Behind the Myth: Did North Korea Help Gwangju’s May 18 Uprising?
Every month of May, the myth is revived that Gwangju’s moment of glory in 1980, when the city held out for a full week against South Korea’s new military dictatorship, received an assist from North Korea.
Belief in this conspiracy theory is unfortunately strong among conservatives – strong enough that last year, two TV channels ran programs in which North Korean defectors claimed they personally fought in the uprising. As translated by the JoongAng Daily in a May 13, 2013 article, one defector said, “We pretended to be Gwangju civilian forces and even attacked the South’s government forces together.”
The JoongAng Daily reported that the story received over 17,000 supportive comments on the conservative website Ilbe, even though no respected intellectuals on the Right or Left believed the story. Cho Gab-je, a conservative commentator who defends the reputation of dictator Park Chung-hee, even penned a reply to the allegations entitled, “Intervention by North Korea special forces in Gwangju is something I cannot believe!”
Nor should anyone. The uprising has been exhaustively researched by now; we know everyone who was involved. But why do these lies continue to be believed so strongly over 30 years after the fact?
The slur is effective because although Korea’s Democrats find it politically uncomfortable to discuss, South Jeolla in 1980 was indeed home to multiple socialists sympathetic to communism, as well as a few outright communists and even the rare pro-North agitator. Indeed, the early stages of the 1980’s “Pyeongyang fever” were in evidence all over South Korea; songs were sung of liberating the minjung – the proletariat – and activists called each other dongji, the Korean equivalent of “comrade.” The year before the Gwangju Massacre, the government arrested an explicitly pro-North group named the South Korean National Liberation Front.
Were the students who led Gwangju’s uprising part of such a movement? In his article “Yun Sang-won: The Knowledge in Those Eyes,” journalist Bradley Martin lists every political book he saw on the bookshelf of the revered martyr Yun Sang-won, who died fighting the Korean army. Martin did indeed find such titles as “The Origins of Socialism” and “The Theory and Practice of Communism.” As he points out, however, these books are “far from propaganda.” They are the same sort of books Martin himself read at Princeton University.
This distinction – the difference between a communist and an intellectual, or a communist and a socialist, or even a communist and a fifth columnist – was lost on the government of 1980 and is unfortunately still lost on many people today. The existence of a variety of Leftists in 1980 South Jeolla was a sign of a healthy interest in ideas, not North Korean espionage. In fact to whatever degree communism ever found support in South Jeolla, Seoul is probably more responsible for it than Pyeongyang; abuse and neglect by South Korea’s government undoubtedly strengthened interest in other ideologies. But that is a subject the conservatives find politically uncomfortable.
Good article I enjoy reading about the history of Gwangju. The communists, whether real or imagined, as usual, ruined it for the common man, co-opting his dissatisfaction with the government and creating an atmosphere of fear that gives cause for corrupt governments to over react and for distant governments, like the USA under Reagan, to make the mistake of inadvertently supporting a dictator out of fear of communist influence, which was a problem for American foreign policy in Latin America as well.
But one of the challenges for dissenters is the inability to see the long term consequences of actions and ideas and understand why western leaning/supported governments have legitimate concerns about the presence of communism within their borders. The United States had the same challenge/problem during the ‘Cold War’ and the Soviet Union was more than happy to exploit it. The proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, that today currently threatens this peninsula, was the direct result of Russia’s ability to co-opt youthful yet ignorant ‘Parlor-Pink’ and ‘Fellow Traveler’ Americans who were embracing communism within the comforts of their relatively privileged western lifestyles. The life of Robert Oppenheimer is one example of this problem and his biography is worth reading.
Also, as a side note, I think the paragraph – “This distinction – the difference between a communist and an intellectual who considers communism – was lost on the government of 1980 and is unfortunately still lost on many people today.”, is problematic. The burden of distinction should also be shared by the practitioners not just the government. Writing a doctoral dissertation on why communism failed worldwide and Secular atheist Marxist ideologies adopted by Cambodia and North Korea have murdered even more people than Muslim extremists is much easier for any government to understand than saying naive things like, “Communism isn’t so bad”, or the western lefts naive mantra, “Your being paranoid and over stating the threat.” (As if they have insider knowledge about what foreign governments are doing abroad, as if spies are going to pop up and say, ‘here I am’ )
But beyond this debate of distinguishing, even when communism is indirectly present or pretends to be your book-club friend it is still your enemy. The desire for democracy anywhere in the world should be free from all communist influence. If you want legitimacy for a political movement, immediately get rid of all notions of ‘revolution’ and ideas that communism is a benign alternative or an ally. That is a hard lesson to learn for many in the west who have enjoyed the material privileges of democracy and capitalism for so long. Germany, South Korea, and thankfully still some parts of Ukraine have all said no to communism even in it’s intellectual form. China is trying to say no and hopefully Cuba and Vietnam will do so soon.
Thankfully, today, even without the benefit of scores of documents released after the Soviet Unions collapse, we now know that the Chinese/Soviets were very much a threat worldwide. Only recently after Putin came out publicly before the Olympics against homosexuals as predators did the American left finally, collectively, acknowledge that the Russian government was ‘bad’. All Americans, after 70 years, can finally join together and be ‘anti-Russian’ – “Dude Putin is an @#$!hole, I hate Russia.” Thats progress.
In the middle east where the Arab spring has been forcing change in oppressive Muslim governments, the common moderate Arab people are not dabbling with old communism and it’s secular persecution of theism. They want a better future, they are regular people, with traditional families, they want good government not terrorism or anarchy. They want democracy and modernity and to rid themselves of tyrants in Syria and Iran and that is something the Gwangju uprising should resonate with.
As I watch political events unfold in Thailand, and the new military leaders say things like, “Democracy isn’t working” and consider the possibility that China, North Korea, and Russia as usual will take full advantage of the situation, I realize how much I have benefited from being in a stable democracy and how good things actually are in Korea.
‘James’ I have to apologize somewhat for that paragraph because it presumes a certain level of understanding of the western cultural context and contains a kind of sarcasm that is misunderstood outside of that context. What, I’m trying to say is that a radical minority in America has been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting the ideas of ‘Free Markets, Free Peoples, and Free Speech.’ And they spent years saying silly things like, “…if only Communism was practiced properly all would be well” (It’s never been, nor will it ever be ‘practiced properly’). I actually knew a white American suburban kid who said he would gladly defect to China if they invaded the USA (he would keep his Iphone though).
Anyway, because Putin imprisoned a sucky female punk band(And the Cossacks beat their asses to much public joy during the Olympics) and because he committed a serious western cultural faux pas by equating gays with predators, white western sympathy for Russia is at it lowest in years. And worse, an entire generation of US kids have been raised to be the center of attention in a kind of quasi socialist suburban home life where schools and parents gave them wholly unearned accolades, wealth and status, (something the outside world refuses to do), now they are lashing out at competition, free markets, religion, and Russia.
In short, I don’t hate the Russian people and I wish the West could have kept Putin as a friend but he is heading east now for more reliable partnerships.
This is an article well written with convincing evidences against the myth of North Korean soldire involvement in the Gwangju Uprising in 1980. I just want to add one more information. Gwangju citizens delivered those who promoted North Korea or communits ideology to the police or the martial law army. Nobody was prosecuted afterwards. They were all thugs planeed by the the military regime to discredit the uprising, which the Gwangju citizens understood from their experiences.
As a linguist myself, I can safely confirm that it will take half a year to train 600 soldiers to use the Gwangju dialect before their infiltration to Gwangju. The ultra-conservatives still assert that 600 soldiers were in Gwangju. I wonder how they went back to the North, no one being captured. None was punished for allowing the infiltration in the South Korean Army. There are thousands of reasons against the presence of North Korean soldiers in Gwangju while there is none for it.