Korean film revives tragic – and fading – memory

In a controversial retelling, 'May 18' looks at the Kwangju crackdown in 1980 by South Korea's military dictatorship.

from the July 9, 2007 edition

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The memories flash back in a rush of images: kids flinging rocks at policemen in a typical antigovernment display that I witnessed one sunny May day in 1980 in Kwangju, the restive center of the Cholla region in southwestern Korea. When I returned two weeks later, the city was cut off by soldiers, and students were careening through the streets as helicopters dropped leaflets imploring "Sons and Daughters, return home."

For the next 10 days, after Gen. Chun Doo Hwan declared martial law on May 18, rebels held sway over a historically hostile regional center in revolt against national leaders.

That atmosphere is revived in a new film, "May 18," about a rustic enclave soon to assume a tragic place in history. Above the title, the words, "The Day a Nation's Conscience Died," recall the assault by special forces ordered to retake Kwangju in retribution not just for the rebels' insolence but for that of mentors seen as "leftist" or "communist" foes almost as bad as the leaders of North Korea.

The revolt was the bloodiest event in the sequence that culminated in the rise of democracy – and also of an anti-Americanism fostered by the claim that the US had gone along with Chun's pulling troops under Roh's command from the line with North Korea to send them south.

Chun's worst enemy was Kim Dae Jung, hero of Cholla who was already under house arrest in Seoul and, after the revolt, sentenced to death. Only a deal with the Americans rescued Mr. Kim, who went into exile in the US for two years before returning and winning the presidency in 1997. Chun, who had seized power after the assassination of long-ruling Park Chung Hee, and his ally, Gen. Roh Tae Woo, meanwhile, were convicted for the massacre and massive corruption – though not until Mr. Roh had served a full term as the first president elected under Korea's "democracy constitution" proclaimed after massive riots in June 1987.

But today, the story is in danger of fading from consciousness as people focus on the North's nuclear weapons and an election that may return a conservative to power for the first time in a decade.

"It's practically forgotten except among the Cholla people," says Shim Jae Hoon, who visited the city during the revolt. "It's a generation since that happened. It's not the only revolution in Korea."

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