6월 민주항쟁
June 8, 2020 9:43 AM   Subscribe

Thirty-three years ago, 240,000 citizens across 22 cities demonstrated to demand free elections.

The year was 1987, and the South Korean tiger was beginning to roar. The shift to an export-oriented economy under CHUN Doo-hwan1 had started to make Korean conglomerates (discount) household names: GoldStar2 electric fans, Daewoo3 televisions, and the Hyundai Excel4, 5. In just over a year, South Korea would have a feature article in National Geographic and Seoul would welcome the world for the XXIV Olympiad6, showcasing the Miracle on the Han River7.

For those in power, the excitement has led to a feeling of confidence--granting a form of mercy to two opposition leaders, KIM Dae-jung8, whose death sentence was commuted, allowed to return from exile, and live under house arrest, and KIM Young-sam9 (no relation), who was allowed to resume participation in political activity. For the wealthy and the upwardly mobile, Korea was rocketing to modernity, with GDP having quadrupled over the past decade. With this confidence, CHUN Doo-hwan named his successor, ROH Tae-woo, on 10 June.

But dissatisfaction over the dictatorship continued to bubble, and reached every member of society. In early January, a student council president named PARK Jong-cheol studying linguistics at Seoul University10 disappeared; four months later, on 18 May, the Catholic Priests Association for Justice discovered the truth, revealing to the public that he had been detained by the government for pro-democracy activities and refused to name fellow activists even after being waterboarded11, which directly led to his death on 14 January. In response, students and activists began to protest, as was to be expected. Riot police were brought in to maintain order, inflaming tensions further. Then, during a demonstration on 9 June, a student at Yonsei University10 named LEE Han-yeol was murdered when a tear gas canister fired by the police penetrated his skull12.

The police's violent escalation inflamed the protests, and by 18 June, 1.5 million citizens from all socioeconomic classes--students, labor, farmers, and white-collar workers, among others--were protesting nationwide, leading to CHUN Doo-hwan issuing an order for a military crackdown the following day, which he rescinded hours later due to the recent memory of Gwangju. The struggle for democracy and justice continued throughout the rest of the month, with over a million marching on the 25th, with counterprotests to police violence occurring daily.

On June 29, ROH Tae-woo capitulated to the demands of the protestors, which paved the way for democratic elections in South Korea in December of 1987. ROH was able to win due to KIM Young-sam and KIM Dae-jung splitting the opposition vote. Three days after ROH's victory, the Fifth Republic of Korea was dissolved with the adoption of a new constitution, and the foundations of the vibrant, modern, and democratic Korean republic were laid.

A movie about the events, 1987: When the Day Comes, was released on the 30th anniversary. (Google Play/YouTube, Amazon, iTunes)

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1You can read more about the brutality of this dictator here.
2GoldStar became LG in 1995.
3Daewoo, at least the vast majority of it, went bankrupt in 1999 following the IMF Crisisi.
4The 1986 Hyundai Excel broke first-year import sales records with 168,882 sold and was available for just under US$5,000 (US$12,000 when adjusted for 2020).
5Samsung is not mentioned because it wasn't until the late '90s that it would become known to consumers globally.
6These would be the first games since 1976 that had the majority of members from the Soviet Bloc and the American Bloc. North Korea would boycott, as would its ally Cuba.
7Obviously a play on the Miracle on the Rhine, aka, Wirtschaftswunder.
8He would be elected the 8th president in 1997.
9He would be elected the 7th president in 1992.
10The significance of students at these two particular universities being murdered cannot be understated. Seoul National University and Yonsei University, along with Korea University, make up the "SKY Universities", where elites are made. They have all the prestige of the Ivies, as well as all the networking opportunities that come with. The killing of students from these schools was viewed with much more shock and opprobrium than the deaths of students at other schools, let alone places like Chonnam University in the city of Gwangju, thanks to some horrible regional biases.
11In 2003, Korean American John Yoo would claim that waterboarding was not torture in order to enable the Bush Administration to not torture prisoners.
12"Non-lethal" projectiles are still lethal if they're used in certain ways.
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iThe harsh austerity measures required by the International Monetary Fund as a precondition to the US$60 billion bailout and the knock-on effects led to a difficult three-year period that South Koreans associate more with the IMF than capital flight.
posted by anem0ne (7 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
Thank you for this interesting and well crafted post! I’m interested in learning more about Korean history; lately I’ve been watching and reading more Korean narratives and sometimes I can tell I would understand more if I had better context.

I recently read the graphic novel Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook (illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju)—her memoir describes her experiences as a young university student and activist in the early 1980s under the repressive Fifth Republic. It’s a fast, absorbing read and I learned a lot that I did not know before.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:30 AM on June 8, 2020


I bawled hard watching 1987: When the Day Comes in a theater. Thanks for the post!
posted by RichAndCreamy at 12:51 PM on June 8, 2020


What a great post! Classic Metafilter. My in-laws are Korean, so it's great to know more about the beginnings of democracy there.
posted by starscream at 1:03 PM on June 8, 2020


For all the people in all the posts about police reform who are predicting that nothing will happen... this post also describes a time when protests had been tried and had failed many times.

Protest doesn't work, until it does.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:34 PM on June 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


This is an incredible post, anem0ne. So timely. Thank you for introducing me to this history and to PARK Jong-cheol and LEE Han-yeol. Wow.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:41 PM on June 8, 2020


Great post. With the language barrier and because I think people didn’t feel totally comfortable speaking their mind to a random white guy, I never really grasped all the specifics of what was going on there when I had a summer job in 89. I certainly got the sense that the dictatorship hadn’t rolled over and disappeared all at once. I remember large demonstrations with tear gas. Apart from the phalanxes of riot cops, there were crowds of paid enforcers wearing identical acid wash jeans, with matching jean jackets and bucket hats. I remember seeing these thugs at the destruction of aN urban shanty town too - standing guard over old ladies and housewives trying to hold onto clothes and other possessions while bulldozers flattened the place into a pile of orange and blue plastic tarpaulins. Predictably, some asshole in a black luxury sedan was presiding over the process.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:46 PM on June 8, 2020 [1 favorite]


The resonance with modern-day events is strong. It seems to me that (one of) the biggest things to take away from this is how long people had to protest for significant concessions to be made. Counting from 18 May to 29 June, that's six sustained weeks of protests. Something to remember about not letting up the pressure, because you don't know when you'll win until you do.
posted by coolname at 10:28 PM on June 9, 2020


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