Former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan stood up in front of a flurry of flashing
cameras again last Monday. Chun appeared before a district court in the southwestern city
of Gwangju, the very place where a pro-democracy uprising against his authoritarian rule took
place in May 1980. Monday’s court appearance by the disgraced ex-leader comes in 23 years
after he stood in a criminal trial on treason and other charges in 1996. He lived a relatively
quiet life since he had been released in December 1997 on a presidential pardon. This week Korea
Now looks into how Chun was able to seize power back in the late 1970s and what the
Gwangju uprising means in modern Korean history. Chun, the 88-year-old, was in charge of the
investigation into the assassination of President Park Chung-hee, which is often referred to
as the “October 26th incident.” On December 12th 1979, in what became known as the Incident
of December 12th, Chun ordered the arrest of Army Chief of Staff without authorization
from then-President Choi Kyu-ha. By the next morning Chun was in charge of the Korean army,
making him a de facto ruler as an unelected coup leader until September the next year.
Choi, who had long since become little more than a figurehead, resigned in August 1980
and Chun was elected as his successor by the National Conference for Unification, then-South
Korean electoral college. Chun was officially inaugurated into office on September 1st that
year and served as President of South Korea until 1988.
Chun’s presidency occurred during the Cold War, and his foreign policies were based around
combating communism not only from North Korea, but also from the Soviet Union and Communist
China. During his term there was a North Korean assassination attempt against him at Rangoon,
Burma or Myanmar in 1983 as well as a bombing of a Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987 by Pyongyang.
Nevertheless he proposed a summit between the two Koreas in 1985 for the first time
as South’s president, but it never ended up being held.
Chun was indicted again in May last year on charges that his memoirs defamed a deceased
priest over his eyewitness account of the bloody crackdown on the Gwangju revolt. The
late activist priest Cho Chul-hyun said he witnessed the military firing at citizens
from helicopters during the bloody suppression of the protests. Chun described Cho as “Satan
in a mask” and “a shameless liar” in his book published in early 2017. Therefore
Cho’s nephew Cho Young-dae, also a Catholic priest, filed a complaint, which led to Chun’s
court appearance in more than two decades. On May 18, 1980, the brutal crackdown on student-led
demonstrations against Chun's junta sparked a massive civilian protest in Gwangju. When
the troops fired into crowds, it is said protesters began to arm themselves. According to an official
tally, the bloodshed led to the deaths of around 200 people and 1,000 injured.
Ahead of Monday’s court hearing, Cho Young-dae called for the former president to admit to
his wrongdoing “at least for once,” however, Chun has never admitted responsibility or
apologized for the crackdown. After the hearing, protestors attempted to block Chun’s vehicle
from leaving the scene, demanding him to apologize over his role in brutally suppressing citizens
during the upheaval. How the Gwangju uprising should be defined remains a deeply divided
issue in South Korea and is often a subject of ideological confrontation between the conservatives
and liberals. Watching through all this, many South Koreans,
including myself, had a lot of mixed emotions. Do you feel the same way? Please let me know
in the comments below and thank you for watching Korea Now.