Comment by agentifysh
7 days ago
> The important context is that these two presidents were Chun Doo-hwan and his successor Roh Tae-Woo, who led the military coup of December 12th (1979), seizing power, and then sending paratroopers to murder hundreds of civilians to quash public protest in the uprising of Gwangju (1980).
I think your comment here is very emotionally charged here but to clarify to outsiders reading, those protestors also broke into an military armory, armed themselves to the teeth, and an armed conflict broke out. It's still not clear as to who fired the first shot and by all definitions can be viewed as armed insurrection not a mere "public protest".
Also during this time protests were spreading not just in Gwangju but in other large cities. The Gwangju incident is still a very contested and heavily debated historical event one that has been constantly politically weaponized to silence opposition.
> So mock their later pardons if you want to, but you can't deny it marked an important and necessary step in Korea's history. It also shows sending your ex-presidents to prison only to pardon them later is still better than not bothering with it at all.
I am mocking South Korea's political arena because pardoning Presidents after charging them with treason/corruption/insurrection only reinforces that laws are selectively applied and some are still above its law and constitution. Better would've been to refrain from the tit for tat kangaroo courts altogether to placate whatever direction the country's leaning towards in that election cycle.
> Also, the "obvious reason" that American politics sent zero ex-presidents to prison is that Biden chickened out. So, there's that.
Post-watergate scandal, it was President Ford that stated going after Nixon would bottleneck national interest decision making with partisan legal/political factionalism , something that South Korea has become today and it will not stop.
> those protestors also broke into an military armory, armed themselves to the teeth, and an armed conflict broke out
Oh you are one of those people.
So when you said you were "surprised by the lack of depth of assessing Korea's history of prosecuting its presidents" you were complaining that people didn't follow your far-right revisionist history of Korea?
Talking with the likes of you is waste of my time, but just to clear the matter for others interested:
On May 18th, 1980, paratroopers were beating and arresting residents of Gwangju, not just protestors but random civilians, going into people's homes to beat up everyone and arrest anyone they didn't like. By 20th, multiple people were beaten to death, and as people got angry protests became larger and larger.
On 21st, the street of Geumnam-ro was packed with tens of thousands of protestors. On 1 pm, soldiers opened fire on protestors, with more than 50 dying. That afternoon, people started organizing armed militia.
These are all very well known and publicly available information, a google search away for anyone who can read Korean.
English summary is also available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
You are purposely taking words out of context.
I'm not disagreeing with the timeline here, but the moment of breaking into an armory, handing out thousands of military grade weapons to civilians and engaging in active organized firefights fundamentally transforms a situation from a "protest" into a full-scale armed conflict.
To pretend otherwise ignores the exceptionally detailed historical record regarding the sheer level of armed action that took place. This wasn't just a crowd shouting and throwing molotov cocktails.
The citizen militia systematically raided police stations, military reserve armories in surrounding towns. They commandeered hundreds of armored personel carriers, military trucks, and jeeps to use in combat.
The citizen militia armed themselves with several thousands of M1 Garands, carbines, M16s and light machine guns with thousands of rounds of live ammunition and gernades. They even secured somewhere around like 8 tons of TNT and dynamite from local coal mines, which explosives experts among the citizens used to rig the basement of the provincial capital building which served as the headquarter for the militia.
This resulted in intense, organized urban warfare. The militia was heavily armed enough to engage in massive gun battles and physically drive the martial law troops out of downtown Gwangju for several days. In the ensuing combat, official records show 22 soldiers and 4 police officers were killed, alongside over 250 state forces wounded. Even accounting for the soldiers killed by friendly fire in the chaos, the armed citizens actively engaged, shot, and killed military personnel.
We can acknowledge that the Korean military committed atrocities AND that what followed was a highly organized, massive urban warfare between a heavily armed well organized citizens militia and the army. The two facts need not be mutually exclusive. Pointing out the severe reality of the heavy weapons used, the scale of the combat, and the casualties inflicted on both sides is what makes this complex. I'm shining a light on the complicated historical reality of how massive and violent this conflict was as an outsider looking in. I understand you are Korean and I understand this might invoke an emotionally charged take from your part.