The other victims of the Kwangju Uprising

Kim Dong-kwan when he was in the military.

Over a month ago the Joongang Ilbo printed an article about a former paratrooper who took part in the Kwangju Uprising.

A court has ordered a veterans’ office to grant “National Meritorious Person” status to a 51-year-old man who has suffered from schizophrenia since he served as a paratrooper cracking down on demonstrators during the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980.

Kim Dong-kwan was a student activist at Korea University’s College of Political Science and Economics in the late 1970s and was strongly opposed to then-President Park Chung Hee’s Yusin [“revitalizing reform”] policy. However, he was conscripted into the Third Special Airborne Force Brigade in 1979 and later sent to Gwangju, in a drive to suppress massive civil protests that broke out from May 18 to May 27, 1980. He was issued live ammunition to fire at protesters, and sometimes had to dig graves to bury the dead. He was bullied and beaten up by his fellow soldiers when he resisted using his weapon, Kim insisted.

Friends say the experience changed Kim forever. Once known to friends as an “outgoing and friendly college student,” Kim was diagnosed with schizophrenia four months after he was discharged from the military in November 1981. Friends say he has lived with deep guilt about his actions and has been in psychiatric treatment for 29 years. He was frequently haunted by hallucinations of neighbors berating him for gunning down innocent civilians. His condition left him unable to sustain a normal life.

In 2002, after failing to have him recognized as a National Meritorious Person, his wife divorced him, "fearing the stigma that could be passed to the couple’s then-5-year-old son."

His friends and former college classmates decided to help him and petitioned the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs' Office in Suwon to recognize him. When this failed (they couldn't prove his condition was due to his military service) they took it to court. His friend Jeon Seong took the lead, as he

had once been a student activist and participated in the same circle as Kim. He was arrested in October 1980 for organizing student demonstrations in Seoul to publicize the government’s actions in Gwangju. Jeon later was granted May 18 Movement Meritorious Person status in 2000 and won 40 million won in compensation. Jeon used the money to study for the national bar exam, which he successfully passed in 2004. [...]

To win the case, the friends needed clear evidence proving Kim was actually at the scene. Finally, they found a senior soldier who was sent to Gwangju with him. However, when they asked him to testify, he was reluctant to get involved.[...] But on Dec. 19 - the last day of witness testimony - the soldier surprised everybody by appearing in court as a witness. He presented to the judge a photograph of Kim and himself taken in front of South Jeolla Provincial Government Building. On Jan. 23, the court ordered the district office to give Kim National Meritorious Person status.

This story goes to show that there were more victims than the protesters and unlucky bystanders during the uprising, and how unhelpful it can be to portray the paratroopers as being uniformly barbaric. While I don't think anyone has ever adequately explained the brutality of the soldiers on the first day of the protests, by the second and third days, as more troops were sent to Kwangju, the new arrivals were faced with angry crowds and had no idea of what was motivating their anger. It such a situation, it's not hard to see why the new arrivals would justifiably be angry at the violence of the protesters, being ignorant of their "fury over [other units'] inhumane violence" (as Choi Jungwoon put it) on the first day. In the end, the blame lies with the authorities who ordered the troops into action on May 18, orders which had been questioned by the commanding officer on the ground (who was eventually removed from command several days into the uprising). His protest was meaningless, however, because the orders were coming straight from Seoul, circumventing the chain of command. This is likely the reason why 12 of the 23 soldiers who died during the uprising were killed in friendly fire incidents - the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, and other units were mistaken for the citizen army. When I asked a former air force officer what he thought about this circumvention of the chain of command, he told me, "That's one of the reasons I quit the air force."

The photo above is a still taken from this news report.

Bangsin Market fire

After reading about this fire at Bangsin Market, my co-worker and I decided to see exactly where it happened.

The north entrance to the market (beyond the top of the map above) is just off Banghwa junction, so we had to walk for awhile before we found it.

Note the LPG tank.

The charred remains of a blanket store, a traditional medicine store, a clothing store, and three others we couldn't identify, certainly drew people's attention.





The butcher shop in the building next to this store was certainly lucky. Looking on the brighter side, I picked up some strawberries at this corner shop.


I liked the way the display of fruit was spread out in a quarter circle around the corner.

In flames again.

Little did I know when I was writing about the destruction by fire of this food stall (and mentioning the destruction caused by an LPG explosion in nearby Bangsin Market three years ago) that six stores in that same market were destroyed by fire around 5 am that very morning (Saturday).


According to YTN (and as you can clearly see in the video) the fire burned electrical lines, cutting off power in the area. It burned over 100 square meters, causing 19 million won in damages. The cause of the fire is still being investigated. There were no injuries, luckily.

A 3D city hall: A luxury Seoul can't afford?

'Dismantling' Taepyeong Hall

I noticed the other day that Taepyeong Hall, the building behind City Hall, was missing. Its destruction began last August, as the Korea Times notes:

[On August 26,] the city started dismantling one of the city hall buildings, the Taepyeong Hall, located just behind the main front building facing Seoul Plaza. The work was part of the local government's scheme to remodel the 82-year-old buildings and establish a new city hall behind them by 2011. All city workers moved to a nearby annex in June for the construction.

The atrocious winning design for the new city hall is here; my preferred choice is here.

The main building and Taepyeong Hall are registered as cultural properties No. 52. Registered cultural property is a type of national cultural heritage, but unlike national treasures or historic relics, there is no legal protection restricting their transformation or demolition.

Seoul City Hall was, as Robert Koehler notes here, designed at the same time as the Japanese National Diet Building in Tokyo, but was completed 10 years earlier, in 1926.


The above photo of City Hall under construction is from this blog, which has numerous photos of the building. Here's a shot of the interior of Taepyeong Hall, after its partial destruction:

The interior of Taepyeong Hall (also here).

The city began demolition knowing that the Cultural Heritage Administration objected to the city's plans to destroy the buildings, and that it planned to register them as historical landmarks that very day. As the Joongang Ilbo puts it, "If a building is designated a historic landmark or a national treasure by the cultural authority, the authority can restrict its renovation or demolition." The Korea Herald continued:

Mayor Oh Se-hoon wrote on the city website Thursday [August 28] that he cannot accept it. "Just six years ago, the Cultural Properties Committee said it does not recognize the value of the City Hall main building as cultural property worth preserving," Oh wrote in the message addressed to Seoul citizens. "The committee had deferred naming the main building as registered cultural property in 2002, saying it lacked value for preservation, and registered it after reviewing for a year."

The Cultural Heritage Administration, a central government ministry, said Oh's claim that the committee did not recognize the building's value as cultural property for registration in 2002 was incorrect.

"Two people on the committee disapproved, so the committee did a review the next year and registered the building, citing 'a need to preserve the site and remains of our shameful history and to refer to the construction technology and materials used back then.'"

The city's main reason for wanting to demolish the buildings was because they were structurally unsafe, as the Hankyoreh describes:

As for the building safety issue, Oh said, “A large-scale renovation or demolition is urgent because the main building of the Seoul City Hall complex got grades of D and E for safety. There is a zero tolerance policy on the safety issue because the building will become a place for Seoul citizens after it is rebuilt as a public library,” Oh said. “To use it as a library, the building should be able to withstand the weight of books, so demolition and restoration work is unavoidable.”

Pointing out the rust.

However, CHA Administrator Lee Geon-mu said, “The main building of Seoul City Hall received a C grade, or a rating of being good, in safety inspections by the Korea Infrastructure Safety and Technology Corp. in 2001 and the Korea Institute of Construction Technology in 1996. I can’t trust in the city’s argument in favor of demolition, that the building’s structural integrity has deteriorated in just a couple of years.”

(The chairman of Cultural Heritage Solidarity weighed in on this the next day.)

Here's a look at how City Hall has been changing over the last year or so:

A later addition can still be seen at right.

The destruction begins, August 26.

How it looked at the end of that day.

The Joongang Ilbo had this quote: “Following those results [of the safely studies], demolition of part of the buildings became inevitable,” said Oh. “The demolition does not mean that we dismantle everything. We will just tear down some weakened areas.”


Yes, that is what it looks like now. There's nothing but the facade and the section supporting the tower. At about the same time I first saw this photo, the first anniversary of the Namdaemun arson was marked by opening the site to the public and putting up a display on its restoration.


Perhaps they'll open up the city hall site a year from now. But hey - it's not all bad. The city government is going to build a nice 'artistic fence' around the construction site. What a stroke of PR genius.

Oh, and the city has also announced a 'Namsan Renaissance Plan.' And yeah, I guess carving the mountain into the shape of the Dokdo Islets and building a lake park around them is a pretty inspired idea.

Careful with that LPG, 유진

In late October of last year, a tented food stall appeared on the corner near my house, selling squid and beondaegi, among other things. It can be seen below:


Strangely, not too long after appeared, it seemed to have been knocked down. The concrete pylons next to the tent had been knocked over too. (No, it wouldn't have been gangsters; my neighbourhood is known to be gangster-free; it's the police who tell stall owners to move on (occasionally)).


At any rate, the stall was put up again and was open in the evenings, and closed in the mornings and afternoons (a thick rubber band was tied around the tent part and kept it tight to the trailer base). The man running it never seemed to get much business.

In mid-January I walked out to see this (having walked past a broken jar of beondaegi thrown 10 meters down the street).




As you can see above, the building to the left has windows boarded up and part of the sign is melted, suggesting that flames must have gone up quite high. The hydro pole is also blackened. Strangely, none of the other buildings showed any signs of damage. I can only assume that there must have been an explosion of some sort; look at the damage done to the concrete pylons below:


Also, a mere fire does not rip a metal tray in half:



I'm not really sure what happened, or whether anyone was hurt. The burned carcass of the stall (which attracted surprised looks from most people who walked by) remained there for a day or two before it was cleaned up.

Banghwa-dong has seen problems with LPG before - in May, 2006, an LPG explosion destroyed a store in Bangsin Market, as this news report reveals.

I'm not a big fan of Gangnam...

...but I'm pretty happy with the way this panorama, shot from my friend's officetel near Gangnam Station, turned out.

More on subway suicides

In June of 2007, I wrote about suicides in subway stations. A post by Mark at Hub of Sparkle about the new sliding doors in subway stations led me to find new information. A 2004 AP article about Seoul subway suicides and the measures the city was taking (playing soft music) can be found here, while a September 2008 Korea Times article looks at the effects of the suicides on subway train drivers.

Yoo Chung-sik] is still suffering from the aftermath of a tragic experience of running over a man. In February 2005, an old man was slowly falling off the platform at Gangbyeon Station on the Subway Line 2. "The moment I saw him fall, I applied the brake and managed to pull up the train. But it was too late. I ran him over with a speed of 30 km/h and the man was stuck between the first and second wheel.''

Fortunately, the man survived, but left Yoo with traumatic memories. "I cannot shake off the horrible moment. Right after the accident, I got out of the train but I couldn't look at the victim,'' he said.

Since then, Yoo has not been able to stand behind the wheels again. He now works as an office worker for Seoul Metro. "I don't think I will be able to drive a train again. I couldn't put up with the tension whenever my train approaches a platform.''

Yoo is rather okay compared to other colleagues who experienced passengers' suicide attempts. Some drivers need to have psychiatric treatment for several months, according to the subway company.

Be sure to read the rest. A scientific study looking at the effects of suicides on drivers can be found here. As Reuters tells us, after a subway driver died in December 2007 (suffering from diarrhea, he leaned out of the window and fell onto the tracks, where he was hit by another train), the city installed portable toilets in the subway train's driver's cab (the article has a photo). Korea Beat translated an article about subway drivers here.

Regarding sliding doors, there was a woman who died when she became trapped between the subway and sliding doors last October at Hwagok Station, or so this article tells us. One factor was apparently that the doors were not yet finished. Actually, according to a student I taught at the time, it was a suicide. The reason he would know is that he is a station engineer, repairing systems in 12 stations (Omokyo - Banghwa on Line 5), and part of that job includes reviewing CCTV footage when suicides occur - not an enviable job. He told me more than 20 suicides had occurred within those 12 stations (I’m not sure of the time frame), including this one at Gaehwasan Station last August, where a divorced mother jumped in front of a train with her 5 year old daughter and 11 year old son. Only the son survived. Oddly enough (well, not really, Banghwa is kind of like a small town sometimes), another student, a high-school girl, mentioned that her friend lived in the same building as the woman's mother in law, and that the suicide occurred after she failed to borrow money from the mother in law.

It just goes to show that the walls are not just preventing suicides (in subway stations), and providing new advertising space (the wall with the sliding doors in Yeongdeungpo Gucheong station was covered with ads by one company when it first appeared a few years ago), but are also sparing not just drivers, but also other subway workers (and passengers) from the trauma of witnessing such horrible incidents.

Angry sidewalk

I wasn't expecting to see this on the ground:



It was out in front of a hagwon, but not one that teaches English.

Behead the King!

The Korea Times looks at a 2 volume history book titled "Behead the King'' written by historian Baek Ji-won, which examines Joseon dynasty-era Korea from the point of view of the lower classes and slaves. It also looks at the negative effects this forgotten history has had on modern-day Korea. It's certainly a catchier title than "A People's History of the Joseon Dynasty." It was nice to see this:

He also blasted the Korean fantasy of "minjok,'' based on the perception of a one-blooded nation, saying that Korean ethnic roots can be traced back to a mixture of various tribes such as Kitans, Malgal, Mongolian, Han and Yemaek.

It's not uncommon to see the sentences "Koreans are a homogenous race" and "Korea was invaded many times" in the same paragraph, with little thought given to the effect the latter must have had on the former.

The article ends with this:

The author commented that both historians and the public turn deaf ears on telling the truth of history. ``Historians conceal the disgraceful facts of history, while the public don't want to look into their shameful past. But by exploring the past, we can see the way of the future and not repeat the same mistakes,'' he said.

Sounds good to me.

Hanging out with older men at Jongmyo Park

The abstract for an essay in the latest Korea Journal titled "Stigma, Lifestyle, and Self in Later Life: The Meaning and Paradox of Older Men’s Hang-Out Culture at Jongmyo Park" by Chung Gene-Woong can be found here (hat tip to Mark).

The abstract makes no mention of the nearby bars where "men's hang-out culture" takes place, and certainly makes no mention this aspect of later life.

Fun tidbit: This photo reveals that there were still lots of houses in front of Jongmyo in 1945, though a small open area can be seen. It's likely the result of a fire break built (or demolished, really) by the Japanese in preparation for US firebombing during World War II.


More on aerial photos, and a list (and a photo) of the fire breaks can be found here. I don't know when the park in front of Jongmyo was built, but it may be a part of the legacy of the fire breaks, much like the Seun Sangga.

The cardinal and the first lady

[Update - In the comments, Park's letters are mentioned. A Joongang Ilbo article looks at his letters here.]


Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan's funeral is now past, but one of the interesting things about his passing is this:

The posthumous cornea donation by Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan has inspired many Koreans to sign up as organ donors.

Dr. Joo Choun-ki of Kangnam St. Mary’s Hospital, who performed the procedure and examined the corneas, said Kim had cataract surgery in 2001 but his corneas were good for transplantation. Two people at the top of the waitlist received a cornea each.

As a result of his example, many more people are registering to donate organs, and, perhaps being influenced by this, the government wants to make it easier to declare someone brain dead in order to get more organs to people on waiting list. As the latter article notes, "A shortage of organ donations has been a chronic problem in Korea," something that I looked at briefly here, so one hopes the effect of the late cardinal's example is a lasting one.

Regarding his funeral, a Korea Times article asked, "Have We Mourned Like This Before?" The answer is, of course, yes. The most recent example would be this, from a year ago:

Of course, the masses of people who came here were paying their respects to a building, not a person

Other funerals came into my head, such as Park Chung-hee's, in 1979. Upon searching, I found this article (and others), which suggested Park and Kim Ku (whose 1949 funeral can be seen here) as precedents. It also suggested a third person, and the first that came to mind for me.

Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan at the Blue House in 1969 celebrating

Park Geun-hye's graduation from (the Catholic) Sungshin High School.

In the center of the above photo, standing next to her husband Park Chung-hee, is Yuk Yeong-su, the first lady. Here are some photos of her from a book I found at Yonsei University Library a few years ago:








She has been described as being "widely revered," and the photos above may suggest why. On August 15, 1974, she accompanied her husband who was giving an Independence Day speech.



As you saw, Park's speech was interrupted by Mun Se-gwang, a Korean resident of Japan, who fired shots at him. Park ducked behind the bulletproof podium and as shots were exchanged between Mun and security, his wife was hit.

(Photo from here)

She died later that evening. Also killed by a ricocheting bullet was high school student Jang Bong-hwa. As can be seen in the video, her funeral was attended by thousands of people.


The western media often referred to Park as being 'tough', and in the video it's not hard to see why, as he stepped up and continued his speech.


What I like about the above photo is that it reminds you that, yes, he was not some mythical figure (despite the arguments of those who like to posthumously canonize or crucify him), but very human.

Other photos of Yuk Yeong-su, in her childhood or with her husband can be found here and here.

One wonders, however, what Park would have thought of people referring to him as "몸짱!"

See See Tee Vee

The Joongang Ilbo looks at how the use of CCTV and other information gathering systems threaten our privacy (but increase our security). I liked what the manager of Kookmin Bank's Fraud Detection System had to say:

“Kookmin Bank has all the details of its clients dating back to 1984.”

Interesting date.

Korea Beat also translated a Donga Ilbo article looking at the difference in the number of surveillance cameras found in Seoul's richer areas as compared to its poorer areas, with possible implications for the security of the poorer areas.

If you want to get in on the surveillance fun, use Daum's map service, click on 교통정보 (in the top right corner) and then look at the window that pops up; at the bottom of the window you can click on CCTV and choose from several different expressway cameras around the country.