In 1961, a politician and army officer named Park Chung-hee seized power in South Korea through a military coup. He eventually became president in 1963, and served several terms until his death. South Korea's rapid growth and industrialization transformed the country into an "economic powerhouse," though this came at great costs to human life and democracy. In the translator's note in Human Acts, Deborah Smith states that Park declared martial law in response to the protests against his increasingly authoritarian regime. For example, Park's administration controlled the press and universities, drastically increased presidential powers through the Yushin Constitution, and created a dictatorship. Following Park's assassination in 1979, his protégé Chun Doo-hwan assumed strict military rule over South Korea. Chun convinced the standing president, Choi Kyu-hah, to appoint him as the chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. From there, the military (led by Chun) declared martial law in May of 1980.
Beginning initially as a student protest movement calling for democracy, the Gwangju Uprising gained traction among other citizens and workers. On May 18th, students at Chonnam National University in support of academic freedom demonstrated against Chun Doo-hwan's coup d'état. Soldiers opened fire on, killed, beat, and tortured these protestors, inciting citizens to take up arms and form militias. The citizens broke into police stations and armories for weapons. They managed to fend off the soldiers and drive them out of the city. However, a week later on May 27th, the military returned. The South Korean military (with the approval of the US) sent elite Special Forces, tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters to Gwangju. They brutally suppressed the resistance movement and indiscriminately attacked the city. In addition, the government claimed that the uprising was organized by communist sympathizers. The number of deaths and detainees remains heavily disputed to this day, with government records indicating around 200, and Gwangju residents insisting that the number is closer to 2,000.
Although the uprising was quashed and did not immediately bring about democracy, it is credited as being a defining moment in South Korea's struggle for democracy.
