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“May 21, 1 pm, was a very critical point,” Lee Jae-eui, an activist and writer who witnessed the massacre in front of Gwangju’s provincial capitol building, told us as he stood on the exact spot of the firing years later. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
For three days, Chun’s paratroopers had used boots, clubs, bayonets, and even flamethrowers to terrorize the city, filling the morgues with the dead and overwhelming the hospitals with bodies ripped apart by the violence. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
Angered and shocked beyond measure, the people, led at first by young students and joined by taxi drivers, bus drivers, shopkeepers, gangsters, and prostitutes, fought back with vehicles and their own handmade weapons. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
By midday, hundreds of thousands of furious Gwangju residents surrounded the paratroopers, who had made their stand at the old capitol building. Suddenly, and without warning, Lee says, the troops opened fire. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
Repeated volleys from M-16s turned Gwangju’s now-famous Geumnam-ro (avenue) into a scene of carnage. “I saw so many people killed, so many injured, with blood everywhere,” recalls Lee. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
The massacre was indelibly sealed in Korean memory in A Taxi Driver, the acclaimed 2018 film starring Song Kang-ho, the beloved character actor from the Academy Award–winning Parasite. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
The next day, May 22, Jimmy Carter’s national security team met at the White House and approved the use of force to retake the city. They also agreed to provide short-term support to Chun if he agreed to long-term political change (which never happened). https://www.thenation.com/article/world/two-days-in-may-that-shattered-korean-democracy/
