Re: AUT: Iraq, Korea, Islamic Fundamentalism

["Michael Pugliese" <michael098762001@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:46:57 -0800, Hex * <shatterbreakseance@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Reply to Thiago,
>
> First, about Korea.  You may be right about 3000 slaughtered workers...

http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/shorrok.htm

The Kwangju Uprising, 1980
Written by George Katsiaficas
Taken from the website of the North-Eastern Federation of
Anarcho-Communists at www.nefac.net
http://www.enrager.net/history/articles/kwanju-uprising-1980/index.php
In the past two centuries, two events stand out as unique beacons of the
spontaneous ability of thousands of ordinary people to govern themselves:
the Paris Commune of 1871, and the Kwangju People's Uprising of 1980.

In both cities, an unarmed citizenry, in opposition to their own
governments, effectively gained control of urban space and held it despite
the presence of well-armed military forces seeking to re-establish "law
and order"; hundreds of thousands of people rose to the occasion and
created popular organs of political power that effectively and efficiently
replaced traditional forms of government; crime rates plummeted during the
period of liberation; and people felt previously inexperienced forms of
kinship with each other.

The liberated realities of the Communes in Paris and Kwangju contradict
the widely propagated myth that human beings are essentially evil and
therefore require strong governments to maintain order and justice.
Rather, the behaviour of the citizens during these moments of liberation
revealed an innate capacity for self-government and cooperation. It was
the forces of the government, not the ungoverned people that acted with
great brutality and injustice.

Events in Kwangju unfolded after the dictator of South Korea; Park
Chung-Hee was assassinated by his own chief of intelligence. In the
euphoria after Park's demise, students led a huge movement for democracy,
but General Chun Doo-Hwan seized power and threatened violence if the
protests continued. All over Korea, with the sole exception of Kwangju,
people stayed indoors. With the approval of the United States, the new
military government then released from the frontlines of the DMZ some of
the most seasoned paratroopers to teach Kwangju a lesson. Once these
troops reached Kwangju, they terrorized the population in unimaginable
ways. In the first confrontations on the morning of May 18, specially
designed clubs broke heads of defenceless students. As demonstrators
scrambled for safety and regrouped, the paratroopers viciously attacked:
"A cluster of troops attacked each student individually. They would crack
his head, stomp his back, and kick him in the face. When the soldiers were
done, he looked like a pile of clothes in meat sauce." [Lee Jae-Eui,
Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age, p. 46] Bodies
were piled into trucks, where soldiers continued to beat and kick them. By
night the paratroopers had set up camp at several universities.

As students fought back, soldiers used bayonets on them and arrested
dozens more people, many of whom were stripped naked, raped and further
brutalized. One soldier brandished his bayonet at captured students and
screamed at them, "This is the bayonet I used to cut forty Viet Cong
women's breasts [in Vietnam]!" The entire population was in shock from the
paratroopers' over-reaction. The paratroopers were so out of control that
they even stabbed to death the director of information of the police
station who tried to get them to stop brutalizing people. [Kwangju Diary,
p. 79]

Despite sever beatings and hundreds of arrests, students continually
regrouped and tenaciously fought back. As the city mobilized the next day,
people from all walks of life dwarfed the number of students among the
protesters. [The May 18 Kwangju Democratic Uprising, p. 127] This
spontaneous generation of a peoples' movement transcended traditional
divisions between town and gown, one of the first indications of the
generalization of the revolt. Paratroopers once again resorted to callous
brutality - killing and maiming people whom they happened to encounter on
the streets. Even cab and bus drivers seeking to aid the wounded and
bleeding people were stabbed, beaten and sometimes killed. Some policemen
secretly tried to release captives, and they, too, were bayoneted.
[Kwangju Diary, p.113] Many police simply went home, and the chief of
police refused to order his men t fire on protesters despite the
military's insistence he do so.
People fought back with stones, bats, knives, pipes, iron bars and hammers
against 18,000 riot police and over 3,000 paratroopers. Although many
people were killed, the city refused to be quieted. On May 20, a newspaper
called the Militants' Bulletin was published for the first time, providing
accurate news - unlike the official media. At 5:50pm, a crowd of 5,000
surged over a police barricade. When the paratroopers drove them back,
they re-assembled and sat-in on a road. They then selected representatives
to try and further split the police from the army. In the evening, the
march swelled to over 200,000 people in a city with a population then of
700,000. The massive crowd unified workers, farmers, students and people
 from all walks of life. Nine buses and over two-hundred taxis led the
procession on Kumnam Avenue, the downtown shopping area. Once again, the
paratroopers viciously attacked, and this time the whole city fought back.
During the night, cars, jeeps, taxis and other vehicles were set on fire
and pushed into the military's forces. Although the army attacked
repeatedly, the evening ended in a stalemate at Democracy Square. At the
train station, many demonstrators were killed, and at Province Hall
adjacent to Democracy Square, the paratroopers opened fire on the crowd
with M-16s, killing many more.

The censored media had failed to report the killings. Instead, false
reports of vandalism and minor police actions were the news that they
fabricated. The brutality of the army was not mentioned. After the night's
news again failed to report the situation, thousands of people surrounded
the MBC media building. Soon the management of the station and the
soldiers guarding it retreated, and the crowd surged inside. Unable to get
the broadcast facility working, people torched the building. The crowd
targeted buildings intelligently:

"At 1:00am, citizens went in flocks to the Tax Office, broke its furniture
and set fire to it. The reason was that taxes which should be used for
people's lives and welfare had been used for the army and the production
of the arms to kill and beat people. It was a very unusual case to set
fire to the broadcasting stations and tax office while protecting the
police station and other buildings." [The May 18 Kwangju Democratic
Uprising, p. 138]

Besides the Tax Office and two media buildings, the Labour Supervision
Office, Province Hall car depot and 16 police vehicles were torched. The
final battle at the train station around 4:00am was intense. Soldiers
again used M-16s against the crowd, killing many in the front ranks.
Others climbed over the bodies to carry the fight to the army. With
incredible fortitude, the people prevailed, and the army beat a hasty
retreat.

At 9:00am the next morning (May 21), more than 100,000 people gathered
again on Kumam Avenue facing the paratroopers. A small group shouted that
some people should go to Asia Motors (a military contractor) and seize
vehicles. A few dozen people went off, bringing back only seven (the exact
number of rebels who knew how to drive). As they shuttled more drivers
back and forth, soon 350 vehicles, including armoured personnel carriers,
were in the hands of the people. Driving these expropriated vehicles
around the city, the demonstrators rallied the populace and also went to
neighbouring towns and villages to spread the revolt. Some trucks brought
bread and drinks from the Coca Cola factory. Negotiators were selected by
the crowd and sent to the military. Suddenly gunshots pierced an already
thick atmosphere, ending hope for a peaceful settlement. For ten minutes,
the army indiscriminately fired, and in carnage, dozens were killed and
over 500 wounded.

The people quickly responded. Less than two hours after the shootings, the
first police station was raided for arms. More people formed action teams
and raided police and national guard armouries, and assembled at two
central points. With assistance from coal miners from Hwasun,
demonstrators obtained large quantities of dynamite and detonators. [The
May 18 Kwangju Democratic Uprising, p.143] Seven busloads of women textile
workers drove to Naju, where they captured hundreds of rifles and
ammunition and brought them back to Kwangju. Similar arms seizures
occurred in Changsong, Yoggwang and Tamyang counties. The movement quickly
spread to Hwasun, Naju, Hampyung, Youngkwang, Kangjin, Mooan, Haenam,
Mokpo - in all, at least sixteen other parts of southwest Korea. [The May
18 Kwangju Democratic Uprising, p. 164] The rapid proliferation of the
revolt is another indication of people's capacity for self-government and
autonomous initiative. Hoping to bring the uprising to Chunju and Seoul,
some demonstrators set out but were repulsed by troops blocking the
highway, roads, and railroads. Helicopter gunships wiped out units of
armed demonstrators from Hwasun and Yonggwang counties trying to reach
Kwangju. If the military had not so tightly controlled the media and
restricted travel, the revolt may have turned into a nationwide uprising.

In the heat of the moment, a structure evolved that was more democratic
than previous administrations of the city. Assembling at Kwangju Park and
Yu-tong Junction, combat cells and leadership formed. Machine guns were
brought to bear on Province Hall (where the military had its command
post). By 5:30pm, the army retreated; by 8:00pm the people controlled the
city. Cheering echoed everywhere. Although their World War II weapons were
far inferior to those of the army, people's bravery and sacrifices proved
more powerful than the technical superiority of the army. The Free Commune
lasted for six days. Daily citizens' assemblies gave voice to years-old
frustration and deep aspirations of ordinary people. Local citizens'
groups maintained order and created a new type of social administration -
one of, by and for the people. Coincidentally, on May 27 - the same day
that the Paris Commune was crushed over a hundred years earlier - the
Kwangju Commune was overwhelmed by military force despite heroic
resistance. Although brutally suppressed in 1980, for the next seven years
the movement continued to struggle, and in 1987 a nationwide uprising was
organized that finally won democratic electoral reform in South Korea.

Like the battleship Potemkin, the people of Kwangju have repeatedly
signalled the advent of revolution in South Korea - from the 1894 Tonghak
rebellion and the 1929 student revolt to the 1980 uprising. Like the Paris
Commune and the battleship Potemkin, Kwangju's historical significance is
international, not simply Korean (or French, or Russian). Its meaning and
lessons apply equally well to East and West, North and South. The 1980
peoples' uprising, like these earlier symbols of revolution, has already
had worldwide repercussions. After decades in which basic democratic
rights was repressed throughout East Asia, a wave of revolts and uprisings
transformed the region. The 1989 revolutions in Europe are well known, but
Eurocentrism often prevents comprehension of their Asian counterparts. Six
years after the Kwangju Uprising, the Marcos dictatorship was overthrown
in the Philippines. Aquino and Kim Dae-Jung had known each other in the
United States, and the experiences of the Kwangju helped to inspire action
in Manila.

All through Asia, peoples' movements for democracy and human rights
appeared: an end to martial law was won in Taiwan in 1987; in Burma a
popular movement exploded in March 1988, when students and ethnic
minorities took to the streets of Rangoon. Despite horrific repression,
the movement compelled President Ne Win to step down after 26-years of
rule. The next year, student activists in China activated a broad public
cry for democracy, only to be shot down at Tiananmen Square and hunted for
years afterward. Nepal's turn was next. Seven weeks of protests beginning
in April 1990 compelled the king to democratise the government. The next
country to experience an explosion was Thailand, when twenty days of
hunger strike by a leading opposition politician brought hundreds of
thousands of people in the streets in May 1992. Dozens were killed when
the military suppressed street demonstrations, and because of the
brutality General Suchinda Krapayoon was forced to step down. In 1998 in
Indonesia, students called for "people-power revolution" and were able to
overthrow Suharto. Interviews conducted by an American correspondent at
the universities in Indonesia determined that the people-power slogan was
adopted from the Philippines, as was the tactical innovation of the
occupation of public space

--
Michael Pugliese


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