KOREA: STIRRINGS OF RESISTANCE
Shorrock, Tim
KOREA STIRRINGS OF RESISTANCE BY TIM SHOKROCK The moment they found the leaflet I knew I was in trouble. "Is this yours?" asked a customs agent as I stood in line at Seoul's Kimpo International...
...You see, the minority monopolies are wealthy, while the people are so poor," the economist explained...
...The troops came in as if they were capturing an enemy land...
...But from that point on, the official Korean and American versions merge...
...Their hands were bound by their sides, but they were killed...
...We believe the incident was set up to provoke this kind of reaction...
...As of November, there were 500 political prisoners in South Korea, more than were jailed at the height of the repression under Park Chung Hee...
...Chun was not so strong then...
...The most seriously injured was Pang Young Sok, a former textile worker and a leading figure in South Korea's growing labor movement...
...The controversy surrounding Kwangju won't go away...
...Kim Young Sam and I are maintaining close cooperation—no split...
...They massacred many young men after binding them...
...In one photo, thousands of people crowded into the city square to call for an end to military rule...
...They massacred peaceful demonstrators...
...That's why it's so threatening...
...U Students have begun a major nationwide campaign for democratization, labor rights, and an end to U.S...
...It's very possible that you will have another Vietnam here, where you have a liberation front that is very anti-American...
...And also we must liberate our laborers from suppression...
...On another occasion, I observed them monitoring a textile-workers' strike...
...Though hated by the Korean military, Kim is basically a conservative...
...The U.S...
...Powerful organizational ties and alliances have been formed among militant unions, journalists, students, farmers, and church groups—all working for an end to military rule and what they see as South Korea's dependence on the United States and Japan...
...That version is a crude and self-serving distortion of the truth and explains why American credibility in Korea is at such a low point...
...We are seeking a very prudent social-welfare system...
...And they said no reprisals, but thousands were rounded up, tortured, and put on trial...
...Among the beaten was an eighty-two-year-old man who first became involved in dissident politics during the anti-Japanese, anti-colonial movement of the 1920s...
...On nearly every major intersection sits a bus filled with these troops, who spend much of their time idle, smoking or playing cards, waiting for a demonstration...
...Recently, unions have begun to pressure big business groups and the government through strikes, sit-ins, and street demonstrations...
...KIM: You dispatched a Korean division to Kwangju to keep order, but before sending troops, you should have examined which side was keeping order— the Kwangju people or the paratroopers...
...he was not supported by our people...
...Only when laborers are active and willing to produce very good quality goods can we succeed in high-technology...
...This will require changing the constitution, which mandates a system- of indirect elections perpetuating military control over politics...
...But whether we can reach our democracy easily and peacefully may depend on whether we can avoid military involvement in politics or not—and that depends mainly on the American commander's attitude...
...In this way, the two classes confront each other...
...Government power has begun to lose the initiative to control Korean politics, in the campus and in the political circles," former opposition party leader Kim Dae Jung told me...
...KIM: Well, we are supporting the free-market system...
...By working together for a change in the Constitution so Koreans can directly elect the president, and by supporting each other through demonstrations and other actions, this budding movement has begun to present a real threat to the Chun government—and indirectly to U.S...
...And we are seeking a very healthy common goal: Western-style democracy, a free-market system, and supporting the rights of consumers and laborers...
...And the basic way to resolve it is democratization in this country...
...One set, taken in a Seoul hospital two weeks before, showed a group of human-rights and labor activists who had been severely beaten by a gang of thugs outside a factory...
...The government is keenly aware that social unrest could break out almost any time...
...In another, a line of young men and women marched through the streets holding a South Korean flag and waving banners reading We demand democracy and unification and Chun Doo Hwan, Resign...
...The buses are usually accompanied by ugly black armored carriers that spew pepper fog, a painful and dangerous gas banned in the United States and West Germany...
...Witnesses who were in the city said it was a time of sorrow, common suffering, joy, and sharing...
...Second, they want a restoration of democracy so they can freely discuss and debate such issues as economic development, labor rights, and reunification...
...How can your embassy say these troops were orderly...
...labor union and for the North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea...
...The leaflet, which the agent triumphantly held, showed an armed soldier guarding a line of young men with their hands tied behind their backs...
...the activists had come to support a sit-in by workers protesting a government decision not to recognize their union...
...A dynamic labor movement, a student campaign for democracy, and a popular opposition party have the generals worried As it is, the United States is already being viewed as an imperialist and interventionist power, providing key support for the military dictatorship and perpetuating the division of the peninsula...
...If the Reagan Administration persists in supporting Chun and is perceived as opposing the demands for political rights and independence, the movement will grow more radical, and the United States will completely lose whatever influence it could have exerted with such conservative dissidents as Kim Dae Jung...
...It was a deliberate trap...
...the rising disbelief and anger of the people witnessing the killings...
...if I took them with me, North Korea would "use them to attack South Korea...
...On the other hand, our country has for more than ten years promoted exports on the international market with a low wage...
...This is a strongly nationalistic movement," a teacher in Kwangju told me...
...Since 1980, the ten biggest companies' share of the Korean GNP (measured in sales) increased from 29 per cent to an astounding 72 per cent in 1984...
...The photographs depicted two of the most volatile subjects in South Korea today: labor repression and the 1980 Kwangju Uprising...
...Despite differences in outlook and perspective, South Korea's dissidents all share the view that military rule must end, and that South Korea must regain some independence in its relations with the United States...
...I hope this doesn't give you a bad impression of my country," he said...
...What were your motives in coming to our country...
...In recent weeks, a number of protests have focused on U.S...
...That was the 'orderly' Twentieth Division...
...version—explained to me by foreign diplomats—blames Korean paratroopers for the initial violence, emphasizing that these troops were not under direct U.S...
...They are looking toward mass-based social revolution as the only path to democracy and reunification with the North, the stated goals of their movement...
...As long as the American military commander has the right to control all Korean military forces of 600,000 troops, the American commander must take the responsibility to prevent military involvement in a coup...
...Even though they have become rich men, there is no freedom of businessmen...
...Scattered around me were books, magazines, and other subversive materials seized from previous passengers...
...I visited Kwangju for two days on my recent trip, shortly after the government had issued an "official" report that blamed the uprising on "unruly elements" and labeled stories of mass killings "groundless rumors...
...But his courageous struggle against military rule has also earned him widespread admiration and respect...
...By the end An Interview with Kim Dae Jung Kim Dae Jung, South Korea's best-known dissident, was imprisoned and sentenced to death for treason in 1980 on trumped-up charges of instigating the Kwangju Uprising...
...Last spring, members of the opposition party initiated an investigation within the National Assembly, but Chun's Democratic Justice Party, which holds an automatic majority, blocked the move...
...Scores of them have been charged with violations of the National Security Law and face years in prison...
...Q: How hopeful are you that democracy will return to South Korea...
...KIM: The democratic movement is well unified...
...of my visit, I had begun to recognize some of these "undercover" police...
...The dissidents seem more confident than ever...
...Please come with me...
...troops stationed in South Korea...
...T.S...
...The responsibility goes right to the president...
...but if they move to suppress the movement and spark widespread unrest, they risk disrupting the Olympic Games scheduled for 1988 as well as driving away investors at a time when the economy is suffering from a severe recession and global protectionism...
...The photographs showed the "ugly side" of Korea...
...Up to 3,000 people may have died in the fighting...
...But at peacetime now, we have lost all of those freedoms...
...To regain the upper hand, the government has increasingly opted for force—the only instrument at its disposal...
...He lived in South Korea from 1959 to 1961 and has visited there often...
...The wealth here is monopolized by a minority, the big companies like Hyundai, Samsung, and Daewoo," said an economist whom the Chun government banned from teaching for three years...
...Chun has also deployed thousands of riot police throughout Seoul...
...Now we are seeking high-technology production...
...The photos I possessed showed rare scenes from the liberation—as the Cholla people call it—of Mokpo, a port city fifty kilometers south of Kwangju...
...They described a city run in a cooperative manner, with water, food, and electricity rationed, and buses and taxis operated free...
...What's worse, the police forces have been turning more frequently to torture...
...During his most recent trip in 1985, he conducted research on South Korea's labor situation for a U.S...
...Only America supported him...
...American officials in Korea deny any direct responsibility for the violence that occurred...
...the liberation of the city from May 22 to 26...
...For the immediate future, they agree on two broad goals...
...Dismissing this figure as the usual "groundless rumor," the government launched an investigation last June and charged a former city employee with "falsifying" records...
...Your attitude was not just, not fair...
...ties as a barrier to unification, in the dependency of our country on foreign powers, in the unholy alliance between your corporations and our entrepreneurs...
...Kwangju's official records for June 1980 showed a dramatic rise in deaths for the month of May—up from an average of 200 a month to 2,627...
...During the five days when Kwangju was in citizen hands, the diplomats say, the city was in "chaos...
...If an open election is to be held in 1987, the constitution will have to be changed soon...
...What's worse, I didn't understand the country's "special situation," Tim Shorrock is a free-lance writer based in Washington, D.C...
...We had freedom of speech, local autonomy, direct election of the president, the independence of the national assembly and the judicial branch...
...They also criticize what they consider to be his pro-American attitude...
...Many activists are studying the history of the Philippines, Nicaragua, and El Salvador to find parallels in their own situation...
...If the United States doesn't see our movement properly and continues to support the Korean government, then it will contribute to something quite unfortunate...
...Students guarding ammunition came out waving a white flag with their hands in the air and were shot and killed in cold blood...
...Chun's party blocked the investigation because Chun himself was directly involved in putting down the uprising...
...In wartime, our people's per-capita income was only $16...
...The witnesses also criticize the actions of the army when it recaptured the city...
...KIM: In the future, we can realize strong security because we can enjoy the people's voluntary support and also force North Korea to have a sincere dialogue to bring peace to the Korean peninsula...
...With special treatment from the government in the forms of export and import licenses, low taxes, unenforced labor and environmental standards, and low-interest credit, the jaebol have gained tremendous control over the economy...
...There were no police or army—just the people, all young and old, together, functioning in a very humanitarian manner...
...Many people in Kwangju believe that the unprovoked attack by the paratroopers was designed by Chun to goad people to rebel and thus give Chun a rationale— "saving the nation"—for his seizure of power...
...There was no breaking into banks, no looting...
...Last spring, student activists stood up to government intimidation and formed their own autonomous organizations on campuses, which have spearheaded the movement...
...The leaflets I was carrying, the agents explained, were written by "bad elements...
...You know, when there was the Korean War thirty years ago, there was democracy—in wartime...
...asked the lawyer, who was imprisoned for three years after the uprising...
...Kwangju is by far the most explosive issue in Korea today...
...banks and commercial organizations, occupying (and sometimes burning) government facilities, and fighting riot police with Molotov cocktails...
...pressure to open the South Korean market to foreign goods...
...If America had not sent one division to Kwangju, Chun Doo Hwan would not have succeeded in getting power...
...Two thousand or more workers have been fired and blacklisted for union activity, while more than seventy trade unionists have been imprisoned...
...Inside an envelope hidden in a book, I had tucked two packets of color photographs given to me by dissidents...
...In this way, Chun is hoping to paint the emerging student and youth movement as a plot hatched in Pyongyang...
...These officers are said to be recruited from the gangs of hoodlums rounded up during Chun's "purification drives" in 1980, who were given the choice of going to jail or joining the police...
...Ihave visited South Korea four times in the last five years...
...policy...
...We see the implications of U.S...
...One of the most significant actions occurred last June, when 1,000 workers at six factories in Seoul's Kuro Industrial Complex launched sit-in strikes to protest the arrests of union leaders at the nearby Daewoo Apparel Company—the first sympathy strikes since the late 1940s...
...The attitude of the U.S...
...And when the troops from the Twentieth Division mobilized by Wickham entered Kwangju, they "retook the city in a very peaceful fashion, and acted very responsibly...
...But we can't enjoy the same freedom we had when it was $ 16...
...Freed in 1981 after strong pressures from around the world, he moved to the United States, where he spent four years writing and lecturing...
...Defense Intelligence Agency...
...11 Strengthened by the spectacular showing of the opposition New Democratic Party (NKDP), which swept every city in last February's election on a platform dedicated to ending military rule, the opposition forces now have the Chun government on the defensive...
...According to sources in Korea, several prominent activists now in custody have been tortured with electric shock and other gruesome techniques and then forced to declare themselves communists and North Korean agents...
...There was a normal, very orderly process during the time of our liberation," recalls a minister...
...the seizure of arms on May 21...
...The will of the people is toward democracy...
...The Kwangju problem must be resolved before the Korean political situation is properly normalized," says one judge...
...And we support the national security...
...The Kwangju people kept order...
...But it didn't go over...
...They have begun to take their protests to the streets—the only place they think their struggle can be won...
...But this expansion has come at the expense of the bulk of the Korean population—its low-paid workers...
...Lots of innocent people were killed...
...We criticize America and Japan, but we don't want to become anti-American and anti-Japanese...
...Who knows when it will explode...
...So we must escape the need for such an era...
...But the low-wage era has passed...
...To succeed in such a hightech era, we must liberate two groups: one is businessmen...
...Since July, hundreds of students have been arrested, including members of the Sanmintu, the group that organized last May's occupation of the USIS library...
...paratroopers broke order...
...Many dissidents mistrust him, fearing that he may put his political ambitions above the broader needs of the opposition...
...cultural centers in major cities have been firebombed, U.S...
...We never want to damage our ability to promote exports...
...Unless your government supports the flowering of democracy here, our long-time relations will have come to a bitter end...
...The dictatorial government fails to get the people's voluntary and full support...
...One day, as I emerged from a subway, several hundred of them were breaking up a demonstration of slum dwellers protesting forced evictions...
...For the next hour-and-a-half, I was besieged with questions: Who gave you these photos...
...Each time I have come, the dissident movement seems stronger, broader, more confident than the time before...
...The death toll was far higher than the 191 claimed by the government and repeated by most of the Western media during last spring's occupation of the USIS building...
...This is not true...
...I felt my stomach tighten as he escorted me to a nearby holding area, where he dumped on a table the entire contents of my bag—files, notes, tape recorder, camera, assorted clippings, socks, toothbrush, and a piece of calligraphy by dissident leader Kim Dae Jung reading To care for the people as if they were heaven...
...Household income and labor income have grown at only half the rate of per-capita income over the last twenty years...
...In an interview session that lasted from late morning until evening, the committee members—two ministers, a trial lawyer, a prominent judge, the director of a local YWCA, a teacher, and a pharmacist from the nearby town of Mokpo—laid out, in sometimes painful detail, the events of May 17 through May 26, 1980...
...Last year, with former political rival Kim Young Sam, he organized the Council to Promote Democracy and returned to South Korea to rejoin the democratic movement...
...We would raise conditions for a permanent peace treaty to ask American troops to withdraw from South Korea...
...We must liberate them so we can have free competition and fair competition...
...nuclear weapons from the country...
...Three-and-a-half years ago, the Ninth Division of the Korean Army was permanently stationed near Seoul to prepare for domestic unrest, according to a recently released document from the U.S...
...This single act has put a bloody stain on U.S.Korean relations that may never be erased...
...I saw these stormtroopers in action several times...
...Don't you know we have laws about taking underground literature out of Korea...
...I interviewed Kim last June, a month before he was placed under house arrest again...
...And I was informed that, for "security reasons," the airport authorities had decided to keep the pictures...
...Q: Do you favor the withdrawal of the 40,000 U.S...
...The five-day period of liberation differed sharply from the government's claim of "chaos" in the streets...
...I'm a journalist, I protested, an American citizen, the people in these pictures are friends of mine, you have no right to do this—all the usual isn't-this-a-democ-racy stuff...
...Following the military coup led by General Chun Doo Hwan, citizens in Kwangju rose up after Chun's paratroopers savagely attacked peaceful demonstrators...
...You should tell your people this," one retired journalist from Mokpo told me...
...Many Koreans view Chun's recent crackdown as the act of a desperate man who knows he lacks legitimacy...
...The government blames the people here for the violence," said one of the ministers...
...KIM: I am carefully hopeful...
...So we don't support any laborer's request to ask a higher wage compared to promotion of productivity...
...This was the limit of [U.S.] involvement...
...they told me...
...The agent looked at me suspiciously...
...South Korea, for all its political repression, is highly touted in the West as a model of Third World economic development...
...troops, and peace groups within the churches have demanded the removal of U.S...
...But the issue of Kwangju has serious implications for the United States as well: During the uprising, the American commander of the joint U.S.-Korean military forces—General John Wickham, now chief of staff of the U.S...
...The opposition forces have gathered impressive speed over the past two years: If More than 150 unions have been organized, many of them under the leadership of a dynamic, largely underground labor movement with close ties to the democratic opposition...
...As I stormed out of the customs gate to meet my delayed plane, one of the agents turned to me with an embarrassed look on his face...
...For five days this situation prevailed...
...Dissidents and opposition politicians have formed a committee and are appealing to the United Nations to investigate the torture charges...
...operational control...
...These huge conglomerates—called jae-bol in Korean—produce everything from ships to textiles, and they control the bulk of the country's exports...
...Q: What kind of economic system would you like to see in South Korea...
...They were unable to fight...
...Their story is chilling, their message powerful...
...But the fruits of growth are not widely shared...
...It was this action that sparked the student occupation of the USIS building last May...
...asked a customs agent as I stood in line at Seoul's Kimpo International Airport waiting to catch a Northwest Airlines flight to Tokyo...
...If the Americans didn't support that paratroopers' massacre, then our people would have risen up for democracy in other cities...
...Student leaflets have openly criticized the presence of U.S...
...But at the present, it is too early for us to ask for the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea because there is no strong security under dictatorial rule...
...How can we understand this...
...America needs to recognize this process is taking place and to give support...
...Two agents studied them and decided to send the photos upstairs to a superior who, I was told, would decide their fate...
...Accompanied by an old friend who speaks fluent Korean and has lived in the country for more than thirty years, I was able to meet and converse with many people, including the leaders of a committee formed to build a memorial to those who died during the uprising...
...To keep the media in their place, the KCIA, Korea's intelligence agency, abducted three editors and writers from the prominent Dong-A-Ilbo newspaper and severely beat them for printing a story against government wishes...
...As the government has turned to harsh measures to crush their movement, some students have gone to the extreme of taking over U.S...
...To call this "chaos," he said angrily, "is a bald-faced lie...
...Chun and his military and corporate allies are adamant that the system remain intact so they can hang on to the reins of power...
...So you should have criticized the paratroopers' side, not the Kwangju people's side...
...In this country, all businessmen are under government control...
...Plainclothes police, dressed in white jackets with little buttons on their lapels identifying their agency—military police, regular police, and riot police—carefully watch such buildings as the American embassy or the United States Information Office for any signs of trouble...
...You're really talking about how the government took power," one foreign diplomat told me...
...intervention...
...Government toward the democratic movement will also play an important role...
...Here are some excerpts from our conversation: Q: Was the United States responsible for the Kwangju Uprising and its bloody suppression...
...Q: How unified is the opposition movement...
...We could have succeeded in restoring democracy...
...People rose up because the paratroopers came here and were cruel and brutal, and the people were enraged...
...government and business facilities occupied by protesters, American flags burned at demonstrations...
...the forty-eight hours of agonizing negotiation between the "Reconciliation Committee" and the military, and the pre-dawn attack on the provincial capital, where the last voices of resistance were stilled...
...There is the Chinese competition—they are competing with Korea at a far lower wage...
...Last May, a group of twenty-five student leaders occupied the library of the United States Information Service (USIS) in Seoul, demanding that the United States apologize for its role in suppressing the Kwangju Uprising...
...The other set of photos was taken during the uprising that shook the city of Kwangju and the province of South Cholla in May 1980...
...First, they want an open and free presidential election in 1987...
...And, according to government figures, three million people—30 per cent of the country's labor force—earn less than 100,000 won per month, considered the minimum living cost for a single person...
...That feeling pervades our social atmosphere...
...No," I lied...
...Army—gave Chun permission to deploy Korean troops from the border with North Korea and to enter Kwangju and put down the rebellion...
...They are tough, trained in martial arts, and given a solid education in anti-communist ideology...
...now it has soared to $2,000...
...They described those days as only people who lived through them could: the murderous rampage by paratroopers on the afternoon of May 18, when hundreds of people were bayonetted to death, their bodies dumpedin trucks and taken to still-unknown burial sites...
...It was the photographs that drew the most attention...
...I was free to leave...
...The Ministry of Culture and Information launched a broad attack on the minjung ("people's") cultural movement, arresting poets, artists, and novelists, and confiscating paintings and literature that portray the lives of ordinary workers and farmers...
...Thirty-five years after the end of the Korean War, 40,000 American ground troops and several hundred American nuclear weapons are stationed in the country...
...Five years after the uprising, the full truth of how and why it occurred has yet to come out...
...But for one five-day spell, the area surrounding Kwangju was freed from military rule...
Vol. 50 • February 1986 • No. 2
