The essential account of the South Korean 1980 pro-democracy rebellion On 18 May 1980, student activists gathered in the South Korean city of Gwangju to protest the martial law government of General Chun Doo-hwan. The security forces responded with unmitigated violence. Hundreds of students, activists and citizens were arrested, tortured and murdered. This fresh translation … [Read More]
Booklist: Gwangju
Fiction and non-fiction relating to the May 18th 1980 uprising in Gwangju and its aftermath
Witnessing Gwangju: A Memoir
From the publisher’s website: Witnessing Gwangju describes the life-altering experience of young Peace Corps volunteer, Paul Courtright. Courtright was in the countryside of South Korea in 1980 to help leprosy patients. On the way back home from his medical checkup, Courtright was caught in the middle of what became known by some as the Gwangju Massacre, … [Read More]
Human Acts
Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend’s corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter censorship, denial, forgiveness and the echoing agony of … [Read More]
Contentious Activism and Inter-Korean Relations
From the publisher’s website: In South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security, and political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification. Providing international observers with … [Read More]
Straight Lines and Poison Gas – At the Hospital Wards (Bi-lingual, Vol 18 – Liberty)
I stood up with him. I reeled from the feeling of futility, with my legs shaky and my entire body sluggish. As I was walking out of that empty, white, square-shaped room, the man turned around, gave my shoulder a friendly grab, and looked straight into my eyes. “By the way, Sir, you might want … [Read More]
Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century
From the publisher’s website: Using social movements as a prism to illuminate the oft-hidden history of 20th century Korea, this book provides detailed analysis of major uprisings that have patterned that country’s politics and society. From the 1894 Tonghak Uprising through the March 1, 1919, independence movement and anti-Japanese resistance, a direct line is traced … [Read More]
The Old Garden
Political prisoner Hyun Woo is freed after eighteen years to find no trace of the world he knew. The friends with whom he shared utopian dreams are gone. His Seoul is unrecognizably transformed and aggressively modernized. Yoon Hee, the woman he loved, died three years ago. A broken man, he drifts toward a small house … [Read More]
There a Petal Silently Falls: 3 stories
Ch’oe Yun is a Korean author known for her breathtaking versatility, subversion of authority, and bold exploration of the inner life. Readers celebrate her creative play with fantasy and admire her deep engagement with trauma, history, and the vagaries of remembrance. In this collection’s title work, There a Petal Silently Falls, Ch’oe explores both the … [Read More]
South Korean Democracy: Legacy of the Gwangju Uprising
From the publisher’s website: This new book offers a retrospective appraisal of the Gwangju Uprising by academics, activists and artists from Gwangju, Korea. In 1980, South Koreans took to the streets to demand democracy. When the military threatened brutal suppression of the popular movement, only in Gwangju did people refuse to submit. After horrific bloodshed, … [Read More]
Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm
Publisher description: This book follows the long journey of correspondents who have passed through Korea. Since the first of them, photographer Felice Beato, arrived in 1871 with American troops invading Kangwha Island, foreign journalists have puzzled over this land, as complicated and fascinating now as 135 years ago. Famed author Jack London grappled with a … [Read More]
The Gwangju Uprising: The Pivotal Democratic Movement That Changed the History of Modern Korea
From the publisher’s website: The book explores the implications of the democratic movement that took place in Gwangju, a southwestern city of Korea, in May 1980 when military paratroopers brutally crushed a group of protesters who demonstrated against General Chun Doo-hwan, who was about to become the country’s president. Because of the event now known … [Read More]
Contentious Kwangju: The May 18th Uprising in Korea’s Past and Present
From the publisher’s website: One of the largest political protests in contemporary Korean history, the May 1980 Kwangju Uprising still exerts a profound, often contested, influence in Korean society. Through a deft combination of personal reflections and academic analysis, Contentious Kwangju offers a comprehensive examination of the multiple, shifting meanings of this seminal event and explains how … [Read More]
Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising
The Kwangju Uprising – “Korea’s Tiananmen” – is one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 turned into a bloody people’s revolt. In the two decades since, memories of the … [Read More]
Korea On The Brink: A Memoir of Political Intrigue and Military Crisis
In October 1979, a series of potentially catastrophic events was set into motion: President Park Chung-hee was assassinated, South Korean officers staged a coup d’état, and South Korean troops brutally suppressed civilian demonstrators during the controversial Kwangju uprising. Any one of these incidents could have sparked another major conflict on the Korean Peninsula. General Wickham … [Read More]
The Kwangju Uprising: Eyewitness Press Accounts of Korea’s Tiananmen
From the publisher’s website: The Kwangju Uprising that occurred in May 1980 is burned into the minds of South Koreans in much the same way that Tiananmen is burned into the minds of contemporary Chinese. As the world watched in horror following the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, student protesters were brutally suppressed by … [Read More]
Massive Entanglement, Marginal Influence: Carter and Korea in Crisis
From the publisher’s website: Using extensive documentation, this book examines how President Jimmy Carter’s troop withdrawal and human rights policies—conceived in abstraction from East Asian realities—contributed to the demise of Korean President Park Chung Hee. The author suggests that some lessons are relevant beyond Korea, for example, in our treatment of human rights problems in … [Read More]