hankyoreh

By Jung Dae-ha, Gwangju correspondent

“How old was she?”

Aung San Suu Kyi asked this as she stood on the morning of Jan. 31 before the grave of the so-called “May bride” in Gwangju’s May 18th National Cemetery.

Choi Mi-ae was 23 years old, recently married and eight months pregnant when she was fatally shot by a martial law soldier at a house near Chonnam National University in May 1980.

Suu Kyi, a member of the Burmese House of Representatives and longtime democracy activist in Myanmar, also paid her respects at the tomb of Yun Sang-won (1950-1980). A spokesman for the Citizens’ and Students’ Committee for Struggle, Yun was also fatally shot by a martial law soldier at the South Jeolla Provincial Office early in the morning on May 27, 1980, the uprising’s last day.

Suu Kyi was calm as she walked around the cemetery, dressed neatly in gray with a purple scarf and her hair tied with a pin in the shape of a gardenia. Her visit to Gwangju was a symbolic meeting between the events of 1980 in South Korea and the August 1988 uprising in Burma. She traveled to Gwangju on the night of Jan. 30 after arriving in South Korea two days earlier.

“My heart is trembling and my body is shaking,” she told Cho Maung, a 41-year-old Burmese democracy activist who is living in exile in South Korea. “I feel like I’m going to cry.”

Suu Kyi came to the country at the invitation of the organizing committee for the Pyeongchang Special Olympics. After accepting the request, she immediately contacted the South Korean branch of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which was established by Burmese democracy activists living in exile in Korea, and told them she wanted to go to Gwangju.

Her feelings for the city may have come from their shared history of fighting a military regime. The daughter of General Aung San, a hero of the Burmese war for independence, Suu Kyi joined the democracy campaign in the wake of the so-called “8888 Uprising” that occurred at eight in the morning on August 8, 1988. The result was similar to the May 1980 massacre in Gwangju: over 20,000 people lost their lives at the hands of the Burmese regime. Sentenced to house arrest in 1989, Suu Kyi was finally freed 21 years later in 2010. Last April, she won a seat in the Burmese House of Representatives in a by-election.

But representatives of the military regime still hold one-quarter of the country’s parliamentary seats.

To commemorate her visit to the cemetery, Suu Kyi planted a pine tree - a symbol of persistence, vitality, and constancy that remains green throughout the seasons.

San San Wi, a 48-year-old Burmese woman living with her South Korean husband in Naju, South Jeolla, tearfully recalled seeing Suu Kyi from afar while attending a democracy rally in Yangon as a graduate student.

“She is the symbol and hope of democracy in Burma,” San said.

Suu Kyi received her 2004 Gwangju Human Rights Awards medal on Jan. 31 from the May 18 Memorial Foundation, as well as honorary citizenship from the city of Gwangju.

The medal to Suu Kyi, recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, had been an expression of friendship and solidarity from Gwangju to a Burmese democracy fighter who suffered through years of hardship. The foundation and city continued sending invitations to her every year after giving the award.

The South Korean branch of NLD, which is located in Bucheon, Gyeonggi province, accepted the medal on her behalf and kept it in storage. Nine years later, it finally found its way into her hands.

“It is all the more precious for being a gesture of friendship from citizens who suffered similar difficulties to ours at a difficult time,” she said. “I hope that the bond between Gwangju and the Burmese democracy movement becomes strong.”

Suu Kyi left a message in the visitor’s book in the first-floor lobby of Gwangju City Hall. “It is an honor to come to this city of brave people, and to feel like I have become one with them,” she wrote.

Gwangju Mayor Kang Un-tae asked Suu Kyi to give a keynote speech as leader for peace when the city hosts the World Human Rights Cities Forum on May 16-18 and the 2015 Summer Universiade.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]