"We Die Tonight to Live Forever": Legacy of the Gwangju Uprising ft. Kap Seol

Red Star Over Asia

May 18th is the anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, when the citizens of Gwangju launched an armed uprising against South Korea’s military regime.

On October 26, 1979, South Korea's longtime military dictator, Park Chung Hee was assassinated by his own head of secret police, ending the infamous Yushin regime. However, in December of that year, General Chun Do Hwan, chief of South Korea's internal security seized power in his own coup d'tat.

On May 15 1980, students in Seoul organized mass demonstrations demanding an end to Martial Law, which had been declared after Park's assassination. Chun responded by expanding martial law to the whole nation, including the island of Jejudo. Student leaders decided to end the protests in order to discuss their next moves.

Protests stopped everywhere, except for one city, Gwangju, the regional capital of the backwater Jeolla region.

Kap Seol, a former South Korean activist (now based in the U.S.) and lead translator of the 'Gwangju Diaries', joins us this week to commemorate the legacy of the uprising on its anniversary.

You can download the 'Gwangju Diaries' (in both English and Korean) for free here: http://eng.518.org/sub.php?PID=0401&page=&category=&searchText=&searchType=&action=Read&idx=583

We also recommend reading Kap Seol's recent Jacobin article about the struggle for and emergence of South Korean 'democracy': https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/gwangju-uprising-korean-war-seventieth-anniversary