Family member of Gwangju Democratization Movement victim testifies to helicopter gunfire

Posted on : 2019-06-11 18:24 KST Modified on : 2019-06-11 18:24 KST
Jeong Su-man heard sound of gunfire on his way home during the massacre
Jeong Su-man
Jeong Su-man

“On the afternoon of May 21, I heard the ‘rat-tat-tat’ of repeated gunfire from a helicopter that was circling to the rear of the South Jeolla Province Office.”

Jeong Su-man, a 73-year-old former chairman of the May 18 Bereaved Family Association, shared this testimony of the events of May 1980 in Gwangju before the court while appearing as a witness on June 10 in the trial of former President Chun Doo-hwan. Judge Jang Dong-hyeok of the eighth criminal division of Gwangju District Court heard testimony about gunfire from helicopters from Jeong and six others that day as part of Chun’s trial on charges of defaming a deceased individual.

Jeong prefaced his remarks by saying the incident had “happened while I was returning home during a break in the confrontation after the airborne troops opened fire on citizens in front of South Jeolla Provincial Office at 1 pm on May 21, 1980.”

“After spending some time at the South Jeolla Daily on Seoseok Road, I was going through the roads behind the provincial office on my way home and came across a dead body. As I approached the Kim [name redacted] clinic in Seoseok about 50 meters away, I heard the ‘rat-tat-tat’ of gunshots coming from the air,” he recalled.

“I looked and saw a helicopter circling in the air. I hurried to hide under a tree by the clinic’s wall,” he said.

After looking at the records later, Jeong confirmed that the body he had found around 2 pm on May 21 belonged to Hong In-pyo, then 19.

“It had the cause of death listed as ‘complex concave fracture of the left front bone’ due to blunt force trauma,” Jeong said. “Given that there weren’t any martial law forces in the area at the time, his death appeared to be the result of gunfire from helicopters.”

To support his claims of gunfire from helicopters, Jeong cited records of the martial law command ordering helicopter fire, a 1st Aviation Brigade situation log from 5:10 am on May 27 listing “two kills of rioters with prior records,” and records of 1,500 rounds of 20mm Vulcan ammunition resupplied to the air fleet by the Combat Arms Training Command.

Defense attorney Jeong Ju-gyo asked Jeong Su-nam why he had not mentioned the helicopter fire during a 1995 investigation by the Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office or 2016 investigation by the Ministry of National Defense.

The attorney also asked Jeong how he “arrived at the place where [the gunfire] was witnessed when it was around 500m from the provincial office to his house in Dongmyeong [a neighborhood in Gwangju].”

Jeong replied, “I did not have the chance to mention it because I was questioned mainly on secret burials, which were the chief issue at the time of questioning.”

He also explained that he “had no choice but to take a detour at a distance while the airborne troops were in control of the provincial office.”

Emergency room worker remembers seeing helicopter flying outside hospital

Choi Yoon-choon, 56, was working as a nursing assistant trainee at the time in the emergency room at Gwangju Christian Hospital.

“I could hear the sound of a helicopter in the sky outside the hospital. I stepped outside the emergency room and saw a low-flying helicopter firing – rat-tat-tat – toward the tail end of a blood donation procession,” she recalled.

“The bullets were pinging off the dry earth, and a lot of people were wounded,” she added.

When Jeong asked why Choi was only discussing the incident now, she retorted, “If I had done it before, they would have arrested me.”

Chun, who previously attended a hearing on Mar. 11, was absent by court permission on June 10. He is facing trial over remarks in his memoirs published in Apr. 2017, in which he denounced the late Father Pius Cho as a “shameless liar and embarrassment to the clergy” after the priest spoke about gunfire from helicopters during the Gwangju Democratization Movement.

By Ahn Kwan-ok, Gwangju correspondent

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