bus terminal was in the middle of nowhere, and even getting a taxi was a problem. I went to a telephone booth and starting calling friends to see who could put me up for the night.

SOURCE: Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising, by Linda S. Lewis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2002), pp. 56-58

NKZone has a second post about interviews with North Korean defectors in Seoul. (The earlier post is here.) The group interviews were conducted by Brendan Brown, an Australian national who teaches English to North Korean refugees in Seoul. The introduction notes that SK’s “Unification Ministry has asked Brendan to act as an informal consultant on North Koreans’ views, since the refugees are apparently less trusting of the South Korean government.” The reasons show up in response to question 7.

7) Do the North Korean people still want re-unification with the South? What do most North Koreans think of the South Korean government and people?

Mixed bag of responses here. Of course their greater desire is for North Korea in its present form to disappear forever. Nearly all want to return to their hometowns in a free democratic North Korea.

As for re-unification and their feelings toward the South Korean government and people, the longer one has lived in South Korea the less favourably he considers re-unification and South Koreans. At first, after arriving in South Korea they are appreciative to be in a free and plentiful country and wish for immediate re-unification. However their initials feelings of gratitude eventually turn to disappointment and even resentment of their status in the eyes of South Koreans.

Many South Koreans are openly patronizing of the North Koreans in their dealings with them. Asking what it is like to eat leaves and barks or frogs at a first meeting isn’t a way to win North Koreans over. Neither is asking if any family members have starved to death or are imprisoned in North Korea (perhaps because of their own defection). North Koreans don’t welcome the bringing up of bitter memories by unknown people, yet many South Koreans ask these type of questions as if enquireing about the weather.

As a North Korea expert I once worked for used to suggest, Unification-era Korea will resemble the Reconstruction-era South in the newly re-United States, with South Koreans playing the role of imperious Yankee carpetbaggers, and North Koreans playing the role of resentful Southern tenant farmers.

DURING THE FIFTH REPUBLIC–that is, the presidency of Chun Doo Hwan (1981-1988)–it was difficult even to speak of the Kwangju Uprising, let alone do research or attempt to write about what had happened. Lee Jae-eui tells of his apprehensions and fears as he and a few friends in 1985 began work on their definitive account, Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age; they covered the windows at night so no one could see in and arranged secret signals with their families should the authorities be watching.

While in a retrospective gaze these precautions seem almost quaintly cloak-and-dagger, Lee’s concerns were very real. As he says, “Any publication criticizing the Chun Doo-hwan regime was completely banned. Of course, ‘the truth about the Kwangju uprising’ was told in an incomplete and distorted way. Given the conditions, documenting the uprising was like belling a cat” …. Indeed, in May 1985 the publishing house where Lee’s volume was being printed was raided, copies of the unbound book were seized, and both the publisher and the “cover author” (Hwang Sok Yong) were arrested; it was not until 1987 that the book could be openly sold.

Information about the Kwangju Uprising circulated underground, but harassment of publishers and print shops; raids on bookstores; and confiscation of videos, books, and other “subversive” materials found at such places as churches and the offices of student and activist groups were commonplace through much of the 1980s. In fact, restrictions on the press and the suppression of free speech were (remarkably) even more severe under Chun Doo Hwan than under his predecessor [Park Chung Hee]. As one report on human rights noted, “Were the press free, President Chun’s policies, practices, and indeed his very authority would no doubt come under close scrutiny, and political opponents would be able to get their message to voters. To have a free press would be to invite political competition. This is something the South Korean government is not willing to permit” (International League For Human Rights 1985:49).

An incomplete, yet still deep and fearful, silence surrounded the “incident” of May 1980 and its larger implications. Even outside Korea it was difficult in the 1980s to get the scholarly community to confront the Kwangju issue and to discuss it openly. Nowadays I often characterize 5.18 as “Tienanmen before CNN and the fax”; the comparison is painfully apt in the sense that although there were indeed many political analysts, academics, and “friends” of Korea concerned at the time about human rights abuses under Chun, in the absence of “reliable” accounts, there were others who simply found it more convenient to believe the government’s version of events in Kwangju.

SOURCE: Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising, by Linda S. Lewis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2002), pp. 75-76

The Kwangju Uprising (or “5.18,” after the date it began) was a popular revolt against the Korean government that lasted for ten days in May 1980. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the reimposition of military rule turned into a bloody citizens’ uprising when the people of Kwangju, outraged by the brutality of government troops sent in to suppress dissent, pushed the soldiers to the edge of town and proclaimed a “Free Kwangju” (haebang Kwangju). The military eventually retook the city with tanks and tear gas but not without great cost in human lives and government credibility.

In retrospect, the Kwangju Uprising stands as one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history, a powerful symbol of popular opposition to thirty years of repressive military rule and a milestone in South Korea’s long journey to democratic reform. Nonetheless, 5.18 also remains, at the millennium, a contested event, the subject still of controversy, confusion, international debate, and competing claims….

In 1979-1980 I had been in Korea for thirteen months, doing research for my doctoral dissertation. My project concerned the role of judges as mediators in civil disputes, and I had chosen the district court in Kwangju as my research site. Ironically, I first visited Kwangju (to arrange housing) just days after the October 26, 1979, assassination of President Park Chung Hee–retrospectively the first in a chain of events leading to the May uprising.

SOURCE: Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising, by Linda S. Lewis (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2002), pp. xv-xvi