hankyoreh

By Lee Moon-young

“At the time of the April 19 Revolution, a request came in from the police asking us to lend them 100 thousand rounds of carbine ammunition. Martial law commander Song Yo-chan dismissed it, saying, ‘Tell them we don’t have any.’ A few days later, a phone call came in from Gwak Yeong-ju [the then-police affairs bureau director who issued the order to fire on demonstrators]. He said he was really resentful. Song got his ear chewed off by Gwak. ‘You crazy bastards, you say the most useless things without knowing how the world works....’”

Over two interviews on July 20 and Sept. 27 of last year with the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities, former International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice Chairman Kim Woon-yong, 80, delivered his account of the frantic situation at the time of the April 19 Revolution in 1960. At the time of the events, Kim was aide-de-camp to Army Chief of Staff and martial law commander Song Yo-chan. Kim, who fought in the Korean War as a student at Yonhee College, was recognized for the English skills he picked up while engaging in “military study abroad” on three occasions at U.S. infantry schools, and worked as aide-de-camp from the time Song was first army commander.

Kim’s account included many unknown back stories about the revolution.

“The U.S. tried to send Yi Ki-bung to Hawaii,” Kim recounted. “If his family had known about this, maybe things would not have ended up the way they did.”

At around 5:30 a.m. on Apr. 28, 1960, Army second lieutenant Yi Kang-sok, Rhee’s foster son, shot his father, former National Assembly speaker Yi Ki-bung, his mother Park Maria, and his younger brother Yi Kang-wook before taking his own life at Official Residence No. 36 in the Kyungmudae.

Kim went on to talk about Song. The occasion that prompted a renewed explosion of popular anger after it died down with Apr. 20 suppression of demonstrators at Korea University by the martial law forces was Yi Ki-bung’s Apr. 23 announcement that he was “considering stepping down” as vice-president-elect. In response to the use of the phrase “considering stepping down” rather than simply “stepping down,” even professors joined in the demonstrations of Apr. 25. On that day, Kim reported that “something serious has happened,” at which Song, who was napping in his office, reportedly said “Tell the deputy chief of staff” before going back to sleep.

According to Kim’s account, Song refused repeated requests for troop support from Yi Kang-sok when demonstrators gathered at his father’s Seodaemun home on Apr. 25, three days before the murder-suicide.

“A call came from Yi

Kang-sok, and you could hear the demonstrations roaring in the background,” Kim recounted. “He said, ‘Send just a single squadron, and do it quickly,’ and I communicated this to the situation room. They just said, ‘Say we sent one,’ but did not send any.”

The archives containing Kim’s account are based on the results of an oral history collection effort interviewing participants in the April Revolution, carried out by the Korea Democracy Foundation last year to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the events.

For a little over a year, the KDF interviewed participants in the events of the revolution to collect and organize their responses, with the results to be released on the Internet on Tuesday (oralhistory.kdemocracy.co.kr) in time for the fifty-first anniversary of the revolution. The archives include 181 hours of testimony from 105 people, including high school and university students from around the country who took part in the revolution, as well as journalists, soldiers, judges, and ordinary citizens who were working in various vocations.

The KDF undertook considerable efforts to gather accounts from people who were middle and high schools at the time. As a result, it confirmed that these students played a major role within the flow of events from the Feb. 28 “Daegu students’ patriotic deed,” which began when students were ordered to attend school on Sunday so that they could not attend a campaign rally for Chang Myon, then a Democratic Party vice presidential candidate, and continuing on to the Mar. 15 demonstrations against election improprieties and the April 19 revolution.

A KDF official said, “The role of middle and high school students did not receive detailed examination over the years, even though they were leaders of the April Revolution, and the oral history effort allowed us to examine how the student demonstrations did not just happen by chance, but through preparations and alliances.”

The archive includes histories of the activities of the interviewees, as well as photographs and videotaped testimony. Visitors can glimpse a vivid picture of the situation at the time of the Revolution, including demonstrations with farming implements, street demonstrations, candlelight demonstrations, and hand-to-hand combat with police, and hear the voices of people telling how the police engaged in torture, beatings, and persuasion through appeasement.

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