[HN Gopher] The May 18 Gwangju Uprising
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The May 18 Gwangju Uprising
Author : exolymph
Score : 152 points
Date : 2021-05-31 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.datasecretslox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.datasecretslox.com)
| jchook wrote:
| Possible that we in the US do not learn much about the atrocities
| of South Korean autocracies because they were largely supported
| and propped up for decades by the US government.
|
| After nearly 40 years of Japanese rule, Korea formed a unified
| independent, democratically elected government with
| representation from right, center, and left political leaders on
| September 6, 1945. The very next day US forces showed up to
| dissolve the government and keep power in the hands of the
| Japanese.
|
| The subsequent election in South Korea was boycotted by nearly
| every political group.
|
| In the late 1940s, Kim Gu had unification talks with Kim il-Sung
| but the CIA had him assassinated in 1949.
|
| From there it's a long chain of military dictatorships, coups,
| and suppression of democratic uprisings, with US influence and
| support.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| |and keep power in the hands of the Japanese
|
| I think you mean Japanese collaborators, who were hated by the
| population, but who also were the only people with any
| experience in technical and administrative areas.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Politics are dirty especially you fought with a dirty opponent
| like china supported North Korea. I think the great is so much
| then we might lost sight why the horrible dictatorship of South
| Korea and Taiwan in those days. One wonder whether they will
| fall into communist hand, even today. Korea not sure. Quite
| sure the nationalist party might even today.
| yongjik wrote:
| I'm no expert in 1940s Korean history, but I think it was more
| like Game of Thrones (everyone fighting everyone else while
| fervently believing they're on the right side), than typical
| Hollywood (righteous people fighting against a powerful
| supervillain).
|
| Even Kim Gu himself, giant as he was, is widely believed to be
| connected to various assassinations (and attempted
| assassinations) of his political enemies.
|
| * Also I don't think it was ever proven who ordered Kim's
| assassination - I think most people assume it's President Rhee.
| (It's no secret that Rhee was very fond of the person who
| killed Kim.)
| nsajko wrote:
| > In the late 1940s, Kim Gu had unification talks with Kim il-
| Sung but the CIA had him assassinated in 1949.
|
| Taking a look at Wikipedia, the assassin seems to have been an
| US Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC, of "ratlines" fame)
| asset. Are there indications of him also being employed by OSS
| or some of its descendants (among which CIA is included), or
| did you just mistake one part of the US government for another?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Gu#Death_and_legacy
| greesil wrote:
| Does it matter which organization actually carried out the
| orders?
| johnhughes wrote:
| yeogiseo daeggaemun balgyeon ssb
| eynsham wrote:
| I think that we forget 18 May partly because it succeeded. There
| is no enormous symbol of the failure and suppression of 18 May in
| the same way that there is of 4 June. I suppose that another
| massacre that sticks in my mind is the Kent State Massacre, which
| also passes unremarked. The lesson I draw from this is people may
| forget even when the state does not encourage them to do so: it's
| much easier to discuss the Kent State Massacre in the US than 4
| June on the Mainland, and yet it's not really very obvious which
| in the respective area is better known.
| jinwoo68 wrote:
| May 18 succeeded? It was a beginning of a long dictatorship in
| Korea. Maybe we can say it was a success because Korean people
| achieved democracy as a result of a long battle against the
| dictatorship that shared with May 18 in spirit. But it was a
| big loss at that time causing huge sorrow in people's hearts.
| eynsham wrote:
| I suppose that you are right that it is an infelicitous turn
| of phrase: I mean what you mean, i.e., that the long battle
| eventually was won. In China, the vindication of 4 June looks
| more distant a prospect than ever.
| yongjik wrote:
| America largely forgot about 5/18 because they never got the
| chance to know it: on the very same day, Mount St. Helens
| erupted, killing 57. I can only imagine the media frenzy after
| that.
|
| Of course, in South Korea, it was never forgotten.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Hel...
| xbar wrote:
| I liked this story. The failure to account for the amount of
| mindshare Mount St. Helens' eruption consumed is regrettable.
|
| This date, May 18, 1980, is clearly burned in my memory as
| the day of the eruption. As a youth, I cut out the the
| headlines and photos from 2 newspapers and saved them for
| decades.
| pirate787 wrote:
| This item is on the front page on the US holiday of Memorial Day,
| when we remember those who died so others could be free. That
| count, of course, includes 36,516 Americans who died fighting in
| the Korean Conflict.
| trasz wrote:
| But not about ~million victims of that war?
| Klasiaster wrote:
| The Jeju Uprising is mentioned just shortly, it's even more
| neglected in the public memory - it's a massacre that happened
| before the Korean war:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
| sho_hn wrote:
| Related movie recommendation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taxi_Driver
|
| It recreates some of the original newsreel footage from Gwangju
| that was smuggled out into the West, embedded into a Hollywood-
| style narrative based on historical characters. With Song Kang-
| ho, recently familiar from "Parasite".
|
| There's a lot of Korean cinema that processes Gwangju in one form
| or another, but this is one of the more accessible entries,
| especially to an international audience.
| Klasiaster wrote:
| Another one is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_18_(film)
| which tries to be a more of a chronology focusing on the
| citizens and the armed self-protection unit.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| My girlfriend at the time brought me to see that film, Gwangju
| was her home city. She was very pleased to show me after how
| accurate the recreation of some of the scenes were and the
| locations of the film.
| yongjik wrote:
| I think it was a decent movie, except for that one... Hollywood
| action scene toward the end, which felt out of place and more
| like a "fan service."
|
| Not depicting the same event, but if you liked _A Taxi Driver_
| , I'd also recommend _1987 - When the Day Comes_ which depicts
| people fighting against the same dictator. (Fun fact: in _1987_
| , the role of one major character was kept secret and he's
| never called by his name until the end of the movie, because
| otherwise everybody would've recognized who he was.)
| sho_hn wrote:
| Agreed, I think the "car chase" is the part everyone feels
| was a bit superfluous and much like it had to tick the
| formulaic boxes toward the end to make box office. But if you
| make those concessions to form it's a picture with some great
| moments and definitely a story worth telling. Maybe
| especially for me as a German citizen, and then watching the
| original Tagesschau clip (the news hour the footage surfaced
| in) after getting home from theaters, it really resonated a
| lot.
|
| 1987 - I liked it, but I'd say it was more on the nose and
| lacks Song Kang-ho's acting chops :). Still, around the time
| I watched it I often worked from a cafe across from gates of
| Yonsei Univ., which figure prominently in this real-world
| tale so it still had an impact on me.
|
| The other movie I really liked that's loosely connected to
| the era and the student uprisings was "Sunny". The comedy-
| drama tone of that one is a super close match to some German
| films processing the end of the East German regime and I felt
| really connected to that film.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| I appreciate the post, but I don't think it's constructive to
| argue that the Gwangju Uprising was bloodier than June 4. That's
| only true if you go by official numbers put out by the CCP.
| nsajko wrote:
| Your post is less constructive: your only argument is an appeal
| to the lack of trustworthiness of the Chinese government. Even
| so, it would have been better if you stated what are your
| opinions on the number of casualties regarding both events.
|
| To give a starting point to the discussion; the English
| Wikipedia gives about the same summary for the independent
| estimates of casualties related to both events: from hundreds
| to thousands.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| Appeal to the lack of trustworthiness of the CCP: this is the
| level of discourse?
| nsajko wrote:
| No idea what you're saying now.
| xbar wrote:
| OP is saying CCP is known untrustworthy.
| xenihn wrote:
| I initially understood "bloodier" as in literal blood due to
| how corpses were handled. In which case I would agree that it
| was not as bloody. But I do think the term was for body count,
| in which case they're probably comparable.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| One of the things that surprised me in high school history was
| just how recent many democracies are.
|
| Within the lifetime of my parents, Portugal, Greece, Spain were
| dictatorships. Apparently South Korea is one of these as well.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Women's right to vote in Switzerland is much more recent than
| you might expect. 1971 for federal elections, 1991 when the
| last hold-out canton was forced to allow them to vote in local
| elections.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
| michaelpb wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| For me, at least from what I remember from school in the
| 90s/00s in the US, this stuff wasn't taught at all. We just
| learned a bunch of left-over cold war rhetoric about being
| "leader of the free world", and little discussion of what
| actually went on in the "free world" that was being "lead".
|
| Events like this one -- or the Bodo League mass killings [1],
| or the institution of slavery in Korea [2], etc -- were not
| covered at all. Even more shocking is how violent and
| unimaginably cruel so many governments have been, and yet to
| this day they manage to be fondly remembered by many
| conservative citizens. For example, President Park Geunhye,
| daughter and "successor" to the dictator President Park Chung-
| hee, became president in a (questionable) election in 2012,
| with mass support from conservative voters. So even if a given
| dictatorship is gone, it's supporters are still here, and will
| be voting in as many similar policy as they can.
|
| History in high school used to be my least favorite subject,
| but as an adult, reading history books is like all I do, and I
| will use any excuse to go on and on about it (as evidenced by
| this now very long post lol)
|
| Edit: Not sure why I got so many downvotes so quickly, but just
| to be clear I'm not trying to pick on Korea or single out
| Korean conservatives --- this applies to many, many countries
| [3] --- I'm only using South Korea as what I thought was an
| interesting example, due to the original post being about
| Gwangju.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
|
| [2] Slavery is now illegal, but for a modern horrific example
| in 2014:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_on_salt_farms_in_Sinan...
|
| [3] Brazil is one I know well, but for a European example, the
| Mussolini Family continues to be elected by Italy's
| conservatives:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Legacy
| baybal2 wrote:
| And its a good reminder just how fledging this moment can be.
|
| Two days ago I posted an article on just how rapid was the
| downfall of democracies in the last decade:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27320565
|
| _There are less functioning democracies today than in 1991._
|
| The truth of life is simple. There is no deep, philosophical
| argument to it. Who wins, rules, be it a democracy, or
| totalitarianism.
|
| If you lose to totalitarians, you die. If totalitarians lose to
| you, they die.
|
| Do not discount military action as sometimes the only option on
| the table to defend, and solidify a democracy.
| op03 wrote:
| Or Democracies could just try attack ala Soliemani.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _If you lose to totalitarians, you die. If totalitarians lose
| to you, they die._
|
| That's kind of a bizarre and exaggerated way to put things.
| Nominally, what separates dictatorship and democracy is that
| a democratic regime doesn't wantonly murder it's enemies.
| Some dictatorial regimes engage in brutal attacks on their
| enemies but even there, for most people life goes on.
|
| Also, there are a variety of regimes mid-way between
| democracy and totalitarianism - the current regimes of India
| and Turkey for example. Which is to say the loss and the
| gaining of democratic rights is often (though not always) a
| gradual thing.
| bserge wrote:
| And if that military has other plans, well, learn to live
| under the new regime. I always think how fortunate western
| Europe was to have the US force them into democracy and
| freedom for the individual. Many don't agree with that, but
| if left to either the Nazis or the Soviets, we'd all be
| living under some sort of authoritarian regimes to this day.
| schoen wrote:
| Also Taiwan
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_Taiwan
|
| Brazil
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_in_Brazi...
|
| Argentina
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Argentine_coup_d%27%C3%A9...
|
| Chile
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
|
| Paraguay
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Stronato
|
| Well, I guess I'm just missing about 40 others...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship#Former_c...
| umanwizard wrote:
| Mexico was not a dictatorship, but it was a non-democratic
| one-party state until the late 20th century.
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| The Statue of Liberty was a gift from one of the only
| functioning Democracies to the only other functioning
| Democracy.
|
| And half the people in the US apparently do not believe in
| Democracy.
| CalChris wrote:
| Dictatorship is very common today:
|
| https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/
|
| January 6th was close to creating another dictatorship here.
| sam345 wrote:
| Very questionable assertion.
| lurker3901 wrote:
| I feel sorry for you if you actually believe that.
| mistermann wrote:
| How close were we? Was there a pivotal moment where an
| individual hero saved the day, or maybe something completely
| different? Just trying to get a handle on the truth of the
| matter, I don't seem to know very much about the specific
| details of that infamous day where our most precious
| institution hung in the balance (if I'm understanding
| correctly).
| jinwoo68 wrote:
| And don't assume the democracy will stay here. It is in
| constant threats and can be lost if you don't fight hard
| always. Just a few years ago in Korea, the very daughter of the
| dictator became the president and people had to fight again to
| expel her. I'm observing similar things happening in the US
| now...
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Yes, it's important to remember that in the modern world,
| states often transition between a variety of forms. The
| common forms are representative democracy, military
| dictatorship, populist/strongman dictatorship (which can be
| formally democratic to whatever extent) and single-party
| "totalitarian" dictatorship but there are endless variations.
|
| All these are based on particular power groups and only
| partially relying on the consent of the governed - while also
| organizing the governed to give their consent, with represent
| democracy naturally relying most on the consent of the
| consent of the governed.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I'm embarrassed to say I had never even heard of this. What an
| interesting and inspiring read, thank you for sharing.
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