Minnen från diktaturens Sydkorea väcks till liv: ”Desperation och rädsla”

The Gwangju Uprising, known in Korean as May 18 (Korean: 오일팔; Hanja: 五一八; RR: Oilpal; lit. Five One Eight), was a series of student-led demonstrations that took place in Gwangju, South Korea, in May 1980, against the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. The uprising was violently suppressed by the South Korean military with the approval and logistical support of the United States under the Carter administration, which feared the uprising might spread to other cities and tempt North Korea to interfere. The uprising is also known as the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement (Korean: 5·18 광주 민주화 운동; Hanja: 五一八光州民主化運動; RR: 5·18 Gwangju minjuhwa undong), the Gwangju Democratization Struggle (Korean: 광주 민주화 항쟁; Hanja: 光州民主化抗爭; RR: Gwangju minjuhwa hangjaeng), the May 18 Democratic Uprising (Korean: 5·18 민주화 운동; Hanja: 五一八民主化運動; RR: 5·18 minjuhwa undong) or the Gwangju Uprising (Korean: 광주 항쟁; Hanja: 光州抗爭; RR: Gwangju hangjaeng) in South Korea. Prior to the uprising, at the end of 1979, the coup d'état of May Seventeenth resulted in the installation of Chun Doo-hwan as military dictator and the implementation of martial law. Following his ascent to power, Chun arrested opposition leaders, closed all universities, banned political activities, and suppressed the press. The uprising began when Chonnam National University students demonstrating against martial law were fired upon, killed, raped, beaten and tortured by the South Korean military. Some Gwangju citizens took up arms and formed militias, raiding local police stations and armories, and were able to take control of large sections of the city before soldiers re-entered the city and suppressed the uprising. While the South Korean government claimed 165 people were killed in the massacre, scholarship on the massacre today estimates 600 to 2,300 victims. Under the military dictatorship of Chun, the South Korean government labelled the uprising as a ''riot'' and claimed that it was being instigated by "communist sympathizers and rioters" acting under the behest of the North Korean government. In 1997, 18 May was established as a national day of commemoration for the massacre and a national cemetery for the victims was established. Later investigations confirmed the various atrocities that had been committed by the army. In 2011, the documents of Gwangju Uprising were listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. In contemporary South Korean politics, denial of the Gwangju Massacre is commonly espoused by conservative and far-right groups.