May 18 Democratic Uprising and Women

PREFACE _Lee, Kyung-soon 3

Chapter 1 The Gwangju Citizen’s Resistance and Women _Ahn, Jean 15
1. Introduction 17
2. The Viewpoints on the Gwangju Citizen’s Resistance 18
3. The Historical Background of the Gwangju Uprising 22
4. What Women Did in the Gwangju Uprising 35
5. Conclusion 60

Chapter 2 The Women’s Activities in the Gwangju Citizen’s Resistance _Park, O’Bog 71
1. No More Blood: Cho, Ah?ra 78
2. Women’s Systematic Cooking and Catering Activity: Jeong, Hyang?ja 92
3. Kill the Guy Who Looks like a University Student: Kang, Boon?hee 103
4. Picking Up Weapons in Jangseong: Ahn, Eun?kyung 113
5. Vehicle Demonstration by Female Laborers of Ilshin Reeling Co.: Kim, Jeong?soon 123
6. Holding My Friend’s Hand during the Street Demonstrations: Hong, Won?young 130
7. Making Molotov Cocktails and Kimbap: Yoon, Kyung?ja 132
8. Collecting Rice and Making Kimbap: Kim, Kyung?ae 136
9. Things I Could Do as a High School Student: Pyo, Kang?nim 139
10. Confirmation of Class Consciousness Put into Action in the Revolutionary Period: Hong, Hee?yoon 144
11. Summarization of YWCA Women’s Activity: Jeong, Hyeon?ae 147
12. Woman Demagogue Brought into Sudden Prominence: Jeon, Choon?shim 160
13. Woman Leader of Protest Meetings: Lee, Hyun?joo 175
14. Devoted to Publicity Work: Kim, Jeong?hee 182
15. Ten Days of Breathlessness: Jeong, Yoo?ah 189
16. Collection of Money; Preparation of Rally: Im, Young?hee 196

Chapter 3 The Women’s Resistance and the Victims _Lee, Kyung-soon 199
1. The Killed 204
2. The Wounded 219
3. The Broken Families 248
4. The Psychological Shocks and the Scar on Women 267
5. The Collective Shocks 287

INDEX 293

It has been thirty two years since the Gwangju Uprising in May against the military junta passed into part of history. From that time on, although diverse evaluations and interpretations of it have been made on the basis of historical facts, it was not until the tenth anniversary of the May Resistance that an opportunity to do justice to it from an historical point of view was allowed. In the meantime, the Research Institute of Modern Korean Historical Materials, encouraged by the effort of the conscientious citizens of various quarters, not to speak of the citizens of Gwangju and Jeonnam province, started to illuminate scientifically the true nature and meaning of the Resistance through the collection of materials and study. The Women’s Association of Gwangju and Jeonnam Province too, keeping step with all these movements, organized the Women’s Research Society in September 1990, and scientifically shed light on the women’s activities in the Resistance, on the meaning of the influence of the Uprising on the Korean women’s movement, and on the casualties and the activities of women in Gwangju and Jeonnam province after the Resistance, and then published them in a book form.
Our aim is to make clear the condition of women’s activities based on the many written testimonies, and also to detail the ways in which the Resistance took a toll on individual lives, in order to disclose the atrocious acts of the junta. We also intend, in a small way, to probe into the situation of the women’s great contributions in the Uprising, which are often apt to be viewed as negligible, and to show the importance of the role women played in sublimating the great Gwangju Uprising. Then again, this book also brings to focus how the consciousness of the women of Gwangju has changed since the Uprising, and how they were able to integrate their efforts through the process of coping collectively with the surprising human costs involved in the Uprising.
As is generally known, the Gwangju Uprising was caused by the New Military Group, which was dazzled by the lust for power in 1980. They slaughtered people, especially the people of Gwangju, who had an eager desire for democratization. Although the sixth Republic defined the Uprising as a democratization movement, they only made reparations for the casualties in a material way, and they said the matter had been brought to conclusion. On the contrary, they tried every man available, taking conciliatory and suppressive measures as occasion called. This shows that offering reparations was just a gesture for staying in power without taking any proper steps. On the contrary, they had no mind to punish the men who were responsible for firing weapons, and continued to try to deceive people by foul political tricks. As the new military junta desperately tried to conceal the casualties at the time of the Resistance, so the government in power after the fact continued to suppress the truth and try to bait the event sufferers, who have been hard up during the succeeding eleven years, with money. This outward attitude cannot possibly be accepted because it is an act leading to the bankruptcy of the human character.
It is true that the Gwangju Uprising of May provided the Gwangju women with a potential chance to change their attitude toward the lie. In other words, it awoke the Gwangju women’s consciousness and led them to the construction of a new outlook on life. In short, it, as a catalyst, played a very large part in forming the foundation of women’s life from that point on. In this book we will reveal through the historical evidence that Gwangju women, too, realized the gravity of the situation and were active in the Resistance as much as men and that many women were either killed or wounded. Even the male citizens of Gwangju probably had not expected that the women should so actively participate in the Resistance as the main constituents till the eve of the event. They took the lead in the settlement of the affairs and were able to persuade the other party because they harbored all the conflicts as much as other Koreans did.
This book relates how actively the women were engaged in saving the situation as members of committees, in supplying food, in offering blood transfusions and donations, in preparing the citizen’s rallies, in watching over the dead bodies, in announcing news through loud speakers in the street, in producing placards or news posters to put on the walls, and how they played an important part in negotiation with the opposing party, and in apprising what happened in Gwangju to the people of other districts. For example, from the beginning to the end, the great majority of the people in charge of cooking food for the demonstrators entrenched at the Provincial Hall were the members of the Young Women’s Labor Union. They worked at Jeonnam Spinning Mill or at the Rocket Dry Cell Factory. It is said they never served stale food to the demonstrators.
The experience in Gwangju brought about the forming of a strong relationship of solidarity among women. After 1980, the Gwangju women made up a party to inform other people of their own experiences, but it was impossible to organize on a large scale and activate it because the government suppressed it by all means available. Even under such conditions, however, the ‘Democratic Families Association’, ‘Mothers’ Association’, and the ‘Association of the Wounded’ could change their gloomy mood merely by paying attention to an injured heart and talking with each other. These kinds of activities did not begin systematically by checking up the historical meaning of the Resistance caused by the butchery plot of the military junta. And in spite of the fact that the patriarchal system and sex distinction were still very much alive, women gave full play to their ability because they were mothers of the youngsters who had been branded as rioters. They risked the danger for their daughters and sons, who were mostly petty and poor traders, shoeshine boys, needle workers, or factory hands. Almost all of them were so?called lower classes; they fought heroically against the military junta to the last.
The Gwangju Uprising has an important meaning in itself, but it also gives us an important historical lesson in that the military junta revealed its true colors through its evil conduct in taking power. Consequently, none could fail to mention the loss of human dignity in historical terms, without making reference to the Gwangju massacre. During Park Chung?hee’s regime, together with the export drive policy, the industrial policy brought about unfair and unequal development across the nation, due to the policy’s partiality toward particular provinces. Owing to this kind of partial treatment, Gwangju city and Jeonnam province, which were, and still are, mainly dependent upon agriculture, fell far behind other provinces in terms of standard of living. During the Uprising most of the casualties fought in isolated situations. To tell the truth, if it had not been for pictorial record of the event, ordinary Korean people would not have believed the horrible spectacle in which the citizens were trampled down like lumps of flesh. There in the pictures, we find many women most atrociously killed among the killed and wounded. The acts of brutality, the methods of butchery, violence, and rape that the army, mobilized under the martial law, committed are vividly represented through the female victims. The soldiers aimed at women, regardless of whether they were pregnant women or girl students.
After that, most of the wounded became deranged, and the bereaved mothers also died away one after another with bitter grief in their hearts. In addition, a number of families have broken up under the yoke of hardship. The scar that the Gwangju Uprising has left on the women’s hearts is too deep to be effaced. We should not denounce women who were falsely accused of espionage activities and sexually tortured as infantile heroines. Under such miserable circumstances in which most people fell into dissociation of personality, a woman who bravely sets herself up and expresses what she underwent during the event must be treated as valuable.
In what follows, you will read about women like the woman beaten by soldiers on the street at midnight, who is now sustaining her dissociated life in an asylum; or the girls’ high school student who was assaulted by a group of soldiers and has now completely lost the meaning of life. We can see from such offenses and injuries as these, committed solely against females, what the military junta really was. The reason why we describe in this book in detail how the women of Gwangju were victimized is to derive a historically important lesson by exposing the truth of the military junta’s unpardonable wrongdoings although they tried to wipe out the proof of it.
On the day of May 18th, the main street of Gwangju City was a field of death. Both the persons who suffered and the persons who committed violence were no more human beings. The junta wielded arms like savage brutes and the regular citizens, women as well as men, were like driving beasts. In short, the law of the jungle prevailed. In a situation where one is forced to live as a beast, the women of Gwangju City struggled in a frenzy to be human and redeem life as human beings. They are still not free from the psychological shock and the trauma of that day. Their agony of mind is also caused by their husbands, whose groaning under the fetters of history is getting worse, to say nothing of the repentance and the consciousness of debt to the dead as survivors of the tragedy. A number of wives have become the prey of their husband’s violence, but they have nothing to do but to put up with it. The government authorities, from the very nature of things, should bear the responsibility for all this kind of privation. For, if the junta had not committed the wrongdoings of brutality or if they had not stigmatized the citizens as rioters, ordinary peaceful homes would not have been visited by such horrible misery.
The Women’s Association of Gwangju and Jeonnam Province published this book because this kind of problem should be shared with all other women. We realized through the Gwangju Citizen’s resistance that women could be the main constituents in the development of history. This event brought about a great change in the conventional belief that women are inferior to men in ability. The consciousness that “We women are citizens, as equal to anything as men” was actually realized by the Uprising. In fact, there was no organized guidance bureau at that time which was supposed to take charge of the concentration of women’s power in a mass, but the Uprising provided a moment to be conscious of feministic problems in particular and social reform in general. Through this book, we want to criticize the common historical tendency of making light of women’s role during the Resistance and conversely, to emphasize the great importance of their role. For, by doing so, we can properly establish the meaning of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising in terms of national history.
At the time of the Uprising, there were many women who were ruled out of productive social activity and tied down to housework. This is the very reason that they could form the spearhead of advance during the Uprising. Many fell as unknown flowers do, and so much the more conspicuous their sacrifice is. This book is dedicated to the souls who passed away as flowers plucked in the bud, and to those who are still suffering from their wounds due to the Gwangju event. We would like to dedicate this book to these women. And we make our deepest acknowledgement to the many people who helped us both materially and morally in the making of this book.

Lee, Kyung-soon
Winter 2012