hankyoreh

civic groups and Sewol bereaved families carry a large South Korean flag as they march in front of the former site of South Jeolla Provincial Office in Gwangju

After a ban lasting from 2008-16 under the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, the song “March for the Beloved” rang out in unison from all attendees at a 37th anniversary event on May 18 to commemorate the Gwangju Democratization Movement. It’s symbolic in itself that the song, which has now become a symbol of that movement, was again sung in chorus. The 37th anniversary ceremony was the largest yet, attended by President Moon Jae-in and around 10,000 veterans of the May 18 Movement and surviving family members. It’s good to see the new administration’s efforts to deeply inscribe the spirit of that movement.

But it is dismaying to know that apart from the state-level celebrations, the truth of what happened in 1980 remains shrouded in mystery. The nature of the cover-up is clearly shown in the Hankyoreh’s reporting on documents acquired on Army Security Command distortions of the May 18 movement. It is shocking to learn that the Command set up a secret organization to misrepresent and lie about the movement ahead of a 1988 National Assembly hearing on it. Called the “May 11 research committee,” the secret organization submitted key documents to the National Assembly that painted Gwangju citizens as rioters and depicted the suppressive actions of the martial law army as legitimate defensive measures. The time of the citizen army‘s first weapon seizure on May 21, 1980, was altered from 5:30 pm to 8 am, which was before the martial law army opened fire. The aim was to make it seem as though the citizens had fired first on the airborne troops. The committee also ordered the deletion of Training and Doctrine Command situation log records of the 7th Airborne Brigade suppressing citizens to conceal the brutal slaughter perpetrated by the troops.

It’s deplorable that these illegal misrepresentations at the direction of a state institution resulted in a failure to punish the deaths of the citizens killed in the file in front of the former South Jeolla Provincial Office as “homicide for the purposes of insurrection” in the prosecutors’ 1996 investigations of May 18 and the coup of Dec. 12, 1979. More distressing still, those manufactured falsehoods later became the official line of the Ministry of National Defense, and are the roots of the fabrications about May 18 that continue to circulate on the internet.

In addition to finding the full truth of May 18, the new administration will also need to uncover the ways state agencies misrepresented and doctored it. It still hasn’t come to light exactly who ordered the troops to open fire. Bringing all the facts to light is not only a way of bringing solace to the nameless souls who died on May 18, but also of honoring the theme of the 37th anniversary ceremony by creating a Republic of Korea where justice triumphs.

Members of Gwangju massacre bereaved families

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