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The essential account of the South Korean 1980 pro-democracy rebellion On May 18, 1980, student activists gathered in the South Korean city of Gwangju to protest the coup d’état and the martial law government of General Chun Doo-hwan. The security forces responded with unmitigated violence. Over the next ten days hundreds of students, activists, and citizens were arrested, tortured, and murdered. The events of the uprising shaped over a decade of resistance to the repressive South Korean regime and paved the way for the country’s democratization. This fresh translation by Slin Jung of a text compiled from eyewitness testimonies presents a gripping and comprehensive account of both the events of the uprising and the political situation that preceded and followed the violence of that period. Included is a preface by acclaimed Korean novelist Hwang Sok-yong. Gwangju Uprising is a vital resource for those interested in East Asian contemporary history and the global struggle for democracy.
This new book offers a retrospective appraisal of the Gwangju Uprising by academics, activists and artists from Gwangju, Korea. It analyzes the events of the Gwangju uprising, and traces the birth of South Korean democracy in Gwangju’s stubborn refusal to accept life without freedom.
The Kwangju Uprising--"Korea's Tiananmen"--is one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 turned into a bloody people's revolt. In the two decades since, memories of the Kwangju Uprising have lived on, assuming symbolic importance in the Korean democracy movement, underlying the rise in anti-American sentiment in South Korea, and shaping the nation's transition to a civil society. Nonetheless it remains a contested event, the subject still of controversy, confusion, international debate, and competing claims. As one of the few...
One of the largest political protests in contemporary Korean history, the May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound, often contested, influence in Korean society. Through a deft combination of personal reflections and academic analysis, Contentious Kwangju offers a comprehensive examination of the multiple, shifting meanings of this seminal event and explains how the memory of Kwangju has affected Korean life from politics to culture. In keeping with the book's title, the essays offer competing interpretations of the Kwangju Uprising, yet together provide the most thorough English-language treatment to date of the multifaceted, sweeping significance of this seminal event.
In Kwangju, South Korea, in 1980 a student uprising ended in the brutal suppression and massacre of protestors, an event burned into the minds of all South Koreans. This text presents original South Korean accounts of the incident, along with the reports of Western journalists who witnessed events.
The book explores the implications of the democratic movement that took place in Gwangju, a southwestern city of Korea, in May 1980 when military paratroopers brutally crushed a group of protesters who demonstrated against General Chun Doo-hwan, who was about to become the country's president. Because of the event now known as the Gwangju Uprising, 191 people perished and 852 were wounded. In The Gwangju Uprising, Choi Jungwoon analyzes various discourses and motives of the uprising and vividly paints the demonstrators' street battles against paratroopers. He gives an in-depth scrutiny of the participants' mentalities and incentives, and the type of brutality involved. He also examines the s...
The Kwangju Uprising that occurred in May 1980 is burned into the minds of South Koreans in much the same way that Tiananmen is burned into the minds of contemporary Chinese. As the world watched in horror following the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, student protesters were brutally suppressed by the military and police led by strongman Chun Doo Hwan. Kim Dae Jung, the current president of South Korea, was imprisoned and sentenced to death during this period. This book recreates those earth-shaking events through eyewitness reports of leading Western correspondents on the scene as well as Korean participants and observers. Photographs, detailed street maps, and dramatic woodblock prints further illuminate the day-to-day drama to keep this atrocity alive in the conscience of the world.
As a young Peace Corps volunteer, working with leprosy patients in rural South Korea in 1980, Paul Courtright got caught in the middle of a brutal military suppression in Gwangju. Over a span of 13 days, he witnessed the unfolding Gwangju Uprising, during which he was trapped in the city, ringed by the military. The residents of the city rallied to create their own government and militia and Paul and his colleagues translated for a few foreign reporters and photographers who managed to get into Gwangju. Paul’s first attempt to get out, to get to Seoul and inform the US Embassy as to the true nature of events in Gwangju, failed. His second attempt, over the hills to his village and then to Seoul, was successful, but harrowing. This memoir is the first by a foreign witness to the Gwangju Uprising. It is both a clear-eyed record of the events and a reflection of Paul’s emotional journey as the uprising went through its various twists and turns.
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Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of the original trauma. Human Acts is a universal book, utterly modern and profoundly timeless. Already a controversial bestseller and award-winning book in Korea, it confirms Han Kang as a writer of immense importance.