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The Gwangju Uprising, also known in South Korea as May 18 Democratization Movement (Korean: 오일팔 민주화 운동), was a series of student-led demonstrations that took place in Gwangju, South Korea, in May 1980, against the coup d'état of May Seventeenth by Chun Doo-hwan that strengthened his power. Chun had previously taken power and become military dictator through the coup d'état of December Twelfth at the end of 1979. He implemented martial law, arrested opposition leaders, closed all universities, banned political activities, and suppressed the press. The uprising was violently suppressed by the South Korean military who retook Gwangju. Between 600 and 2,300 people were killed. The uprising began when Chonnam National University students demonstrating against martial law were fired upon, killed, 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. The military government of Chun labelled the uprising a "riot" and claimed, without evidence, that it was being instigated by "communist sympathizers and rioters" acting at the behest of the North Korean government. The United States under the Carter administration, fearing that North Korea might intervene, gave approval to Chun to retake the city and also considered contingency plans to send extra U.S. troops to South Korea if the uprising spread to other cities. In 1997, a national day of commemoration for the massacre was established for May 18 and a national cemetery for the victims was established. Later investigations confirmed the atrocities that had been committed by the army. In 2011, the document archive of the Gwangju Uprising was listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register. In contemporary South Korean politics, denial of the Gwangju Massacre is commonly espoused by conservative and far-right groups.