Gwangju Uprising

In May 1980 the people of Gwangju, a city in the south-west of South Korea, rose against the military strongman Chun Doo-hwan after paratroopers savagely attacked students protesting against martial law. Armed residents drove the army out of the city for several days before troops stormed back in on 27 May. Official figures counted fewer than 200 dead, but later estimates run from about 600 to 2,300, and the uprising, known in Korea as the May 18 Democratization Movement, became a founding event of the country's democracy.

When President Park Chung Hee was assassinated on 26 October 1979, his 18 years of authoritarian rule ended abruptly, leaving a power vacuum. In December 1979 Chun Doo-hwan, head of the Defense Security Command, seized control of the army. When universities reopened in spring 1980, students led nationwide protests for democracy and an end to martial law, culminating in a rally of over 100,000 people at Seoul Station on 15 May. On 17 May Chun extended martial law to the whole country, closed the universities, banned political activity and arrested opposition leaders, among them Kim Dae-jung. Gwangju, capital of South Jeolla Province, was Kim's political home in a region long neglected by Park's government.

On the morning of 18 May about 200 students assembled outside the gate of Chonnam National University in protest at its closure. Soldiers charged them, and the protest moved downtown. That afternoon paratroopers of the 7th Airborne Brigade took over and began clubbing, bayoneting and beating demonstrators and bystanders alike; the first known victim was a deaf man of 29, Kim Gyeong-cheol. The brutality swelled the crowds to more than 10,000 by 20 May, when taxi and bus drivers led a convoy to the provincial office and protesters burned two broadcasting stations accused of spreading falsehoods. On 21 May troops opened fire on a crowd in front of the provincial office. Residents then seized weapons from police stations and reserve armouries, formed militias and forced the army out of the city centre by evening.

From 22 May the army ringed Gwangju and cut it off. Inside, committees of citizens and students ran funerals, traffic, medical aid and the collection of weapons, and tried to negotiate a settlement. Violence continued on the outskirts: on 23 May soldiers fired on a bus trying to leave the city, killing 15 of its 18 passengers, and on 24 May two army units mistakenly fired on each other, killing 13 soldiers. Protests spread to nearby towns of South Jeolla. Talks stalled when the army demanded unconditional disarmament, and the militias resolved to fight on.

At 4 a.m. on 27 May three airborne brigades re-entered the city and overcame the militias at the provincial office within 90 minutes. The United States, fearing intervention by North Korea, had approved the use of Korean troops to retake Gwangju. The martial law authorities then announced that 4 police officers, 22 soldiers and 144 civilians had died; disputing it could lead to arrest. Some later estimates put the toll as high as 2,300.

Chun's government called the uprising a riot stirred up by communists and North Korea, a claim later contradicted by declassified American intelligence. Some 1,394 people were arrested, and Kim Dae-jung was sentenced to death before the sentence was commuted. As South Korea democratised, the verdict changed. A 1995 special law allowed prosecutions despite the statute of limitations, and in 1996 a court sentenced Chun to death, later reduced to life imprisonment, and his successor Roh Tae-woo to 22 and a half years; all those convicted were pardoned in December 1997. In 1997, 18 May became a national day of remembrance, and in 2011 the uprising's archives were added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register. In 2018 the defence ministry apologised, acknowledging that helicopters had fired on civilians and that soldiers had committed sexual violence, and a truth commission began work in 2020.

Our 1960 and 1985 maps show South Korea, whose borders were unaffected by the uprising.