hankyoreh

Hanyang University professor Hong Seung-gi (center) talks about his memories with deceased labor activist Park Gi-sun at memorial service held at Dandelion Little Theater in the Gung neighborhood of Gwangju on Dec. 16. (by Jung Dae-ha

By Jung Dae-ha, Gwangju correspondent

Around a hundred people gathered at the Dandelion Little Theater in the Gung neighborhood of Gwangju on Dec. 16. They were there to attend a memorial service for Park Gi-sun, a university student-turned-labor activist who died 35 years ago at the age of 21. The service was organized by the Wildfire Patriot Memorial Association.

The memorial service provided a fresh look at the human side of Park Gi-sun, who until now has been mainly known as the main character of the song “A March for You” and a posthumous wedding between deceased activists.

In July 1978, while Park (1957-1978) was studying in the Korean history education department of Chonnam National University, she played a leading role in establishing the Wildfire Night School, a night school for workers. Three months later, she was hired as at a company in the Gwangcheon Industrial Complex in Gwangju. On Dec. 25 of the same year, her brief life came to an end in a sudden accident.

The members of the Wildfire Night School - including Yun Sang-won (1950-1980), spokesperson for the citizens’ army, who resisted to the end and was finally killed, played an important role in the Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980. In Feb. 1982, a posthumous spiritual wedding was held for Park and Yun. “A March for You” was composed as a celebratory song for this occasion.

In an essay submitted to the memorial volume, Hanyang University professor Hong Seung-gi, 68, made public for the first time his memory of meeting Park as her advisor at the Korean history education department at Chonnam National University.

Shortly before Apr. 19, 1978, the anniversary of a popular uprising that took place in 1960, Hong was taking Park, a junior at the university and a student activist, to his house on the order of university authorities, when agents from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency forced Park to go with them. The next day, Hong followed an agent from the KCIA and entered a room in the basement of the building.

“There were splatters of blood here and there on the walls. The room was dark except for one dim bulb. Park Gi-sun was sitting in a chair,” Hong said.

Hong wrote a pledge on Park’s behalf as he was asked and took Park out of the building. “What country were these people from, who would arrest an innocent student and lock her up in a basement to scare her?” Hong wrote in his essay.

For about a year since the end of 1976, Park had been helping at a night school for young workers with students from the education college at Chonnam National University. Hong saw Park peddling watermelons and other fruit in order to raise money for the night school. “I can still see this female university student, barely twenty years old, wrapping a handkerchief around her neck, pulling a handcart behind her, and entering an alley,” Hong said.

In June 1978, 11 professors at Chonnam National University published a manifesto called the “Korean Education Guidance,” in which they made public their opposition to the Yushin regime. Park had made up his mind to focus solely on research, but he found himself experiencing serious cognitive dissonance while he was advising Park Gi-sun and other students. He said that this was what led him to add his signature to the guidance. Park, who took part in the demonstration in support of the education guidance, was forced to take a leave of absence from her studies. Hong was dismissed from his position, though he was reinstated the following year.

“Park Gi-sun warmly embraced those of us who were poor and uneducated. She treated us like people,” recalled Na Yong-gwan, 49, in a video interview. Na was a student-teacher who both studied and taught at Wildfire Night School.

“Park Gi-sun was the link connecting the student movement and the labor movement in Gwangju in the 1970s. We need to take time to reflect on her life,” said Kang Hyun-ah, a member of the policy research team at the Gwangju Foundation for Women.

Gwangju correspondent)

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