The Hanky has the vapors over President Lee’s plans to let the police use a bit more force against violent protestors. The plans include detailed rules on the use of force, and plans to arrest people who engage in violence and cross police lines. To this, the Hanky reacts with hyperbolic charges of a return to dictatorship:
President Lee seemed to have been encouraging the police when he said, “If foreign television programs show the nation’s unlawful, violent demonstrators wielding iron pipes, the value of the national brand will drop and the nation’s economic activities will also be affected. Lee also urged the police to make a new beginning by setting 2008 as the year to improve the culture of assemblies and demonstrations. After Lee’s Lunar New Year’s Day speech, in which he put special emphasis on the importance of law and order, the police formed a related task force in mid-January and since then have worked on making a manual whose contents include instructions for the arrest all demonstrators crossing police lines. [The Hankyoreh]
Why, it’s Kwangju all over again! (No, they really say this.) After all, if you can’t express yourself with a Molotov cocktail or an iron pipe, how can you express yourself?
I think we’ve seen enough of the effects of unilateral restraint to see how the left’s mob violence was becoming a threat to civil order, free speech, and peaceful discourse. And it’s not exclusively the left, either. Just look what a difference some discipline, training, and a few homemade flamethrowers can make:
Mostly, however, it’s the left — unions, students, and anti-American protestors — who methodically use violence to make their points and get their way. All too often, those mobs were under the sway of people who don’t favor a democratic system of government at all.
Societies must leave room for expression, but when violent expression is allowed, non-violent expression is quickly crowded out. The events in Tibet are an example of how the banning of peaceful expression fuels, and to a degree legitimizes, violence. But a society that allows peaceful expression and self-rule must also make the streets safe for it. That will require making Korean law and society less tolerant of violence.
Joshua: Your reference to Gwangju peaked my curiosity: Is there an *unbiased* (or at least “somewhat balanced”) account on the May 1980 Gwangju uprising in English? My apologies in advance if it was previously referenced on OFK and I missed it. Thanks!
Here is a contemporary account from the moment right before the troops opened fire:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924155,00.html
Thank you, Joshua.
That Time article is next to useless as far as helping one understand what happened in Kwangju. The military ‘opened fire’ countless times, but the two largest instances were on May 21, when they opened fire on crowds of people in front of the Provincial Office (which prompted the demonstrators to begin arming themselves with guns), and on May 27, when the army retook the city. It’s the latter instance you refer to above, but the former was in many ways more important – and the Time article doesn’t even mention it.
The first journal article published in English about the uprising -
“The Kwangju Uprising: An Inside View” by Tim Warnberg in Korean Studies, v.11, 1987 – is still probably one of the best articles to be found, combining as it does a historical background, numerous first hand accounts and all of the sources available at the time. It can be downloaded here (scroll down and wait 24 seconds).
I don’t think the Hani was literally comparing the planned rules to Kwangju – they were comparing it to police behavior during the Fifth Republic, which, they felt compelled to mention, began with the Kwangju uprising. There’s no doubt it’s mentioned to elicit an emotional response, but they don’t even have the facts right – it wasn’t the riot police that set off the uprising, it was the soldiers.
Thank you very much, bulgasari!
If you read that entire Time article, it’s apparent that it was written before the worst of Chun’s overreaction — before the Army arrived. I know it’s dated June 1st, but remember that before online publishing, magazines used to post-date their publication dates.
It’s not a complete story of Kwangju or presented as such, because it predates the worst of the violence. But it does show a side of Kwangju we don’t tend to see much today.
Kwangju was not a pure case of a brutal dictatorship gunning down peaceful pro-democracy protestors. Kwangju actually seems to be a case of a brutal dictatorship gunning down heavily armed crypto-Leninist thugs and, most likely, some peaceful pro-democracy protestors and plenty of innocent bystanders, and not taking much care to distinguish between them.
I have yet to read a complete version of Kwangju that doesn’t somehow oversimplify it by airbrushing out the thuggish character of one side or another.
I may have to take your word on Warnberg’s piece, because I don’t trust zip files (I have no doubt that Vista would gag on it). I will just note that I googled for more of Warnberg’s work to get the flavor of his POV and didn’t find any links to his work but yours. Any way you could unzip the file, upload it into your blog, and let us read it without unzipping it?
I made a pdf of Warnberg’s essay – it’s here. I hope it’s more accessible than the zip file. Warnberg was a Peace Corps Volunteer there at the time, working at Chonnam hospital. Another PCV there at the time was David Dolinger, who wrote this response to some of my questions two years ago.
As for your take on the Time article, you seem to place more importance on the final battle of May 27, but far more people died prior to that. I laid out a very brief chronology here; here’s an excerpt of the civilian casualty figures (based on “official” figures, which do not include the official (or unofficial) missing):
Of the total official figures for the dead (191 known fatalities – 164 civilians, 23 soldiers, 4 policemen) 62 died on May 21, when troops opened fire, while at least 64 died on the outskirts May 21-25, and 26 died during the final battle. This adds up to 152 out of 164, leaving 12 dead between May 18 and May 20.
The Time article was written after the 21st, as the citizen army it describes, riding around in commandeered vehicles and carrying weapons, did not exist before the 21st, the day the soldiers opened fire on the crowds in front of the provincial hall. According to the official figures, far more people died that day (and even more died on the outskirts of the city as troops opened fire on passing vehicles) than during the final battle on the 27th, which seems to be what you are referring to as the troops “opening fire”. The fact the shooting on the 21st isn’t mentioned in that Time article (when even reporters arriving days after it happened were made well aware of it) makes it a poor candidate for an overview of the uprising.
When you say “before the army arrived”, are you distinguishing between the paratroopers who were present from May 18 and the army troops who took part in the final attack on May 27? If not, it should be made clear that the paratroopers were present from the very beginning, with reinforcements arriving on the 19th and 20th, eventually totaling more than 3000. Arguably the most radical action taken by people in Kwangju (prior to the troops opening fire on the 21st) was the protest by taxi and bus drivers on the evening of the 20th which gave the protesters the means to occupy the streets, and if I had to make a guess, I’d imagine there weren’t very many crypto-Leninist thugs among their ranks.
I think it’s worth pointing out that the worst excesses of the Korean left (moving towards outright juche worship, for example) came after the failure of the democracy movement in 1980, and that that failure is to be laid at Chun Doo hwan’s feet – as is the Anti-Americanism that grew out of the myths of the uprising. Chun did his best to make it look like the U.S. supported him at that time (almost getting General Wickham fired in the process), and also did his best to place as much blame for Kwangju as possible on American shoulders (in order to take the heat off himself). I don’t think the people who took part in the uprising should be mythologized as pure democracy fighters, but neither do I think they should be viewed as thugs just because the memory of the uprising has been manipulated by others to serve their own ends.
bulgasari: Thank you so much for your follow-up comments and the links. The “Ghosts of Gwangju” link was very interesting. I noticed that the link in your second paragraph is broken. Thanks again!