Thread by @Americas_Crimes

This week in 1980, Jimmy Carter approved an operation to violently crush a pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju, S. Korea against the US-backed military dictatorship. S. Korean military forces beat, bayonetted, and fired on unarmed protesters, killing 600 & injured over 4,000.

US-backed dictator Chun Doo-hwan sent Korean Special Forces to Gwangju & instituted martial law across the country. Universities were shut down and political speech banned as protests began breaking out around the country.

Protesters in Gwangju—believing the US rhetoric about its support for democracy—naively believed the US government would side with them over their repressive dictatorship, but they were wrong.

The crackdown was carried out by S. Korean Special Forces trained for missions inside North Korea. They beat people with clubs, stabbed and mutilated them with bayonets, threw at least twenty to their deaths from high buildings, and used US-supplied weapons to fire on protesters.

One witness described the soldiers brutality: “A cluster of troops attacked each student individually. They would crack his head, stomp his back, and kick him in the face. When the soldiers were done, he looked like a pile of clothes in meat sauce."

The brutality caused the Gwangju protests to swell and to also take up arms and liberate the city in the style of the Paris Commune. Daily citizens' assemblies were created and much of entire city joined the protesters creating a self-governing community.

By May 19, the army sent 3,000 more soldiers, which began shooting into the crowds. Troops shot dead twenty girls at Gwangju's Central High School. Ambulance and cab drivers who tried to take the wounded to hospitals were shot.

One hundred students who sheltered in the Catholic Center were slaughtered. Captured high school and university students had their hands tied behind them with barbed wire; many were then executed.

Finally, on May 27, the military stormed the city, using tanks and helicopters in a full military operation to reclaim the city. The soldiers waged war on the students, killing hundreds and ending the democratic experiment in Gwangju.

Eyewitnesses saw hundreds of bodies dumped in several mass graves on the outskirts of the city. The death toll may not ever be known. Census figures reveal that almost 2,000 citizens of Gwangju disappeared during this time period.

Much of the very important work done to expose the US role in this massacre was done by the journalist Tim Shorrock.
thenation.com/article/kwangj…