A History of Korea (92 page)

Above all, then, North Korea became a historical tragedy, and “tragic” ultimately rang more true than the other adjectives that immediately came to mind: weird, unknowable, evil. While those labels were readily applied to the regime, the greater concern could only be the North Korean people, victimized by the disastrous turns taken by their history. An investigation into the manner by which the regime came to hold such destructive sway over the populace must be balanced by an inquiry into how the people came to find themselves in such a position in the first place. Here a consideration of the greater historical context is inescapable. One cannot deny that the obsessive fear of external domination was rooted in the painful memories of the colonial period, the post-liberation occupation, and the devastation of the Korean War. One also cannot deny the allure of a fierce nationalism for North Koreans—indeed, Koreans as a whole—given the lessons of the modern experience. The Soviet occupation determined the Cold War orientation of the North’s political system, but understandably a charismatic strongman touting himself as the savior from foreign intervention found resonance. The effects of the colonial experience, furthermore, were not just oppositional: the colonial state’s militaristic and industrializing mobilization of the populace provided a model and foundation for such a system to arise after liberation. And the reception of
traditional forms of monarchical authority, paternalistic leadership, and hereditary social hierarchy also made perfect sense.

In short, North Korea was an unmistakably direct product of its history, including the history that it had in common with South Korea before 1945. That these two states and societies eventually diverged so drastically as time passed suggests not that North Korean history was somehow an aberration or illegitimate, but rather that the two Koreas served as counter-factual examples to each other: each a logical, if perhaps extreme, outcome of a shared past.

26

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South Korean Democratization

CHRONOLOGY

THE JUNE DECLARATION OF 1987

Tear gas again filled the streets of downtown Seoul and other major cities in June of 1987, just as it had so often in recent South Korean history in response to civil unrest. This time, however, the number, determination, and makeup of the demonstrators portended something on another level altogether. Anger and frustration against the Chun Doo Hwan dictatorship among the students and workers had been a given for many years, but in June they were joined by increasing numbers of white collar workers, representing the burgeoning middle class. These soon swelled the ranks of the protestors to upwards of a million people throughout the country. They called for the immediate revocation of plans to hand over the presidency to Chun’s designated successor, Roh Tae-woo, which had appeared as a clear intent to continue the dictatorship in defiance of the popular will. Chun was inclined to proceed with a harsh crackdown
on these enormous demonstrations that would have brought chaos and great bloodshed. When he became aware, however, that such a move, coming on the eve of the Seoul Olympics to be held the following year, would garner little support from the bureaucracy, his American allies, or even the military, he acceded to demands for a direct presidential election.

This “June Declaration” of 1987 began the formal breakthrough to a permanent and stable democratic governing system in South Korea. But to suggest that democratization itself began in 1987 would erroneously diminish the long and painful struggle of South Koreans against the forces of both political and economic domination—a struggle that, as in 1960–1, even attained formal success occasionally. Narratives of the political history of South Korea have, understandably, tended to focus on state actors. But as time has passed a counter-narrative of democratization as the central feature of South Korean political history has emerged, a storyline that views 1987 more as the culmination, not outbreak, of longstanding popular yearning and sacrifice for democracy.

THE PRELUDE: KWANGJU, MAY 1980

One could argue, in fact, that the single most important event in South Korean democratization did not happen in 1987, but rather in 1980: the Kwangju Uprising, normally called simply “5–18” in reference to the date, May 18, of its beginning. The incapacity to account for this bloody episode denied the South Korean regime of the 1980s any lasting legitimacy. Likewise, the memory of Kwangju drove the intensifying struggle against dictatorship until it burst forth irrepressibly in June of 1987. It is safe to say that, without Kwangju, the breakthrough to formal democracy would probably have taken much longer, if at all.

The Kwangju Uprising itself stood as the culmination of resistance efforts in the 1970s against the “Yusin” system that Park Chung Hee instituted in 1972 to stifle all dissent and keep himself permanently in power (
Chapter 24
). As the end of the decade approached, a tense national atmosphere emerged from the combination of many factors: Park’s inaccessibility and siege mentality,
which steadily deepened following the assassination of his wife in 1974; a deteriorating economy hit by the worldwide oil shocks; a heightened crackdown on opposition politicians who had gained a plurality in the December 1978 National Assembly elections; and the escalation of popular protests. On October 26, 1979, in the midst of the largest mass unrest to date exploding in the southern coastal cities of Pusan and Masan, Park was assassinated by, ironically, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, the internal security apparatus that had muzzled political dissent throughout his reign. During his trial, this man, Kim Chaegyu, insisted that he had been motivated by a desire for democracy.

Following their initial shock, the Korean people, too, could justifiably expect, after almost two decades of Park’s rule, an opportunity finally to establish a fully democratic order. As with the euphoria following the overthrow of Syngman Rhee in 1960, the national mood entered an expectant stage with the cancellation of Park’s state of emergency, the release of political prisoners, and the election of a new president, Choi Kyu-ha. The man appointed to lead the investigation into Park’s assassination, General Chun Doo Hwan, however, had other ideas. On December 12, 1979, Chun engineered a coup by arresting the country’s top military commander. Henceforth, despite the nominal political authority vested in President Choi, it was Chun’s group of officers who held real power. The awakening to this reality fueled the “Seoul Spring” of 1980, when laborers and students staged large demonstrations calling for an end to Chun’s control, a lifting of martial law, and a concerted effort to establish a functioning democracy. The peak of these demonstrations came on May 15, when a hundred thousand mostly student protestors gathered in the plaza of Seoul Station. They retreated the following day to their classrooms, but another crisis would emerge on May 17 with the extension of martial law to the entire country, the shutdown of campuses, and the arrest of opposition leader Kim Dae Jung. Chun was solidifying his grip on power.

The Kwangju Uprising that erupted the next day, on May 18, 1980, started in a conventional way, with students gathered at the
gate of a university for a rally. But the shockingly brutal response by the government troops—in this case, paratroopers sent down to quell any such disturbances—sparked the intensification of the conflict from a student protest to a civil uprising involving a considerable portion of the region’s citizenry. Over the years scholars and observers have cited many factors that might have contributed to the stunning phenomenon of crack troops trained to fight North Koreans unleashing their fury on the very citizens whom they were supposed to protect: the suspicion fed by misinformation on the presence of North Korean elements; regional antipathy toward Ch
lla province, where Kwangju lay; and even the drugging of the paratroopers. Whatever the precise combination of causes, the result, after ten days of the uprising, was a total of more than 200 people killed, many more hundreds injured, and a deep wound in the national soul that would take decades to heal. The city of Kwangju itself functioned as an autonomous, almost pristinely primitive collectivity following the retreat by government troops from the city center on the fourth day. When the soldiers returned to re-take the Provincial Hall building at dawn on May 27, many of these citizens, knowing full well their fate, chose to take up arms against the troops in a final act of defiance.

These victims of the Kwangju Uprising were not aiming for a hallowed place in the annals of Korean history, but rather expressing outrage and insisting on their dignity in the face of barbarity. The citizens of Kwangju, however, came largely to embrace the popular judgment that their sacrifices represented an indispensable element in the path toward democratization. In fact the Kwangju Uprising took on even greater historical significance: as the explosive climax of the buildup of wrenching divisions in South Korean society; and as the origin of many other defining features of South Korean politics and society thereafter, including radicalization, regionalism, anti-Americanism, and, of course, democracy. It was, then, truly a watershed event, and if popular culture was any indication, the Kwangju Uprising remained a source of fascination and contemplation. Novels, television dramas, documentaries, and feature films over the next three decades continued to explore its multi-faceted significance.

THE DEMOCRACY GENERATION

The greatest and most lasting impact of Kwangju, however, was felt by the first generation to come of age following the uprising. To these young Koreans, news about what happened in Kwangju came through the thriving underground networks of first-hand written accounts, art work, photos, and even video footage smuggled into the country from the foreign reporters who witnessed the event. Chun’s consolidation of power through the Kwangju bloodbath rendered the validity of his regime null and void, but it was enough to instill an atmosphere of official silence about what really happened during the so-called Kwangju Incident. Intellectuals, students, laborers, and other activists, however, maintained the memory of Kwangju, which they eventually used also as the chief rallying cry for the drive to overthrow the Chun regime in the 1980s.

These activists also employed Kwangju as the springboard for further refinement of the
minjung
, or “people’s,” movement that pervaded the anti-government resistance circles in the 1970s and 1980s. This was a movement in the sense not of a coherent organization, but rather of a powerfully enveloping mood that framed the perspective on Korean politics, culture, foreign relations, and, in particular, history and national division. From the
minjung
perspective, the Korean people had been stripped of their primacy in recent Korean history by authoritarian and corrupt government, big business, and foreign powers that all conspired to divide the Korean masses and suppress their will. The
minjung
movement sought to regain the people’s autonomy and subjectivity by expressing itself not only in anti-government activity, but also in popular culture, patterns of public life, and academic inquiry. The primary practitioners, furthermore, were those who came of age in this era, mostly as university students.

In the 1990s, when the
minjung
movement faded away, these people would be referred to as the “386 generation” (a play on the name of a well-known computer chip): those who were in their thirties, went to college in the 1980s, and were born in the 1960s. By the middle of the twentieth century’s final decade, they could look back on their formidable influence in the 1980s, when they represented
the shock troops behind the democratization movement. By subsequently entering the workforce and the comforts of middle class domesticity, they had found themselves concerned with matters other than politics, but their intense experience in the struggles for democratization would maintain its grip on their outlook. Indeed, when many of them, in their late thirties and forties, reached the top circles of political power in the opening years of the new century, they showed that issues of historical justice remained uppermost in their concerns.

THE 1987 DECLARATION AND ELECTION

However essential this group of young people was to the democratization cause, the breakthrough of 1987 would have not occurred without the massive show of support from the growing middle class. To understand this phenomenon, we must return to the core problem of the Chun Doo Hwan dictatorship: its lack of legitimacy. Following his consolidation of power from late 1979 to late 1980, Chun instituted a rule that largely continued the 1970s
Yusin
patterns of state surveillance, suppression of dissent, and the encouragement of state-directed economic growth dominated by the family-run conglomerates. The US and other major governments recognized his regime soon after it began and, for a while at least, economic growth continued apace. While these developments might have helped in procuring the right to host the 1988 Summer Olympics, they could do little to garner recognition from the South Korean populace. When the economy started to slow down and an atmosphere of corruption and brutality emerged around the Chun junta, the bitter memories of 1980 brought forth an entrenchment of resistance to his rule. This sentiment went far beyond the semi-permanent base of anti-government activists. Indeed, when the long-reigning dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, was overthrown by a popular uprising in 1986, South Koreans felt emboldened to take steps that would ensure the imminent end to their own humiliating condition of chronic dictatorship.